Stardock throws GOO on DRM
Wednesday, March 25, 2009 by Island Dog | Discussion: Personal Computing
Stardock announced today that the forthcoming update to its digital distribution platform, Impulse, will include a new technology aimed to pave the way to solving some of the common complaints of digital distribution.
The new technology, known as Game Object Obfuscation (Goo), is a tool that allows developers to encapsulate their game executable into a container that includes the original executable plus Impulse Reactor, Stardock’s virtual platform, into a single encrypted file.
When a player runs the game for the first time, the Goo’d program lets the user enter in their email address and serial number which associates their game to that person as opposed to a piece of hardware like most activation systems do. Once validated, the game never needs to connect to the Internet again.
Goo has a number of unique advantages that developer Stardock believes both gamers and developers will appreciate:
- There is no third-party client required. This means a developer can use this as a universal solution since it is not tied to any particular digital distributor.
- It paves the way to letting users validate their game on any digital distribution service that supports that game. One common concern of gamers is if the company they purchased a game from exits the market, their game library may disappear too. Games that use Goo would be able to be validated anywhere.
- It opens the door to gamers being able to resell their games because users can voluntarily disable their game access and transfer their license ownership to another user.
“One of our primary goals for Impulse Reactor is to create a solution that will appeal to game developers while adhering to the Gamers Bill of Rights,” said Brad Wardell, president & CEO of Stardock. “Publishers want to be able to sell their games in as many channels as possible but don’t want to have to implement a half-dozen ‘copy protection’ schemes. Game Object Obfuscation lets the developer have a single game build that can be distributed everywhere while letting gamers potentially be able to re-download their game later from any digital service. Plus, it finally makes possible a way for gamers and publishers to transfer game licenses to players in a secure and reliable fashion.”
Because Goo ties the game to a user’s account instead of the hardware, gamers can install their game to multiple computers without hassle.
Goo will be released on April 7 as part of the upcoming Impulse: Phase 3 release. Stardock also expects to be able to announce multiple major publishers making use of Goo in April as well as adding their libraries to Impulse.
Impulse is poised to exceed one million customers in the next week despite only being launched nine months ago.
To learn more about Impulse, visit www.impulsedriven.com .
 |
|
Page 3 of 3 | |
|
|---|
Reply #42 Monday, March 30, 2009 3:47 AM
But very few publishers are convinced of that. It is for them that GOO has been made.
Reply #43 Monday, March 30, 2009 6:51 PM
Exactly.
On Stardock games you buy at retail, we put nothing on it. There's no copy protection. No DRM, nothing. The idea there is that there are plenty of people who don't have Internet connections.
People should be able to go to the store, buy their game, take it home, install it and not have to worry.
But...
If they want to get updates, well obviously we need to make sure the person actually bought the game. Otherwise, we have to jump through all kinds of hoops to make sure (for one example) that the "patch" doesn't turn a demo version into a full game (there have been plenty of debacles in gaming history like that).
Now, what Goo does is take what we've been doing for years and let third parties use it. In Demigod or GalCiv or WindowBlinds, we had to insert code into the source of the program to support this. Obviously, third parties aren't going to want to do that. So instead, we automate this with Goo. (i.e. run Goo.exe on the game).
Will it get cracked? Certainly. Everything can be cracked. The difference here is that what we do is invisible. I doubt the average Demigod beta tester even knew their game was "Goo'd" for the past 6 months. It's basically invisible. Same for GalCiv users.
Reply #44 Wednesday, April 15, 2009 12:10 AM
Reply #45 Wednesday, April 15, 2009 12:27 AM
Err, nearly every major company keeps internet records of everything that happens. Steam, Games For Windows and many other programs are very likely doing the exact same, if not more.
Reply #46 Wednesday, April 15, 2009 8:33 AM
Hey, I go away for a few weeks and i come back and people are thowing me around 
Please login to comment and/or vote for this skin.
Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
- Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting on the forums and downloading skins.
- Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
- Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
- It's simple, and FREE!
|
|
Page 3 of 3 | |
|
|---|
Reply #41 Sunday, March 29, 2009 7:21 AM
And besides, honestly, it's not like a system like this is that difficult to crack anyway.
Sticking to the current Stardock policy(the game is not protected, but to get patches you need validation) would be the best thing IMHO.
Well, putting small items in bigger packaging DOES avert shoplifters (because it's trickier to hide it). It's the same with piracy. If it's TOO easy, more people will do it. The trick is to make any DRM as transparent to honest customers as possible. I like the "fire and forget" feel of this scheme.