Atari founder Nolan Bushnell recently got up at a conference and announced that the end of piracy in PC games is at hand, thanks to a little thing called the TPM - or "Trusted Platform Module". The TPM is the result of the hard work of the Trusted Computing Group, a collection of hardware manufacturers that are looking to put a chip in every PC to improve security as part of a scheme generally referred to as "Trusted Computing".

Trusted Computing has come under fire a bit due to privacy concerns (amongst other things), so we thought it might be a good time to have a bit of a closer look into it - and why it exists. Have a read; if the text scares you can skip to the bottom for a video.

bulls***. someone will just make an emulator and its back to downloading games.

Yep, that's probably the first conclusion I would have jumped to if I hadn't read the article either :>

What's to stop someone from A) Removing the chip and/or B) Disabling the hardware on the CD/program that prevents you from playing without TPM enabled hardware?

Still hasn't convinced me. As far as piracy is going in todays world, pirates are winning and industries are losing. IMO, sadly, they always will.

Thought I might add it was a compelling video, but really is was only an attack on the name of the software being "trusted". Didn't quite make any legitimate attacks on the device or it's usage, nor on the industries making "wrong" decisions "for" you. So an industry wants to make a program that disallows you from pirating their game. They take that power of choosing to pirate their game away from you, and that's supposed to be a bad thing?!

So I guess in retrospect it wasn't very compelling at all :p

last edited by Phooks at 20:08:49 26/May/08

If a computer made it a computer can crack it, Simple!!

Hasnt the game industry gotten it yet, make decent games and sell them for a reasonable price and people will buy them, seems pretty simple to me.

Also make it convenient, like steam, all the games are right there.

Games shouldnt be over $50 and should come down to $20-$30 after 6 months. I wouldnt even consider paying $80 for a games, but would probably buy 4+ games costing $20-30 each over a few months.

Stop wasting money trying to stop piracy, you arent gonna stop it, ever. You'd think they would have realised that by now, games get cracked before they are even released.

What's to stop someone from A) Removing the chip

Nothing - you don't even need to do that; it's disabled by default and you need to enable it specifically in the BIOS to make it work. This is mentioned in the article.

The article isn't really supposed to point out the technical flaws in the system - I don't know enough about its technical strengths/weaknesses, other than every other DRM scheme inevitably gets cracked at some point - its more to point out the social flaws in the system we have now where the default policy of the people selling us content is to treat us like criminals. It's also to point out the (somewhat scary) fact that this TPM thing is seemingly coming whether we want it or not and it might be on our motherboards (at our cost) regardless of whether we want one or not.

I guess we're all just going to have to actually pay for computer hardware, then.

Intel already tried this with SID in the Pentium III. It failed miserably and was subsequently dropped from any marketing references for the Pentium 4. They similarly tried to push it with E7205 and similar chipsets. All attempts thus far have been rejected by the market.

When will these people learn that challenging hackers with something 'uncrackable' never turns out well?

i hope this works, as it will mean cheaper games for the PC and various consoles

Nice article trog. I was reading it thinking it was unusually balanced and I scrolled back up and found your alias!

I think a big problem is that nobody wants it. Vista, even years (3,4?) prior to it's release was tarred with the extremely negative connotations of "Trusted Computing". Apart from all the other issues it has, I think it really was the first seed of 'NO f***ING WAY' and is a big reason I personally have steered clear of it and have really only looked at it for 30 minutes or so.

Assuming it works, I'm a bit dubious of motherboard manufacturers voluntarily including this BIOS branch in their kits, because they're alienating their own customers, and while it's a hardware solution, it's a decentralized approach and subsequently isn't going to work very well, because you only need one happy-golden-harvest factory to buck the trend. Will they trust MS a second time on this play?

I think the games industry is doing ok WRT to piracy. There's a hell of alot more people playing games now than ever before, and tech like steam means software shops can cut out the middlemen and more money goes to the shop itself. Then drop the end user cost of the game, drive business. Isn't Blizzard clocking like a billion USD a year?

