Softwar Piracy

[slappylittleworld]

I paid for Army Builder.
I loaded Army Builder & started to use it right away.
My motherboard crashed.
I ordered and received my new motherboard & reloaded windows xp quicker then I can reactivate my AB license.

Making me wait for you guys to reissue me a key for something I already paid for is ridiculous. If I was pirating the software do you really think I'd contact you guys for a re-issuance or even paid for the thing to begin with???

I could have downloaded the freaking crack 5760 times by now. But I didn't because I pay for things. But this is the crap that causes people to just steal it and not have to deal with crappy anti piracy schemes.

Those 40 dollars are the last of my money you will receive until you come up with something better to combat piracy.

YOU HAVE A GREAT PRODUCT WHY MUCK IT UP WITH THIS BS!?!?!?!

[rob]

Sorry for the hassle with this. If you use the mechanism that Army Builder offers at the completion of the Reactivate License wizard, you should be back up and running within 24-48 hours. It sounds like that's not what occurred for you. If not, I need to know the details so I can find out what's going wrong with the process on our end.

The need for a secure anti-piracy solution was demonstrated many years ago, when we used a rather lax security mechanism for Army Builder. Our sales seemed significantly lower than the product's user base would indicate. So we added some logic into the product that allowed us to detect whether a given copy was licensed or pirated when our server was contacted to check for product updates. The results were stunning. It turned out that there were *four* pirated copies in use for every one licensed copy. When we switched to the new DRM with Army Builder V3, our sales more than tripled. That meant that three of every four pirated copies was being used by someone who was cheating just because they could. No wonder we were barely making ends meet as a business - everybody was using the product, but very few were actually paying for it. If we hadn't switched to the new mechanism, Army Builder 3 would never have been produced. It was a necessity due to the rampant piracy that existed.

Unfortunately, the security imposes an inconvenience on honest users such as yourself. The sad reality is that a clear majority of gamers has demonstrated a lack of honesty, as we learned years ago. If you have a business and the majority of your customer base demonstrates a general lack of honesty, you have to establish your policies accordingly and then strive to minimize the impact on those who are honest. That's what we've striven to do, but we're not always successful.

As for the availability of a crack, I think you'll find that all those references are for V1 and V2 of AB. To our knowledge, we have not yet seen a working crack for V3. If someone out there is aware of an actual working crack for V3, we'd obviously be interested in hearing about it.

Please send me the details of your efforts to get the license sorted out so that I can find out what went wrong on this end. Please give me your license number and the dates/times when you contacted support, along with info on whether you used the mechanism offered by the Reactivate License wizard within AB. Please send this info to me at helpdesk at wolflair dot com. Then we can figure out how to fix the process going forward.

[Redbeard]

You know, I completely understand the need to have some sort of DRM in your software, but it is getting to the point where I just want to stop using your product because of it.

I'm a software developer myself. Due to my job, I am frequently needing to reinstall a fresh OS on my work computer. Every time this happens, I have to contact you in order to have my licence reissued.

Furthermore, your limit of two licences per purchase strikes me as ridiculous. This isn't anti-virus software, that actually does more the more PCs it is installed on. This is hobby software. I have a computer in my office at work, a computer in my office at home, a computer in my game room in my basement, and a netbook I take on trips with me. I'd really like to be able to use the software that I'm paying for on all of them, but due to your draconian policies, I have to either choose which I want to install the program on, or pay more for extra licences. I'm not in all these places at once. This software is not providing me extra benefit from this, only simplifying my life.

You could learn a lot from Valve / Steam. I have a login credential on the Steam system. I can play any game I've paid through them on any PC I want. I'm not restricted to only two computers at a time, and I don't have to jump through hoops when I have to re-image a system. Rather than track what machine I'm using, it simply tracks where I'm logged in. I can't be logged in in multiple places at once, so I get to use each game that I purchased one time, but I can do it from whatever computer is convenient.

I like your product, but you're not successfully minimizing the DRM impact on me, an honest customer. Please, there are other ways to do DRM that don't involve tying honest customers to specific machines. If I'm only running one copy at a time, regardless of which machine I am running it on, I'm not pirating anything.

[rob]

Originally Posted by Redbeard

I'm a software developer myself. Due to my job, I am frequently needing to reinstall a fresh OS on my work computer. Every time this happens, I have to contact you in order to have my licence reissued.

