MikroBitti 11/1994, pp. 36-39 Text: Mikko "Bearer" Ilkko Pictures: Pekka Väänänen PIRACY -- The Underworld of Microcomputing ------------------------------------------ Game piracy is an organized affair. Pirates usually form groups with a clear organization. At the top there are organizators (sic) or leaders. The organizator coordinates other members' efforts, organizes and plans schedules to optimize the activities. BOX: This article discusses piracy, the illegal copying of programs, which they have tried to curb with both laws and pirate hunting. In addition to the organizator, a typical pirate group consists of a few sysops, traders (either mail or modem), crackers (copy protection breakers) and suppliers (who get original copies of software). Many pirate groups also train games, i.e. add infinite energy or lives, or otherwise make the game easier to play. Image Polishing --------------- Some pirate groups may also have a so-called legal section which creates crack intros for games (crack refers to a program where the copy protection has been removed). This identifier is used for bragging to other groups "we did it", perhaps for telling who cracked and supplied the program, advertising their BBSs and also for sending greetings. At times the legal section may be productive and make actual demos too, but usually demogroups want to distance themselves from pirates. At times, new programs spread around the world even before their official launch. That happened, among others, to Flashback released by U.S. Gold and Doom 2. Pirates have infiltrated several software companies, as well as game importers and resellers. The supplier sends by modem or other means a fresh program to the cracker, who usually after a few hours already uploads the finished crack to their BBS, from where the crack instantly spreads through networks and by traders all over the world. "Elfmania was already cracked the day following its launch, but the cracked version has a slower loader and other weaknesses compared to the original," tells Ilari Kuittinen from Terramarque and readily admints that Terramarque didn't invest much effort into copy protection measures. Copy protections can always be removed. Thus, software companies create copy protections mostly to slow down pirates. If crackers have to sweat more than two weeks -- which is really exceptional -- with the copy protection, the game has sold enough to make up for the protection effort. Crackers themselves are the best copy protection creators. Sometimes they have even sold their own protection methods to software companies. What Are the Losses? -------------------- It's hard to estimate how much piracy costs software houses, as it's impossible to assess how many people who copied to game would have opened their wallet in the first place. "If the game is great, the player will buy the original," is Kuittinen's principle, "I think it's useless to call kids who bought a game and copied it to a friend pirates. Making money out of illegally copied software is a different thing altogether. That's is stupid." Gentle words coming from a man whose game didn't sell enough to even cover the development costs. In spite of its quality, Elfmania sold only about 10 000 copies in Britain over the first critical weeks, which is so wrong compared to the millions of sales of Mortal Kombat, an average beat 'em up. The organizator of the traditional cracker group Quartex largely agrees with Kuittinen: "Selling copied programs is stupid. If you advertise super cheap programs you can easily get caught, and if you don't advertise, you won't make money. It would indeed be nice, if our crack remained within small circles, because at least no cracker I know would ever buy a game." "So from the game company perspective it doesn't matter if they have the game or not," claims the Quartex member and tells that he's involved with the cracker circles just because of fun. "I know several game creators and I'm worried for them. We don't crack games made by people we know, and we are so influential that we can at least slow down their spreading." Many Finnish pirate BBSs operate in a weirdly contradictory way. The boards that tend to be among the oldest remove domestic games from their file areas in a patriotic manner. Destroyers of the game industry try to protect the endangered Finnish game industry. Have you ever heard of such a curiosity? Piracy in Finland ----------------- There are no active crackers in Finland at the moment, but pirate boards yes. It's hard to give exact numbers, but tens at least. The figure is relatively high compared to other European countries. There were active crackers in Finland a few years ago, mostly during the C-64 age. The current lack of crackers follows from the fact that getting original games to Finland is slow -- at least compared to Central European countries -- cracking doesn't pay off. Speed is indeed the number one asset among pirates. The most competitive groups fight over hours, at times only tens of minutes when trying to release something first. The winner of the race gets fame and may put down their competitor who was an hour late. However, fast cracking creates "quality control" issues, as there might not even be any. Cracked games may suffer from bugs, compatibility issues and even complete lack of functionality. In the worst case the game isn't tested at all and a copy protection asking for a code from the manual surprises the gamers after ten minutes of play. Old Finnish crackers were in it mostly for the fun, without high expectations concerning the speed. There might still be opportunities to seriously compete in the cracker market, as it'd be possible to get new programs quickly from abroad using a modem. But why would, say, a German send originals abroad when there are already enough local crackers around? "Finland and Scandinavia are deadzones because of piracy, at least when it comes to Amiga game sales," explains Ilari Kuittinen. "In contrast, England is a good market because there computer magazines are full of anti-piracy articles and ads." Less than one percent of Finnish Amigists buy games. Selling a thousand copies is a mega achievement, although there are way more than 100 000 machines. Recently, Settlers and Skidmarks have managed such feats. Stardust also sold well, but usually the sales are around a hundred or two hundred copies. Pityful figures. If the situation gets any worse, soon resellers shouldn't bother selling Amiga games. PC games are usually sold in thousands. Fame and Honor -------------- "Few crackers do it for the money," reveals the organizator of Quartex. "Crackers want fame for their handle (nickname)." A few years ago nobody was able to crack Dragon's Lair, even if there were plenty of attempts. After working hard on it for a month, an Australian cracker team managed to break the protection and got plenty of fame in the cracker circles. In addition to the heavy duty copy protection, the game company had left a message in the game: "If this game is ever cracked, we'll NEVER make another game for the Amiga." One well-known German cracker was about to succeed when he got visitors from the company in question with the following message: "If you do it, we guarantee you will end up in jail." He didn't crack the game. "Nowadays all copy protections can be removed, the easiest of them in just a few minutes," brags the Quartex member. The fame and honor you receive for removing a copy protection is almost the same as among hackers (phone phreaks etc.) who used to honor their peers who had managed to break into a seemingly impossible system. Todays' hackers, who seem capable of anything, aren't easily impressed. The Quartex member finally confesses that it surely is possible to do business within the pirate circles, because the market is so big and it takes little capital to get started. He adds, though, that too much greed usually leads to getting caught. Caption: The writable golden CD-R disc is pirates' new medium for storing commercial games. For now the initial costs are high. The gray box is a dongle, which is commonly used by productivity software creators to fight piracy. The program won't work without the dongle. On their behalf, game creators make pirates' lives harder with passwords and code wheels (see the image), without which you can't progress far in the game --- BOX: Console Copiers -------------------- Even console games can be copied and in Finland you can find people selling them. Console game copying devices are, indeed, popular sources of income within the pirate circles. Such copiers are legal as long as they're utilized for backup copies and personal use only. Piracy is not yet a big problem on the consoles, but among such hobbyists games spread conveniently using modems. Games are typically 1-4 megabytes in size and they can easily be used with a backup tool. On consoles, too, only CD games are more or less safe. Copy buyers mostly receive their games through mail. With a special console copier or backup tool almost any console game can be copied and then the original module can be put into the closet. No console is safe. The most famous victims are the Sega Megadrive and Super Nintendo, but all other consoles are the same in this respect. There are even multi-platform copiers that can be expanded to accommodate almost any console. Physically the console copier is an extension that plugs into the module port and contains 16-32 megabits of RAM, 256 kilobytes of storage RAM and usually a 3.5" floppy drive. In addition, there are devices that plug into a PC using the parallel port and let you load games from PC drives or a CD-ROM. When the copier starts, it presents the user with a menu where you can load a game, load or save a game state, or save a game from a module to the floppy. The newest copiers also include Action Replay like cheats and the option to use a DSP adapter to make games like Mario Kart and Pilotwings work. When the copier has loaded the game from the floppy or from the PC using the PC link, it resets itself and makes the console believe its RAM is a game module. The storage RAM can be used for game saves and also its contents can be dumped to the floppy. Copiers commonly use normal PC formatted HD floppies, so if you have the right connections, you can download countless console games using a modem and uncompress the files to a floppy. And it won't cost a lot. CD-ROM piracy is gaining ground on the console side. Because of their small size, you can fit about 400 console games on a single CD-ROM, and the format is popular in the Far East. The latest copiers support a CD-ROM controller directly. You can fit loads of games on one disc, and professional pirates regularly deliver the latest updated collections. For now, console pirates' discs cost above 1000 marks, but that's not a lot if you consider what the games would cost at a store. Making a "backup copy" only requires that you push a button and swap the floppies. Sometimes game companies are one step ahead of pirates, but only for a moment, after which a new copier that can circumvent the latest protection schemes appears. There's only a handful of modules sold that are immune to copiers because of their special structure. After getting a console copier of about 5000 marks, you can quickly get games worth many times that. No wonder that the console industry keeps quiet about the issue and fights a bloody war against the pirates behind the scenes. --- PIRACY -- A KILL OR A MURDER? ----------------------------- Text: MikroBitti Special Operations Group In addition to killing game companies, pirates wither the platforms they use. They destroy the future of the brand, kill software houses' interest to develop applications, decrease the worth of their own investment in the machine and, at the same time, force themselves to migrate to another platform in the future -- or give up microcomputing altogether. The Vic, Spectrum and other old platforms died because of technological development. The C-64 was seriously hurt by piracy, which hasn't still managed to kill off software support because of the massive number of machines. For instance, Ocean stopped supporting the C-64 only a few months ago. The company mostly produced its most succesful titles for the C-64. Piracy turned really lethal on newer platforms only. Pirates killed the Atari ST game industry. For instance, one ST specific game company went bankrupt because two of their good fames only sold some hundreds of copies, even if there were hundreds of thousands of machines in Britain alone. Cinemaware, known for its high quality games like It Came from the Desert and Wings, also switched to console games because of piracy. The Amiga is facing a similar crisis now. For now, the situation is under control, but for how long? In Britain there are 1.5 million Amigas. On average, games sell 8000 copies and a good one 10 000-15 000. 