I agree that the shift has to be made to trust the customer, trust they will buy the product, and build legitimate mechanisms around this concept which support and grow legitimate use. (eg. Creative Commons). People in 3rd world countries will pirate it no matter what, but the money is made in the west, and if you send a message of, well I don't trust you, then why the f*** should customers buy your product?

make something that everyone loves, and they will want to buy it. It's just that simple. The only system of anti-piracy that ever really seemed to kinda work was starforce, and look what happened to that. Also as viper said, if companies started charging less for the games then they would sell much better. it's insane when you start charging $100 for a pc game that you can import from the US for about $75 with express EMS shipping. If they sell it for $50 in the US, why do we have to pay $100? At most they should be $70. $100+ if it's something special like the GTA4 special edition. When you start getting extra's then its ok to pay higher prices.

Nice read Dave. I wasn't even aware of this tech at all.

Imo, there is no real solution to general audio/video piracy, the best defense is to make something so good that people are genuinely glad to pay you for - the digital honour system.

As for games, I think offline PC gaming is on its way out. Developers will just slowing stop making offline singleplayer games that aren't online authenticated (by steam etc). MMOs, other mutliplayer online only games and browser based titles will dominate pc gaming and the bulk of developers will turn their attention to the closed systems.

Consoles will get tougher and tougher to crack to a point where it won't happen in their lifetime and everyone (except pirates) will be happy.

hope this works, as it will mean cheaper games for the PC and various consoles

No it won't for obvious reasons.

The only system of anti-piracy that ever really seemed to kinda work was starforce, and look what happened to that.

Nah, there's some that are working for games. How many people do you know that pirated World of Warcraft? Enemy Territory: Quake Wars?

The PS3 has also enjoyed a year and a half of piracy free gaming and Microsoft won't be overlooking the optical drive firmware on their next machine. Eventually there will just be so many layers of security on console gaming that it won't be worth anyones while to bother.

Yeah I'd agree with that Dan - but I reckon the solution for video (movies, especially), is to ratchet up the quality control enough on the legitimate releases (eg. streaming HD media) that while it's possible to pirate the stuff, it takes 1) more time 2) is of definite lesser quality 3) kills your quota. Bittorent's going to suffer some growing pains I reckon.

TV stuff if I could subscribe to my favorite shows without ads and automatically downloaded on release at release, that'd be pretty cool.

iphone's out in a couple of weeks, I hope - any telco rep in the know would be nuts not to include streaming media from di.fm etc into quota, or at least as a subscription service. Nuts!

its more to point out the social flaws in the system we have now where the default policy of the people selling us content is to treat us like criminals.

While I sympathise, that's life. Customs, speed traps, RBT's, all that s*** happens to 99% innocent people so you can catch the 1% of people who break the rules.

Eventually there will just be so many layers of security on console gaming that it won't be worth anyones while to bother.

People will still hack away at all these layers until homebrew applications are allowed to freely run and region locking exists. While many may think that the people who are bothering to hack are just out to freely pirate a game, there are others (and I would guess more than those who just want to pirate) who only hack the console for homebrew only, prime example would be Wii homebrew.

While I sympathise, that's life. Customs, speed traps, RBT's, all that s*** happens to 99% innocent people so you can catch the 1% of people who break the rules.

Isn't this a bad analog? I'm buying a piece of software/hardware not doing an illegal activity that may put others in danger. They are two different things in my opinion. While one is designed to increase saftey in general (among other things of course), the other just treats you like a criminal and supposedly increases their profits. Does it even make products cheaper? Were starforce games cheaper than normal games?

It's always been my opinion that sayings are never (or hardly ever) passed onto the consumer, only the expenses.

last edited by sif greazy at 22:06:27 26/May/08

People will still hack away at all these layers until homebrew applications are allowed to freely run and region locking exists.

For sure, people won't stop trying and I agree and support the legit reasons that they will be trying for. But I still think we're going to see these closed systems get tighter and tighter every generation to a point where (barring lucky breaks) they won't get cracked during the profitable life-time of the system.

It's not just games, if something like this was ever passed what the f*** would happen to students?

Lets look at the software that I NEED for uni.

3ds max
Photoshop
Combustion / Premiere
ZBrush

Alright, now say the system was brought in, you'd have to own them legit or spend your entire life at uni. Now i know with my uni it closes at 9pm and isn't open all weekend, good luck getting your s*** done :) Or of course you could fork out the thousands of dollars these programs cost.

