ideas to protect your mods? fallout 4

[RattleAndGrind]

 

At the risk of being digitally stoned, here is a solution that will work. But EVERYONE is going to hate it.

 

Require a credit card when registering users and verify the credit card. Folks will be unlikely to steal when they have lost their anonymity.

Not everyone owns a credit card or can afford a credit card. I don't own one and if I did it'd be only for emergencies and not online purchases. You also have that needing a credit card is a huge security risk as someone could hack the forum and welp, there goes my personal information.

 

You think? Maybe that is part of why I said everyone would hate it.

Edited June 15, 2016 by RattleAndGrind

[CiderMuffin]

 

...

 

DD productions figured out how to do it in just a couple hours.

.....

He claims he did it in 25 minutes and "It was so easy".

 

If you have confidence in a 'DRM' that took 25 minutes to design go right ahead.

 

Keep in mind nobody has used his '25 minute plum pie DRM®', because he hasn't shown it or used it yet.

 

I would highly recommend everyone avoid the, as yet fictitious, '25 minute plum pie DRM' you mention.

 

And that's the worrying part. If it took 25 minutes and is easy to implement I imagine doing the reverse is just as easy with the know how. That is if it's true. It also doesn't do a damn thing for mod piracy in general as sites can still steal mods and post them all over the place.

 

It's literally the most ineffective form of DRM. Hell, Remedy's way of dealing with pirates is more effective and that's just giving Alan in Alan Wake a eyepatch and a pirate shirt.

[ashtonx]

Gonna have to raise a certain point here. Do you really think thieving peasants have the brains to reverse engineer mods ?

I mean come on, we're talking about people who use the "pc elitists" or "i didn't know it was bad to steal" to explain their action.

Most people who know how will be able to do it will most likely not give a crap or waste their time, few that will will be easy targets for dmca, also modifying a code without permission adds to their crimes and even more legal actions should be possible to undertake.

Edited June 15, 2016 by ashtonx

[CiderMuffin]

Gonna have to raise a certain point here. Do you really think thieving peasants have the brains to reverse engineer mods ?

 

I mean come on, we're talking about people who use the "pc elitists" or "i didn't know it was bad to steal" to explain their action.

 

Most people who know how will be able to do it will most likely not give a crap or waste their time, few that will will be easy targets for dmca, also modifying a code without permission adds to their crimes and even more legal actions should be possible to undertake.

Just owning a console doesn't mean you're an idiot. There are guides on how to use scripting everywhere and again, if it took DDP only 25 minutes to learn it and apparently that's all it takes for everyone else clearly it's so easy to get rid of it.

 

Like holy crap, take your arrogance somewhere else. console users, not "peasants", aren't all idiots just like all PC owners aren't all coding masters. There is also the fact that this whole ordeal isn't going to be a long term problem and it's more likely mod piracy is going to go back to being sites that only PC users can use.

[iXenite]

Gonna have to raise a certain point here. Do you really think thieving peasants have the brains to reverse engineer mods ?

 

I mean come on, we're talking about people who use the "pc elitists" or "i didn't know it was bad to steal" to explain their action.

 

Most people who know how will be able to do it will most likely not give a crap or waste their time, few that will will be easy targets for dmca, also modifying a code without permission adds to their crimes and even more legal actions should be possible to undertake.

 

The naiveté in this post is pretty strong.

[NorthWolf]

 

 

He claims he did it in 25 minutes and "It was so easy".

 

If you have confidence in a 'DRM' that took 25 minutes to design go right ahead.

 

Keep in mind nobody has used his '25 minute plum pie DRM®', because he hasn't shown it or used it yet.

 

I would highly recommend everyone avoid the, as yet fictitious, '25 minute plum pie DRM' you mention.

 

And that's the worrying part. If it took 25 minutes and is easy to implement I imagine doing the reverse is just as easy with the know how. That is if it's true. It also doesn't do a damn thing for mod piracy in general as sites can still steal mods and post them all over the place.

 

It's literally the most ineffective form of DRM. Hell, Remedy's way of dealing with pirates is more effective and that's just giving Alan in Alan Wake a eyepatch and a pirate shirt.

 

 

In terms of reverse engineering, any form of DRM is just a hurdle to leap over. Furthermore, as someone who has actually been paying attention to the back-and-forth, DD had specifically said that figuring out how to detect if your code is running on a console or a PC only took him 25 minutes. That doesn't surprise me nor does it mean that reverse engineering a DRM solution from that detection will only take 25 minutes. For example, if I have a script-heavy mod and decide that I'm going to litter my code with console detection or even go as far as injecting console detection into the compiled scripts, that's going to be a pain to remove just because of the time commitment to tracking everything down and making sure it is removed properly.