21st Century's Pinballs are a positive exception with sales of way more than 100 000 copies on the Amiga and half a million altogether. Many leading Amiga game companies have voiced their concern about the situation. Team 17, David Braben etc. said that if the situation doesn't improve, they'll have to switch to other platforms. Amiga pirates probably don't want that, do they? Silver Lining? -------------- The Amiga is still the easiest and most powerful machine to develop for. Amiga's flexible and powerful operating system, combined with good sound and graphic capabilities make it the best development platform that makes ite easy to convert games to any other platforms. It's a common tactic to first develop the game for the Amiga, which probably covers the development costs. Then they port the game to consoles where profits are made, in order to keep the programmers and game companies afloat. Aren't you happy about it, amigos? The PC game market is a different beast, as there are many games for the PC that will never be ported to other platforms. The PC market is, thus, a more closed one which stays profitable owing to the high number of machines. Even if piracy on the PC is growing aggressively, the userbase quarantees that sales don't stall. What's the problem then? It can't be the price of games. Console games can cost up to double, but they sell in thousands, even millions, like in the case of Street Fighter. And there are plenty of cheap games, collections and other packages with a very good game/price/quality ratio. Who are the worst enemies of the gaming world then? Ordinary users? Hardly, even if they owned a few copied games, as long as the also invest in genuine ones at times. The main culprits are: A) Professional pirates, pirate BBS sysops who make it easy to swap programs. B) Traders who spread pirate copies just to collect upload credits. C) Peddlers who sell copies for a few tens of marks. The peddlers have the lowest morale and they're also the easiest targets, since such activity is clearly forbidden by the law. For a reason or another many sysops, however, don't consider themselves as criminals. They even defend themselves by stating that they don't spread software to lamers, but wares (games) circulate only among elite circles. The claim is unfounded. At some point the programs will spread outside this small amoral circle and the damage is done. By ironing out pirate BBSs and traders, the damages caused by piracy would plummet, as copies wouldn't spread nearly as effectively. What Can Be Done? ----------------- There are options. The first one is unpleasant for everybody: tougher laws and effective measures. Start chasing the pirate BBSs, sue the peddlers, set up a 24 hour hotline for reports. As a matter of fact, right now the police is raiding pirate BBSs around Finland and also dealers are under scrutiny. We'll hear about this. The nation could also straighten its moral backbone, pull up its stockings and do something. Buying a game isn't that expensive, and a game you've bought has more emotional value and content than a copy. You even tend to play an original more. If the bad and the ugly would at least once in a while buy a full-price game, they'd at least somehow support the business. And don't claim that there haven't been any games worth purchasing in a long time, if you've played some title day and night anyway. The CD Saves? ------------- Game companies welcomed the CD with applause as the savior of the industry. A medium that can't be copied -- at least not easily. A format that allows so large games that not even the most hardened pirate can't or won't bother to copy them. The PC market is migrating to CD-ROMs, and the CD32 is touted as the savior of the Amiga games market. When Amiga games can be developed for the CD-ROM format, the profits will be higher and, in addition to porting to other platforms, versions for normal floppy and hard drive based Amigas can be made. Surely, it's possible to copy CDs and it's even becoming increasingly commonplace, but for now the price of a CD-R drive is still dizzying, tens of thousands of marks, and one copy costs around 200 marks, even if the prices are going down. Thus, you won't save much. Only large batches of CDs can be produced so cheaply that they'd be affordable to the buyer, and getting them is notably difficult. In the pirate circles, they already actively sell PC, Amiga and Mac "collection CDs" that feature games and productivity software from a certain period. In contrast, you can't find copies of CD games lurking in shady pirate BBSs, waiting to be downloaded. How a Pirate Makes a Living --------------------------- Not many make their living out of piracy. Pirates mostly earn money by selling software and also copied console games. Pirate BBS sysops may sell better access to their board. Pirates also sell all sorts of legal and illegal items and junk -- not necessarily computer-related at all. Hackers have their own ways of making money, and these days few real hackers, traders or sysops pay their own phone bills. They use calling cards, which let you call at someone else's expense. Calling cards are series of numbers that let you use payphones for free. You call a number starting with 0800 or 9800, then enter the target number and then a personal code. Hackers also sell these codes, and large pirate groups have their own call card suppliers. Hackers have been caught in Finland for the misuse of Tele calling cards. The validity of a card depends on the user but also luck, which is why they are sold for a month at a time, after which the seller gives you another number. A month's worth of American AT&T cards, favored by pirates, costs approximately 500 marks. Pirate Troubles --------------- Some pirate BBS sysops get fed up with their hardware being held up and their "hobby", and may sell their setup. You have to wonder if the expensive machine could have been put into better and more constructive use. Running after 0-day warez, meaning that you have programs that were cracked 0 days ago, can't be considered very constructive. In addition to the law and getting bored, pirate boards face other threats, too. For instance, the most popular pirate board software, AmiExpress, contains multiple holes that let a handy hacker download the BBS userbase and the sysop's files, not tot talk about formatting the hard drive. These hackers are a pain in the pirate scene's neck and, in a weird way, they serve the law by breaking it by committing "IT theft", "break-ins" and "trespassing". For instance, one Finnish pirate board was discontinued when one morning its hard drives were formatted. You could almost say, deservedly.