| gregf |
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Ramtek's Trivia promoter
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Reged: 09/21/03
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"Oh noes"
#364639 - 03/25/17 11:15 PM
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*feel free to move to loony bin section if post doesn't belong here*
4AM's ongoing work.
https://twitter.com/a2_4am/status/845655222408134657
The old 1980s era "preachy" thingy as shown by 4AM's work. It is understandable of why it was done then, but just an overkill version when trying to get the message across imo. Just have text with "Please buy product and after 5 years has gone by and product is no longer available, then grab a bootleg copy". The money opportunity is usually within first 5 year window frame unless the product is a successful hit, but very few software game products reached beyond the 5 year window frame.
Some of those old SPA (software publishers association) figures from 1980s seemed suspect....like overinflating numbers imo.
iirc during 1980s and 1990s when buying software meant traveling to a computer store, the fiscal impact was more with stores only allowing anywhere from a month or two at most with game titles allowing to take up shelf space before being disposed of. There wasn't much time allowed with various titles to earn money inside a store's premise because especially game titles were continuously being shuffled around and disappeared within a couple weeks. It didn't leave much time for software game titles to earn money. Maybe Flight Simulator and Zork series managed to not get lost along with other game software.
The only business software products that managed to hang around were products dBASE, Lotus 123, Word Perfect, any M$ software product, and Peter Norton's Utilities. And also some popular Apple software products (not familiar with names)
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HI THERE, THIS IS AN OPEN LETTER TO ALL SOFTWARE USERS. IF YOU WISH TO SKIP IT JUST HIT Z HIT RETURN
I'M SCOTT ADAMS PRESIDENT OF AI (ADVENTURE INTERNATIONAL) AND AUTHOR OF THE ADVENTURE SERIES.
I WANT TO CHAT ABOUT SOFTWARE PIRACY FOR A MOMENT, AND THEN WE'LL GET ON WITH THE MAIN EVENT.
THE SOFTWARE YOU'RE ABOUT TO ENJOY TOOK CONSIDERABLE TIME, EFFORT & MONEY TO DEVISE. WE'VE A LARGE STAFF HERE AND MANY AUTHORS WORLDWIDE.
[source: Scott Adams Graphic Adventure #6 "Strange Odyssey", Apple II edition, ©1982 Adventure International]
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Re: "Oh noes"
[Re: gregf]
#364642 - 03/25/17 11:48 PM
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His work / findings always make for an interesting read
The Pinball Construction Kit writeup is a good one, least not because even after studying it he has no idea how it would even be possible to write or master a disk with that protection in the first place.. also the way the copy protection routine runs in it's own bytecode language..
> *feel free to move to loony bin section if post doesn't belong here*
>
> 4AM's ongoing work.
>
> https://twitter.com/a2_4am/status/845655222408134657
>
>
> The old 1980s era "preachy" thingy as shown by 4AM's work. It is understandable of
> why it was done then, but just an overkill version when trying to get the message
> across imo. Just have text with "Please buy product and after 5 years has gone by and
> product is no longer available, then grab a bootleg copy". The money opportunity is
> usually within first 5 year window frame unless the product is a successful hit, but
> very few software game products reached beyond the 5 year window frame.
>
> Some of those old SPA (software publishers association) figures from 1980s seemed
> suspect....like overinflating numbers imo.
>
>
> iirc during 1980s and 1990s when buying software meant traveling to a computer
> store, the fiscal impact was more with stores only allowing anywhere from a month or
> two at most with game titles allowing to take up shelf space before being disposed
> of. There wasn't much time allowed with various titles to earn money inside a store's
> premise because especially game titles were continuously being shuffled around and
> disappeared within a couple weeks. It didn't leave much time for software game titles
> to earn money. Maybe Flight Simulator and Zork series managed to not get lost along
> with other game software.
>
>
> The only business software products that managed to hang around were products dBASE,
> Lotus 123, Word Perfect, any M$ software product, and Peter Norton's Utilities. And
> also some popular Apple software products (not familiar with names)
>
>
> -
> HI THERE, THIS IS AN OPEN LETTER TO ALL SOFTWARE USERS. IF YOU WISH TO SKIP IT JUST
> HIT Z HIT RETURN
>
> I'M SCOTT ADAMS PRESIDENT OF AI (ADVENTURE INTERNATIONAL) AND AUTHOR OF THE ADVENTURE
> SERIES.
>
> I WANT TO CHAT ABOUT SOFTWARE PIRACY FOR A MOMENT, AND THEN WE'LL GET ON WITH THE
> MAIN EVENT.
>
> THE SOFTWARE YOU'RE ABOUT TO ENJOY TOOK CONSIDERABLE TIME, EFFORT & MONEY TO DEVISE.