 

That's not really an invalid tactic in terms of "security features". Most security features are like that in the sense that they take a minor time investment for a developer in order to make a massive time investment for an attacker. Even your account on the Nexus here relies on that: your password is processed by a cryptographic hash function, something that takes a relatively small time investment for the developer to implement. Any malicious attacker can try to gain access to your account. If they took long enough? They could. It would just take a lot of time and resources. And before you think I'm dissing the Nexus: that's literally what every password you've ever used represents. A time investment to crack, not a sacred key that's impossible to get around.

 

I need to kind of make this clear before I say the next part: I really don't agree with the methods some people are supporting, especially not what I'm about to talk about. However, I think you're both missing the point of what he was getting at as well. Not only can console detection create a non-trivial time investment to crack for script heavy mods but it can be used to create a situation on Bethesda.net that's too volatile for consoles to navigate using what are, bluntly, malware-style tactics. For example: you could put up a mod that has a time-delay feature that begins to destroy the game world silently without the user being aware. By the time they become aware their game is degrading they could have been playing the game for hours and could even have downloaded additional mods since then, making the source of the attack difficult for the user to determine. If you successfully keep doing this on Bethesda.net, you essentially end up with a situation where console modding is a minefield, especially when you consider the lack of ability to fix the game when using a console.

 

And even if I don't agree with the tactic, it is a potentially effective one, partially because of some of the issues making people consider this whole "mod DRM" thing in the first place: Bethesda isn't curating their site well enough. It's not like you couldn't make an equally malicious mod for a PC, but in general I would feel safer throwing my lot in with the Nexus over Bethesda.net simply because I know this place is well policed.

 

TL;DR: There's a misunderstanding about what DD was saying: it took 25 minutes to find a way to detect consoles. That doesn't mean 25 minutes to crack a DRM based on that detection. I don't agree with the extremes he's taking (I don't even really agree with the idea of "mod DRM" beyond however much it takes for Bethesda to actually start curating their site) but what he described is a potentially valid (but malicious) way of reducing "mod piracy."

 

Gonna have to raise a certain point here. Do you really think thieving peasants have the brains to reverse engineer mods ?

 

I mean come on, we're talking about people who use the "pc elitists" or "i didn't know it was bad to steal" to explain their action.

 

Most people who know how will be able to do it will most likely not give a crap or waste their time, few that will will be easy targets for dmca, also modifying a code without permission adds to their crimes and even more legal actions should be possible to undertake.

 

Yes, "thieving peasants" will have the ability and intelligence to reverse engineer mods. Not the majority of console users will have the technical expertise, no, but some will. Just the same as in the wider world, most pirates don't have the ability to reverse engineer game binaries to strip out the DRM, but some do. If an anecdote helps: when I was attending university studying software engineering I didn't have money to upgrade my PC, so I ended up playing Fallout 3 on my XBox 360. But if Fallout 3 had this Bethesda.net thing happen and I decided to be entitled my PC was more than capable enough of running FO3Edit which is the majority of what I would need to strip out the DRM from a mod if I had the time and energy to do so. I'm not exceptional and you wouldn't even need a formal education to do so: a hobbyist with the time and energy could also do so just as well if not better than my lazy self.

 

I know you touch on this in your last line, but I'm blathering on for a reason: you would probably be surprised how many people on consoles would still be doing this. Even if this cut the numbers by 90%, the idea of taking legal action sounds nice on paper, but in reality I find it highly unlikely you'll actually see many (any) lawsuits over mods. The only solution I can see in the real world is Bethesda taking responsibility and actually properly curating Bethesda.net. Maybe it will take someone seriously trying to take legal action before Bethesda will do so, but it's not like people with a passion for modding are going to want to spend 50% of their time trying to hand out DMCA takedowns.

[theMetamancer]

Just owning a console doesn't mean you're an idiot. There are guides on how to use scripting everywhere and again, if it took DDP only 25 minutes to learn it and apparently that's all it takes for everyone else clearly it's so easy to get rid of it.Like holy crap, take your arrogance somewhere else. console users, not "peasants", aren't all idiots just like all PC owners aren't all coding masters. There is also the fact that this whole ordeal isn't going to be a long term problem and it's more likely mod piracy is going to go back to being sites that only PC users can use.