Thankfully if or when this ever does come in I won't be a student anymore :)

Lets look at the software that I NEED for uni.

3ds max
Photoshop
Combustion / Premiere
ZBrush

Alright, now say the system was brought in, you'd have to own them legit or spend your entire life at uni.

My uni made all the software I needed available for free. Most of it was Microsoft stuff so it was all part of the Microsoft "academic alliance" thing, but surely software developers realise that making free, or at least cheap, options for students is a must-have.

Also - better encouragement for unis to switch to open source software :)

Lets look at the software that I NEED for uni.

I highly doubt you NEED Zbrush at Qantm, and to be honest, you could probably get by using GIMP instead of Photoshop, I knew a few people who did that.

As for the rest, you could probably do all of your 3D (except animation) in Blender, and just bring the models in as OBJs.

That just leaves compositing, editing and animating, which, if you managed your time well, you could do on Qantm's licenses.

Sure, it's a whole lot easier to just have pirated copies of all of the software you need on your home PC, but I"m just saying, it'd certainly be possible to make-do without it.

last edited by Midda at 09:19:37 27/May/08

why would you want to train yourself in GIMP when the industry standard is photoshop?

Well, as I've said, there were people I studied with who used GIMP at the time, and they're getting by fine now. It's like training to animate in 3D Studio Max, and then using Maya when you get a job (which is what happened in my case). Sure, the interface is different, but the principles stay the same.

But it was just an example anyway. There's more than one way to skin a cat.

why would you want to train yourself in GIMP when the industry standard is photoshop?

You learn skills that can be applied to any app. Learning an app is dooming yourself to being useless.

And that goes for anything computer related. Learn the skills and concepts.

Obes, you're doomed and useless. ZING!

Says the guy that can't use gimp.
Or have you got stats saying that usage of gimp leads to death ?

haha eat me

Photoshop was made by someone who learnt about that stuff helping their dad to develop photographs in a home made chemical laboratory. So wouldn't it stand to reason that to prevent doom and uselessness you would have to learn these principles that way.

No, because we're not trying to make Photoshop.

I highly doubt you NEED Zbrush at Qantm, and to be honest, you could probably get by using GIMP instead of Photoshop, I knew a few people who did that.

As for the rest, you could probably do all of your 3D (except animation) in Blender, and just bring the models in as OBJs.

Most games these days lets face it have normal mapping, it only makes sense from my POV to get a few models displaying that on my portfolio. Mbox / zbrush are the best programs for those things, if you do it with other programs you're just kicking yourself for no reason.

Yer u could get away with GIMP, but considering i've been using PS since high school that's a pretty big switch.

And blender instead of 3ds max would just be retarded, having to constantly export supporting files and switching interfaces day in day out, re-working the keys etc.. what a pain in the ass not to mention waste of time.

like i said you could prob do it all at uni, you're just cutting down how far u can go with assignments, i.e. lose situation.

Shrug, if its a tool you use, you gots to use it. Doesn't Photoshop have an educational version anyway?

I never said it was convenient, I was just saying, there's certainly a legal and cheap way to go about it.

Thats the gayest clip I have ever seen

Hasnt the game industry gotten it yet, make decent games and sell them for a reasonable price and people will buy them, seems pretty simple to me.

The publishers spend billions of dollars on marketing and consumer research, if the solution was this easy, they would have already done it.

In Britain they bitch about the high prices of games and make the same lame excuses for pirating games @ 30-40 pounds.

Thats the gayest clip I have ever seen

interesting, do go on

The publishers spend billions of dollars on marketing and consumer research, if the solution was this easy, they would have already done it.

have they ever asked the question "if games were half the price, would you buy them more often?"

In Britain they bitch about the high prices of games and make the same lame excuses for pirating games @ 30-40 pounds.

30-40 pounds is $60-$80 dollars - we're talking about the difference between AU$50 and AU$90 in a lot of cases here!@#

last edited by trog at 16:26:36 27/May/08

Two words, Reverse Engineering :)
But if one pirates no software of any media, why are we still feeling so convicted?

i hope this works, as it will mean cheaper games for the PC and various consoles

I don't really believe this, but lets keep moving.

