Copy Protection Nightmare

Just the other day I bought a new computer game that came out in 2011 published by the company Kalypso, and created by RealmForge. The game was on a clearance sale for only $10 brand new. It was a strategy RPG game and I like that style of game, so I picked it up. Then the nightmare began.

I spent two days messing around with the game and my computer trying to get the game to work until I finally realized what the root of the problem was. Copy protection. The game was crammed full of copy protection to make sure that I had actually paid for the game.

When I first installed the game, it asked me for the Product Key included inside on the game's instruction manual. This kind of copy protection has been common for a LONG time (at least since the 1990s, and probably before). Basically, you can't install the program unless you type in a real product key. The product key is usually something like 15 to 20 characters (letters and numbers) long.

After I entered the product key and the game installed, it then asked me to register an account with Kalypso (the publisher of the game). I had to give them an email address (as a unique user name) and a password so that I could log in. The game can be played online with other people, but it can also be played on your own (single player). Keep that in mind...

I registered a new account with an email address that I use for almost all "sign ups" in order to keep mountains of spam and junk mail from clogging my regular email inbox. Then I'm told that I have to activate my account before I can play the game at all (single player or multi-player). So I fire up my web browser, sign into that junk email address, find the email they auto-sent me, and click on the activation URL. Now my account is activated! I've proven that my email account is a real email account. For those of you counting at home, that's 3 separate copy protection checks to make sure that I'm not a game pirate and that I actually bought the game. A product key, registering an account with them, and verifying the email account I used was real.

Great! So now I can finally play my purchased game! I close extra programs that I don't need running while I play (to improve game performance) like I usually do when I play games. I open the game up, and am asked to sign into my account. Here's verification #4. Each and every time I want to play the game, I must sign in with my created account (email address and password) in order to play. Well that kind of sucks. Usually such things are standard on multi-player only games and optional on single-player games (for extra features). But to play this game at all, you MUST sign in and you MUST be connected to the internet when you sign in so that the game can verify that you've used a proper account that really exists. So I do that, now getting a little ticked off. This is starting to get a little ridiculous. I don't even want to play online and the case the game comes in says nothing about requiring an internet connection except for playing multi-player.

I finally get into the game! And I grimace. The opening intro mini-movie clips showing you the name of the publisher and company that created the game (also very common at the start of movies) are stuttering like crazy. They're videos! They shouldn't stutter! Almost NOTHING is happening here. All that's happening is the very basic start up of the program and playing a couple quick low resolution logo clips.

I get to the game's title screen and main menu. I start a new game. I get another intro movie giving an overview of the game's opening plot. Again, it stutters a lot. Then the game play starts and it's surprisingly laggy the jittery (like the videos, though not as bad). So I go into game options, drop all the graphics settings down to the lowest settings and get told that for the settings to take effect I must restart the game. That's VERY common in most computer games, so I save the game, exit the game, and log back in.

This time, I turn off my internet connection after logging in (something I usually do when I play games that I'm not planning to play online) in hopes of squeezing a little more performance out of them. The same stuttering problem as before. I load up my game and the game runs a little more smoothly, but not much. Then the game completely freezes 10 minutes in.

By this point I'm getting annoyed, but I only paid $10 for it. I do the old CTRL+ALT+DEL trick and end the game in the Windows Task Manager. Then I notice a 2nd program also running in the task manager with a very similar name to the game itself and it includes the word "server" in the name. Ok, so the game runs two programs at a time. A little unusual, but not unheard of. Maybe it has something to do with how the game handles multi-player. I close that second program too, then run it all again. I have to log in. Right! I turn my internet back on. Log in. Turn my internet off. And play the game. All the same problems and again it freezes, exactly 10 minutes in. Now THAT is strangely consistent!

I force close the program and the second "server" program and try it again. Again it freezes almost exactly 10 minutes in. Very strange. Maybe it requires my internet connection to remain online when the game fully starts up. That'd be a bit stupid after it's already verified all that other stuff, especially if I'm NOT playing multi-player, but whatever. So I play the game with my internet turned on. The choppiness improves noticeably in the videos and though the game plays more smoothly than before, it's still not great. 20 minutes later, it freezes again. I'm getting very ticked now.

I realized pretty quick what might be happening here, but I wanted to test a few other theories first. I played around with the settings in the game and my computer, testing different options and running the game with each new set up a number of times, but the game still kept freezing (always about 10 minutes in). My first suspicion looked to be the right one.

The game was trying to check back with servers online every 10 minutes or so to make sure that I was playing a proper bought version of the game. That's copy protection #5. The game MUST constantly contact the publisher's online servers and verify that it is a properly purchased copy. If that fails for some reason (any reason), or something else goes wrong with the copy protection, the game locks up.

Quite ticked off that the game is STILL constantly trying to make sure that I'm not a thief or pirate, ON TOP of the other 4 security protocols I already passed, I decided to try something. I download a hack for the game used by people who pirated the game. Many computer games have different types of copy protection and people who pirate the games have to circumvent these systems (hack and break or stop them) in order to play an illegal copy of the game. So I downloaded the hack, used it, and ran the game.

Worked like a charm! NO constant freezing and better yet, the movies didn't stutter at all and the game played VERY smooth without ANY slow down like it should. I cranked up the graphics settings to the maximum and restarted the game and still it ran like a dream. In other words, not only was the game constantly having to verify it's authenticity with computer servers online (even when I played all by myself and NOT online), but all the extra internal copy protection in the game was also making it crawl and stutter as if my computer system were some ancient dinosaur from before the year 2000.

Folks, that is the absolute WRONG way to create a happy satisfied loyal customer. Requiring a long list of verifications when I've purchased your game, making me jump through a bunch of hoops before I even START playing the game, and then constantly spying on me and my game as I'm playing it on my own, resulting in the game lagging terribly AND freezing every 10 minutes, is just plain ridiculous. I bought your game. I registered it. I verified it and continued to verify it every single time I tried to play the game. And then to make matters worse, your game's performance is going to be awful and it'll constantly freeze because while playing, it's regularly checking back with the publisher online to make sure I'm still using a valid copy of the game.

How do you AVOID all that hassle and head ache from a game you bought? Easy. Don't buy it. Pirate the game! Play a hacked illegal copy. This is the height of stupidity on the part of the game publisher. Making it a royal pain to play your game and then making the game play horribly (or freeze, or crash) because of even MORE copy protection built into it is a sure fire way to alienate paying customers. I want to play a game that works and doesn't put me through the ringer because its publisher doesn't trust that anyone actually bought the game.

And how did all this copy protection stop the game from being pirated? It didn't. It's out there free for anyone who knows anything at all about torrent websites to find and download (including the crack that removes or blocks all the many problematic layers of copy protection). The only way the game is even playable for me is to use the hack. A game I paid for (on sale, mind you), and I had to download the very thing the game company was trying to stop, just to get it to work. What a joke!