While you are complaining about over generalization of the console crowd, let's not under specify the exact parties involved as well. The mod thieves are a subset of the console crowd, while the mod authors are a subset of the PC community. The thieves undoubtedly have PCs of their own, but I seriously doubt if 99.9999% have a freaking clue about programming (or how the real world works), let alone cracking DRM. If you were to pit each of these two subsets for their respective communities against the other, I think we can safely say that the mod thieves would be absolutely overwhelmed. They'd be farts in the wind against atom bomb explosions.

 

I am not crazy about DRM myself, but I am open minded about its possible merits. Would any DRM scheme be 100% bullet-proof? Hell, no. But I am pretty certain that it would raise the cost of entry for the thieves and reduce the level of trafficking in stolen mods, perhaps to the degree that Beth might be able to properly curate their user-created content in a timely fashion.

 

The other consideration is this: IF Beth really wants to reintroduce paid modding at some point, even they would have to recognize that their plans would be all for naught if the rampant level of mod theft we see persists. (And I find their weak response to this all the more intriguing, as I am pretty sure that if Valve took the same reaction to, say, people lifting copies of the actual game and DLC's off the Steam servers, Beth would be up in arms too. IOW, they take their own IP rights very seriously, so why not those of the MA's?)

[CiderMuffin]

I seriously doubt paid mods will return, remember when they tried it the first time the entire program didn't even last a week, it was dead so fast that it proved the idea was not good.

[NorthWolf]

I seriously hope they never try the paid modding system again. It will sound dramatic on my part but it seriously killed my interest in Skyrim and I never actually played the game again. :sad:

 

At least with Bethesda.net I can appreciate they're trying to open up modding to consoles, which I think is a cool idea. It just needs a better implementation.

[ashtonx]

 

Just owning a console doesn't mean you're an idiot. There are guides on how to use scripting everywhere and again, if it took DDP only 25 minutes to learn it and apparently that's all it takes for everyone else clearly it's so easy to get rid of it.

 

Like holy crap, take your arrogance somewhere else. console users, not "peasants", aren't all idiots just like all PC owners aren't all coding masters. There is also the fact that this whole ordeal isn't going to be a long term problem and it's more likely mod piracy is going to go back to being sites that only PC users can use.

 

Well that's quite interesting, i said thieving peasants and yet i sense butthurt.

Sure not all are thieves, not all are idiots, but i thought drm is to stop thieves not all console users. And as far as i see all thieves and those who defend them are morons.

 

 

 

 

Yes, "thieving peasants" will have the ability and intelligence to reverse engineer mods. Not the majority of console users will have the technical expertise, no, but some will. Just the same as in the wider world, most pirates don't have the ability to reverse engineer game binaries to strip out the DRM, but some do. If an anecdote helps: when I was attending university studying software engineering I didn't have money to upgrade my PC, so I ended up playing Fallout 3 on my XBox 360. But if Fallout 3 had this Bethesda.net thing happen and I decided to be entitled my PC was more than capable enough of running FO3Edit which is the majority of what I would need to strip out the DRM from a mod if I had the time and energy to do so. I'm not exceptional and you wouldn't even need a formal education to do so: a hobbyist with the time and energy could also do so just as well if not better than my lazy self.

 

I know you touch on this in your last line, but I'm blathering on for a reason: you would probably be surprised how many people on consoles would still be doing this. Even if this cut the numbers by 90%, the idea of taking legal action sounds nice on paper, but in reality I find it highly unlikely you'll actually see many (any) lawsuits over mods. The only solution I can see in the real world is Bethesda taking responsibility and actually properly curating Bethesda.net. Maybe it will take someone seriously trying to take legal action before Bethesda will do so, but it's not like people with a passion for modding are going to want to spend 50% of their time trying to hand out DMCA takedowns.

 

Those who crack games and apps do that for the challenge, i honestly doubt they will feel any challenge from breaking open source code. Rather it'd be insult to their pride.

Also warez scene and piracy scene as immature as it is doesn't like their s#*! being thrown into public, sure it leaks but there were ton's of ddos attacks from warez scenes for uploading their stuff to various trackers. Even those who break consoles, unless they want to make money on it do extra length to avoid piracy in recent years.

 

As i've said it's unlikely to be the case for people who know how to crack to blatantly steal mods and upload them as their own. Most idiots like this will give up right after they have to play with construction kit or they'll release broken mods that'll cause loads of hate.

Edited June 15, 2016 by ashtonx