Our system is designed with a *typical* consumer in mind. There will always be the non-standard exceptions for which any system works poorly. If you frequently need to reinstall a fresh O/S, you are definitely *not* a typical consumer. Decrying the DRM used within AB because it works poorly for your very non-standard environment seems a bit disingenuous to me.

That being said, there are a number of techniques you can use that will either minimize or outright eliminate the problem. You just need to ensure that the computer's identity remains the same.

Here are some possible options that will probably solve the situation for you.

1. Use Norton's Ghost software to take a snapshot of your computer once the O/S and common applications are fully installed, but before installing whatever software regularly changes. Then you can restore from the snapshot and eliminate all the overhead of reiinstalling everything.

2. Use the system backup capability built into Windows 7 to take a snapshot of your computer once the O/S and common applications are fully installed. As above, you can then restore from the backup to get running more quickly than re-installing everything.

3. If you have VMWare at work, setup a virtual machine to run AB within.

4. If you cannot use one of the above approaches and you're installing the *same* version of the operating system on the same computer, there's one other option. Make sure that you use the same product key to activate Windows, name the computer the same every time, and ensure your configuration options are setup the same (e.g. user accounts and such). If you do all this, it is likely (although not guaranteed) that all the pieces used to determine your computer's identity will be the same.

With options 1-3, AB will always generate the same identity for your computer. That means you merely need to go to the License menu and select the Reactivate License option whenever you re-install AB. With option 4, the identity will likely remain the same, in which case the same applies.

Hope this helps....

[gilvagor]

While having a login type DMR (for lack of a better term) would be great (I to have 3 or 4 computers that I would like to have Army Builder on a "net" login would be even more impracticable. I'm sure like most players out there they install AB on their laptop/netbook that way they can take it to a tournament or their friends. What happens if you can't get internet access?. In business you have to do things that may not make sense to other people.

AB2 was rampantly pirated by the same gaming community that claims they support the product so I completely understand the reasons LWD went with this license method. Everyone has to be treated equal...even those that are legit.

[Redbeard]

That's a fair point but it doesn't really mean you can't use a password system.

Consider this:

I get a machine, and install ArmyBuilder. I pay money and get my login validation. I use my password to validate my machine, which is now considered unlocked. I can do this on any number of computers.

When I am using ArmyBuilder, if my machine has a net connection, which most do, and AB requires in order to get updates, it sends my login credentials back to WolfLair's validation system, and is then considered active. WolfLair's system makes sure that no other active copy is claiming to be me, and sends a kill code back to any that are.

If I don't have a net connection, and I've already unlocked my computer, I get to use the program, just like I do now, without a connection, but I can't receive any new updates, because I'm not online.

I'm not going to go sharing my login credentials with people because I don't want my legal and paid-for program to stop working whenever someone I've shared with decides to launch their copy. On the other hand, if I forgot to log off on another machine, then when I launch on the current machine, that copy just disconnects.

Tying usage to specific machines is an obsolete paradigm that just frustrates users. I can get my email anywhere in the world on any computer. I can edit my google docs anywhere in the world, on any computer. I can play my legally purchased Steam products anywhere in the world on any computer. I can access my purchased music anywhere, on any computer. But I can't run ArmyBuilder the same way. There has to be a better way.

[rob]

The Steam suggestion is a good one. Unfortunately, the Steam solution has a number of flaws for a product like AB. We've investigated something like it and found it to be no better than what we currently do. All it does it move the issues around, without providing an overall net improvement. In other words, there are some users who would benefit from having a Steam-like solution (such as yourself), but there are others who would be negatively impacted by such a solution.

Even if the Steam approach was the perfect solution, though, we'd need to invest major development effort towards implementing it. For a tiny company like Lone Wolf, we'd have to basically stop further development on all of our products for a protracted period of time while we implemented this mythical perfect solution. From a business standpoint, the benefits of having the perfect licensing solution would have to outweigh the costs of halting all product development for a lengthy period.

In an ideal world, I'd love to conceive and implement the perfect solution. Alas, this isn't an ideal world, so we need something that is also practical, and that means any solution we come up with will have some limitations. If we can come up with something that can be implemented in a practical manner and provides a better overall solution than our current one, we'll put it into place. We regularly explore new options with that goal in mind. Thus far, though, we haven't found something that is substantively better overall.

If anyone has suggestions, please share them! The Steam idea is a good one that we've already explored. What other approaches should we be investigating?

[nekogunner]

Originally Posted by rob

The Steam suggestion is a good one. Unfortunately, the Steam solution has a number of flaws for a product like AB. We've investigated something like it and found it to be no better than what we currently do. All it does it move the issues around, without providing an overall net improvement.