One way they might be able to get consumer acceptance of of such a device on PCs would be stopping Online cheats.

Assuming a device can be made in the way that they say, you make sure online play is cheat-free and I bet you could get a lot more people onside. It'd be easy to ramp up too (on PC)... you release a game with TPM support, and allow servers to only accept TPM clients. Don't include much other anti-cheat software, and servers would start popping up that only allow TPM clients to ensure a cheat-free environment.

I'm very dubious that there's a solution to this in the way that the TPG hopes, because at the end of the day you're trying to establish trust with an uncontrolled platform. But the harder they make it the better it is for them.

I can't face buying games at all these days (or new consoles), so I just really pick the games that I want... and buying on Steam is awesome. I get reasonable prices and the game is accessible from any computer. I think software like steam really motivates consumers to buy games.

The reason I don't believe that things like TPM will bring down prices is that the prices in Australia are so high. Clearly the publishers just charge whatever they think the market will bear. It's certainly not true that Australians are massive pirates so the publishers move the burden of cost to the Australians that pay, so why would TPM's bring down prices?

At the moment, Australians are happy paying ridiculous prices for games. Our only defense is to stop buying them and do other things. Every game you buy at a high price ensures that we'll keep getting charged.

One way they might be able to get consumer acceptance of of such a device on PCs would be stopping Online cheats.

TPM would be awesome for this - PunkBuster are probably drooling in anticipation of the days when they can use TPM for hardware identification stuff!@#

Prices of games will not come down, at best they will stay the same.

One way they might be able to get consumer acceptance of of such a device on PCs would be stopping Online cheats.

aka, the end of single player games on pc. which is what we have already pretty much.

Prices of games will not come down, at best they will stay the same.

yup & for the people that think the price isn't worth it, if pirating is stopped then they will probably just do without... it's not like these products are essential in any way. so the companies won't make more money (in this way) but they'll have something that's kinda impressive to tell thier shareholders & then blame the revenue downturn on something else... like global warming. :D

last edited by demon at 17:26:15 27/May/08

^^ exactly what i was thinking.

There are heaps of games/programes i would like to buy but have to obtain them other ways due to them being jsut too expensive... I mean who wants to pay $100 for a pc game? not me thats for sure, i understand that consoles game are that price because that is their medium... games...

when are they going to understand u cannot cheat/hack/pirate proof anything. If someone can program it to stop all those things, someone can unprograme it.. waste of money and time even bothering with this sort of useless tech.

Obes: "Photoshop" is a skill. So is "Microsof Office". Ask a recruitment agent!

More seriously, I am a busy business guy and need a graphic designer. Am I going to go with the guy who is an expert in the tool we use or someone who is proficient in concepts and can probably get up to speed quickly?

Its a bit like saying that since I am an experienced C++ & .Net developer that I can switch to Java without skipping a beat because I know lots of OO concepts, its just not that simple. Sure I can (and have) gone out and written s*** in the Beans but I stumbled a lot and had a lot to pick up. There's no way I was as good as an equivalent dev who had used the language & IDE a lot.

Aligning yourself with the industry standard tool isn't a doom, its just good sense to be a strong candidate for well paid roles.

But yeh, academic licensing is cheap as. If its your career you need to be able to afford that, or go carve your way in the world as an Open Source guy because its not gonna get any better.

My uni made all the software I needed available for free. Most of it was Microsoft stuff so it was all part of the Microsoft "academic alliance" thing, but surely software developers realise that making free, or at least cheap, options for students is a must-have.

http://www.itsnotcheating.com.au/

i'll bet an apple (100 bux) that it will be cracked 2 months before its released

I can see One Real problem with all of this. It demends heavly that you have a Internet Connection for them to Monitor your installed software and media. I have 3 systems at work that Can't Connect to the WWW due to legal and security reasons.l There is also a large number of people that cant afford the Net what do we do? Will Trusted Computing pay for these people to have a net connection so they can there software. I think not.

Peace.

Schneier's blog today has a post about the ex-Atari guy's comments, and also links to this cool FAQ about Trusted Computing: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html