> WE'VE A LARGE STAFF HERE AND MANY AUTHORS WORLDWIDE.
>
>
> [source: Scott Adams Graphic Adventure #6 "Strange Odyssey", Apple II edition, ©1982
> Adventure International]
> --
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| gregf |
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Ramtek's Trivia promoter
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Reged: 09/21/03
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Posts: 8612
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Loc: southern CA, US
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Re: "Oh noes"
[Re: Haze]
#364654 - 03/26/17 05:24 PM
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>His work / findings always make for an interesting read
Good to see 4AM's work supported in AppleII softlist hash file. There were a couple recent entries of work he did in which a specific hack was needed in order for the disk image to work within an virtual/emulated environment. It may have been the astronomy program Telestar II because that required a diskette to be in the floppy drive in order to look up stuff iirc.....something along that line iirc.
>The Pinball Construction Kit writeup is a good one, least not because even after studying
>it he has no idea how it would even be possible to write or master a disk with that
>protection in the first place.. also the way the copy protection routine runs in it's own
>bytecode language..
It is too bad with companies/developers creating a protection method 20 to 30 years ago for a product at the time and that protection is so bullet-proof that it eventually sabotages things in case the company wanted to market a re-release of the software program.
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| R. Belmont |
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Cuckoo for IGAvania
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Reged: 09/21/03
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Posts: 9716
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Loc: ECV-197 The Orville
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Re: "Oh noes"
[Re: gregf]
#364717 - 03/29/17 04:52 PM
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> It is too bad with companies/developers creating a protection method 20 to 30 years
> ago for a product at the time and that protection is so bullet-proof that it
> eventually sabotages things in case the company wanted to market a re-release of the
> software program.
The major thrust of 4AM's work is that copy protection actually did work, as long as your title wasn't something the crackers of the time considered to be 31337. A lot of educational software that wasn't Oregon Trail didn't get cracked until now, for instance.
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| smf |
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I've been here before
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Reged: 01/16/15
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Posts: 130
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Re: "Oh noes"
[Re: Haze]
#364720 - 03/29/17 05:21 PM
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> The Pinball Construction Kit writeup is a good one, least not because even after
> studying it he has no idea how it would even be possible to write or master a disk
> with that protection in the first place..
Mastering it is easy if you have the right equipment. It was used for c64 games too http://www.c64copyprotection.com/hello-world/
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| gregf |
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Ramtek's Trivia promoter
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Reged: 09/21/03
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Posts: 8612
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Loc: southern CA, US
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Send PM
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Re: "Oh noes"
[Re: R. Belmont]
#366060 - 05/15/17 10:05 PM
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>>It is too bad with companies/developers creating a protection method 20 to 30 years
>>ago for a product at the time and that protection is so bullet-proof that it
>>eventually sabotages things in case the company wanted to market a re-release of the
>>software program.
>The major thrust of 4AM's work is that copy protection actually did work, as long as your
>title wasn't something the crackers of the time considered to be 31337. A lot of
>educational software that wasn't Oregon Trail didn't get cracked until now, for instance.
Yep. 4AM's 'Copy protection works' mantra with recent update agrees with your post.
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Passport has automatically cracked over 400 Apple II programs since v1. Over 300 of those had never been cracked. Copy protection works.
https://github.com/a2-4am/passport/releases/tag/v20170514
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Re: "Oh noes"
[Re: gregf]
#366064 - 05/15/17 11:58 PM
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> >>It is too bad with companies/developers creating a protection method 20 to 30 years
> >>ago for a product at the time and that protection is so bullet-proof that it
> >>eventually sabotages things in case the company wanted to market a re-release of
> the
> >>software program.
>
> > The major thrust of 4AM's work is that copy protection actually did work, as long as
> your
> > title wasn't something the crackers of the time considered to be 31337. A lot of
> > educational software that wasn't Oregon Trail didn't get cracked until now, for
> instance.
>
> Yep. 4AM's 'Copy protection works' mantra with recent update agrees with your post.
>
>
> -
> Passport has automatically cracked over 400 Apple II programs since v1. Over 300 of
> those had never been cracked. Copy protection works.
>
> https://github.com/a2-4am/passport/releases/tag/v20170514
> --
having software nobody cared that much about copying back in the day probably helped too.
you've only got to look at the number of people who think that we're wasting our time dealing with anything other than 'good' popular games to see how that works, the fact that we care about everything, even stuff they consider worthless makes us targets for a lot of hatred.
similar reason to why a lot of rare things that show up aren't actually all that great, there were a lot of arcade games with no real protection on hardware that would have been easily bootlegged where that simply didn't happen.
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