Painkiller CD Woes [Apr 09, 2004, 09:25 am ET] – Share – Viewing Comments
Several readers have reported the in-store available availability of Painkiller,
the new first-person shooter from Polish developer People Can Fly showing up a
bit earlier than expected (story). Unfortunately, as described in
this post to the DreamCatcher Forums (thanks
Gameguru Mania), there is a
problem getting the game to run on many systems due to conflicts between the
game's copy-protection scheme and a number of CD-ROM drives. The
DreamCatcher Forums also offers their attempts at addressing this problem,
along with word that: "Painkiller Update v1.1 will soon be available for
download that will address a number of issues." Update: Robert Stevenson
of Dreamcatcher made
a post to our forums about this issue, here's a bit:
- The copy protection scheme used on Painkiller (Macrovision SafeDisc) is commonly used in the game's industry on major titles. It and other such systems are primarily to prevent the casual copying of games which ultimately hurts everyone, developers, publishers, and end consumers alike.
- For almost everyone there should be no issue running or playing Painkiller at all.
...
- There may be more drives that have issues, but the game has been tested with hundreds of drives with no problems and most of the support calls and emails to date (bearing in mind that Painkiller has been available in several places in Europe all week) have been on disabling emulators and not CD/DVD drive hardware problems. We are however continuing to look into this matter further.
- A Painkiller 1.1 update is in testing now should be ready next week. It is truly an update (and not just a patch) and will offer some more professional level multiplayer features as well as a new multiplayer map. Some known issues will of course be addressed in it as well.
- If anyone has further issues, please contact the DreamCatcher technical support team. Their information can be found in the Painkiller manual or on the painkillergame.com website and forums.
There has to be an easier way to do this, in terms of end user experience at least. Maybe by the developer collecting CD Keys ?
Look at HL, afaik to this date no one has been able to work out the algorhythm (sp?) for creating a false CD Key.
Now add onto this a mechanism for the developers to keep a central database of the widely shared keys (i.e. warez copies using shared keys). Finally code copy protection into the game itself (not as an addon) that downloads and incoporates lists of warezed keys and if the copy has one of these either degrades the performance of the game, removes features or just prevents it running after a certain period of time. This way casual copiers run it long enough to decide if they want to buy it (a kind of full-feature demo if you like) and hardcore pirates will give up after a while.
Look at HL, afaik to this date no one has been able to work out the algorhythm (sp?) for creating a false CD Key.
Now add onto this a mechanism for the developers to keep a central database of the widely shared keys (i.e. warez copies using shared keys). Finally code copy protection into the game itself (not as an addon) that downloads and incoporates lists of warezed keys and if the copy has one of these either degrades the performance of the game, removes features or just prevents it running after a certain period of time. This way casual copiers run it long enough to decide if they want to buy it (a kind of full-feature demo if you like) and hardcore pirates will give up after a while.
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