Just curious, but what problems would be moved around vs solved exactly? I apologize if this seems like a rant, but I'm just trying to understand your thought process.

Here are the versions of DRM I've seen:

1) Always on internet connection - Ubisoft tried this with horrible results. The goal for this was that your copy of the game would always be connected to their authentication server. The second your connection drops due to a power loss, technical issues, whatever, you are booted out of the game. Even though it was single player.

Pirates circumvented this by creating their own local "server", tricking the game into thinking that it was a legal copy when it wasn't.

Ubisoft servers when down at least one weekend. The community couldn't play and were upset that pirates could.

I can see this happening with Army Builder.

2) Steam approach - Steam is DRM in and of itself. Unless you are adding a shortcut / non-steam game, all games purchased through Steam, require Steam to be running in order to purchase it, initially install it, and run it. There is an offline mode that is supported by many developers.

EX: Warhammer 40K Dawn of War 2 - Retribution. Start game while Steam is online and connected to internet. Start game in Steam's "offline mode" and connected to the internet so the game's DRM can validate your copy as legal but in offline mode, then cut the cord, and go completely offline.

You can run Steam, and most Steam games in offline mode for about a week before it tells you, that you are required to login.

3) CD-key + (optional) X number of installs (Typically 3-10) - This is easily bypassed. Happens all the time with many popular games. Not sure how (not that code savvy) but it happens all the time.



Really all it seems to take would be a small piece of code / DRM program to be installed with Army Builder that connects to your servers. It could run inside of or alongside army builder. A week grace period seems like plenty of time.

Also, why the set number of licenses so low? I don't understand why you would limited the number to just two. While the average person would have a desktop and laptop, it doesn't seem outlandish to let people install it on multiple computers. Especially they would have to have their log-in details to access the program.

I wouldn't just give them to any random person on the street or in my local hobby shop to use. Especially since that could also be tied to my credit card info and multiple products that I've purchased....definitely not....

See where I'm going with this?

Just trying to figure why specially the Steam approach is bad.

DRM is bound to inconvenience the honest user in some way shape or form. It's about minimizing the annoyance factor that helps drive up your reputation as a developer / seller.

Sorry,

\rant.

[nyteschayde]

You're being fairly cagey on how the steam solution didn't work for you. As a developer myself and very unhappy (with your anti-piracy solution) customer I think more disclosure on why the steam model doesn't work is in order.

Make your tool more of a kiosk client. Logging in through the app from any machine [with Hero Lab or other product installed] with proper credentials should be enough to validate we are an honest customer. Verifying that only one (or 1:1 number of users per license) are logged in at any given moment should help keep piracy at bay, your income in good standing and your customers happy.

If you feel you need a developer to help design this scenario, feel free to contact me. I am a long time pen and paper role-player and a long time professional programmer and there is no excuse other than, an excuse the anger rant, greed and laziness for punishing your paying customers like you are.

And if you really think that the average customer only has one computer these days I'd really like to see the stats behind it. Stats showing that they use only one computer to log in is not a good indication of this fact.

Originally Posted by rob

The Steam suggestion is a good one. Unfortunately, the Steam solution has a number of flaws for a product like AB. We've investigated something like it and found it to be no better than what we currently do. All it does it move the issues around, without providing an overall net improvement. In other words, there are some users who would benefit from having a Steam-like solution (such as yourself), but there are others who would be negatively impacted by such a solution.

Even if the Steam approach was the perfect solution, though, we'd need to invest major development effort towards implementing it. For a tiny company like Lone Wolf, we'd have to basically stop further development on all of our products for a protracted period of time while we implemented this mythical perfect solution. From a business standpoint, the benefits of having the perfect licensing solution would have to outweigh the costs of halting all product development for a lengthy period.

In an ideal world, I'd love to conceive and implement the perfect solution. Alas, this isn't an ideal world, so we need something that is also practical, and that means any solution we come up with will have some limitations. If we can come up with something that can be implemented in a practical manner and provides a better overall solution than our current one, we'll put it into place. We regularly explore new options with that goal in mind. Thus far, though, we haven't found something that is substantively better overall.

If anyone has suggestions, please share them! The Steam idea is a good one that we've already explored. What other approaches should we be investigating?

[Mr_Rose]

In an ideal world, you'd get "paid" regardless of how many times a particular instance of the software was copied.
Or, even better, licensing would be unnecessary because people wouldn't be thieving scum.