How Game Companies protect their CD/DVD’s from Copying?

CD/DVD Copy Protection is the most common Protected process used by almost all the Game Development Company these days. In other word, the Original Game CD get protected by using softwares like SecuROM in order to stop hackers and commercial pirates from developing illegal copies to sell on the black market.

These protection works by checking if whether the Original Copy of Game is available in the drive or not, and if not, then you get an error “No CD Found, Please insert the Correct CD” or similar message. Using softwares like SecuROM, the game companies embed a code in the games executable file which detects whether the game’s original executable file is present or not.

Let’s check out some of these CD/DVD Copy Protection Softwares in the market.

SafeDisc : SafeDisc is one of the most common and most known CD Protection used. There are various version of SafeDisc since its presence, the current version is SafeDisc 4.90.010. The major role of SafeDisc is to add a digital signature to the Optical media, which checks the security and verifies the SafeDisc digital signature while replicating the Original Copy.

Popular titles protected by SafeDisc : Splinter Cell – Pandora Tomorrow (DVD-Version), Quake 4 and Call of Duty 5 – World at War

SecuROM : SecuROM also is one of the most popular Copy Protection developed by Sony Technologies. The latest version of SecuROM is 07.38.0009. It also plays a similar role of storing Digital IDs in the SubChannel Data of the Original CD. But the most popular feature of secuROM is the Online activation of the Original Copy. During the Game Installation, the game require user to activate the game online in order to complete the installation.

Popular titles protected by SecuROM : Far Cry 2, Crysis Warhead, Need for Speed Undercover, Tomb Raider – Underworld and Neverwinter Nights 2

There are lot of other players too who play similar role of Copy Protection, some of them are : StarForce, LaserLock, Rootkit, TAGES and Illegal TOC.

The Excellent PC Game Covers designed

PC Game Covers are not easy to design. You just can’t add Posters of Game Characters, Backgrounds and Colors, it takes more than that. Game Covers should catch human’s eye and also should also convey the plot of the game to the non-gamers too.

Although it always follows the common layout of main character with background design at front side and game information on the back side. But here I present some of the best designed PC Game Covers that really strikes out well.

STALKER Clear Sky

Rainbow Six Vegas 2

Splinter Cell Double Agent

Alone in the Dark

Tomb Raider Underworld

Assassin’s Creed

Crysis Warhead

Far Cry 2

Grand Theft Auto IV

Race Driver GRID

Tags: pc games

Game Piracy in India… Let’s know, how it works?

Piracy of Game CD’s exist everywhere, in almost all the country. Game Piracy refers to several practices which involve the unauthorized copying of computer games.

note : insidepcgames.wordpress.com does not promote piracy…

The Current Scenario
Lets figure out how approximately it works in India, specially in Metro city like Mumbai. Its very easy to get the Pirated Copy of latest PC Games on the streets of Mumbai. Check out any Mumbai’s Railway station, or Shopping Mall, or at any corner of the streets. You’ll find it everywhere. Even the Authorized Shoppers keeps the pirated copies of PC Games.

Who behind this?
One of my friend (hiding the identity) in Mumbai, who use to work with such guys who sells the pirated cd’s around CST station, Mumbai disclosed the process.

Game Piracy is a huge market with more and more people involved. These people worked according to the zone they’ve been allocated. Either they buy Original Games from the store or download the games from Peer-to-Peer network or Internet, and make their millions of copies on a low cost DVD’s.

They also make millions of Print copies of the Original Game CD cover, which they use for the packaging of the games. One of my ex-colleague got the job offer for designing Game CD Covers of Multiple games packaged in single DVD. (see image below)

They distribute it among all the pirated CD retailers across Mumbai with their recognizable sign (It means CD bought from Shop 1 cannot be replacable with the Shop 2). These Shopkeepers can easily makeout whether the CD’s sold by them or someone else.

The Price
A single Pirated Game DVD of latest games like FAR CRY 2 will cost you Rs.40/- (Less than a dollar). And you’ll also get discount offered if you purchased more titles at a time.

Although the number of these sellers has been decreased since Mumbai Cops raided most of them, but you can still find them rounding up at such locations.

But the question remains same, Is there a way to stop this Piracy Industry?

Tags: india, pc games, piracy

Lets know the DirectX

While you were enjoying your game on your computer, DirectX takes care of the interaction of your mouse movements, keyboard inputs, sound playing and graphic card acceleration with your computer’s Operating system.

So Finally what is DirectX?

DirectX developed in 1995 by Microsoft, is a set of APIs (Application Program Interface) which communicates between the operating system (Windows) and the hardwares installed on your PC. This Micrsoft product allow all programs (softwares) to write instructions for hardware within your computer. In other word, Microsoft DirectX is a group of technologies designed for creating games and other high-performance multimedia applications which supports 2D and 3D graphics, sound, music, input devices, and support for networked applications such as multiplayer games.

The birth of DirectX?

DirectX is only available with Microsoft Windows Operating Systems. By this writing, DirectX 9.0c is available for Windows XP and DirectX 10.1 is available for Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008. The release of Windows 95 OSR2 shipped with DirectX 2.0, and with continous updation Windows 98 came with DirectX 5.0, and then followed the series i.e DirectX 6.0, 7.0, 7.0a, 8.0, 8.1, 9.0, 9.0a, 9.0b, 9.0c and 10.

So how it helps your Gaming?

During Initial days, Game Developers found it difficult to develop games for the PC, as one person’s PC Architecture was different from others. Developers use to program the game to check whether the mouse and joystick is attached to the computer or whether the sound is playing. Developing games with certain specification doesn’t worked on everyone’s computer. So, Microsoft decided to come up with DirectX standards which has been followed by all the Game Developers and they started developing games using DirectX Technologies and also provides the latest DirectX Softwares bundled with the PC titles.

The use of DirectX

DirectX provides a new level of graphics quality. The latest games like Crysis and Quantom of Solace requires new version of DirectX installed on your machine, absence of which may not start the game, as the game developers uses the feature of the latest DirectX Technologies. For Example, When a game developer wants to display a graphics during gameplay, it asks DirectX API, which in turn displays the graphics. The Developers doesn’t need to know what type of card he’s dealing with, or whether it is capable to do the task. Microsoft has provided DirectX, and the Graphic card manufacturer has provided a DirectX-capable driver, combination of which helps games runs smoothly.

Where is your DirectX?

Installation of the Windows includes DirectX installation on your machine, which you cannot remove. In order to find which version of DirectX is installed on your machine, Simply go to Start > Run > DxDiag. which will come up with DirectX Diagnostic Tool Window, where you can see all the Displays, Sond, Music and CPU related information of your machine. The best place to install the latest version of DirectX is the Microsoft Web site, which is found at www.microsoft.com/windows/directx.

DirectX Problems

A lot of issues that DirectX may cause, such as error messages, lockups, and or crashes, can be resolved by completely shutting down the computer, waiting a couple seconds, and turning the computer back on.

Tags: direct x, pc, pc games