Things that should be done to break the piracy debate.

[Mirai Gen]

Originally Posted by Seil

And the t-shirts, the comic books, whatever.

Unaltered quote:

I also remember a time when you got actual swag in with your purchase.

Originally Posted by Seil

What, like a gold sword, crown, chalice and a Philosopher's Stone? You crazy man, you crazy.

Anyway.

It has occurred to me that an interesting way to prevent piracy is to embed a CD key in an image using stenography corresponding to the CD key provided for the player. What initially looks like nothing more than promotional art could actually hold an encrypted copy of the CD key for verification after a registration process, so that if a key is faked or somehow doesn't match, or the picture is not included, the game will have some sort of impaired function. Or if not a picture, possibly the game icon file, since nobody would intentionally delete that.

Uh, what?

I don't think image files work that way. Even if they did I don't understand what would be DRM about it; a copied CD like that would have the same data on it, and it would check with itself and agree that yes, this is in fact the right key!

The only way to verify that is via internet connection.

Aaaaaaaaaaand here we are.