Quoting: PenglingWe've been discussing this on the forum, and there are several other games known to be afflicted;

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection Vol. 1 & 2
Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection
Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection
Strider
Resident Evil 5

Moreover, none of these are declared on their Steam pages, which I've seen suggested elsewhere might be in breach of the law in some regions. It annoyed me to learn of this second-hand, to be honest.

My response was to uninstall for the handful of Capcom titles I've got and also remove the Proton files (one of them being the Mega Man Zero/ZX compilation, which, as above, definitely has it), because clearly I can't trust any of them now. I presume that, since Proton is basically a container of sorts, I should have no issues as a result of this? (I've never encountered this before.)

Issues I can't predict, but Proton as a container is misleading.
Proton provides 0 containment on itself and is very clear about that.

They're designed to run in a layer of security called "user space" or as others call it ring 0.
It's the difference between root and everything else(on most systems).
Within this restricted space they're willing to let programs do and whatever they like.

They actively support some forms of debugger detection, file analysis, etc. specifically to support "copy protection".
There was an actual attempt for punk buster it failed, because of an issue even Windows had(Wine just had it a lot more extreme and since punk buster got fixed they already marked it as won't fix).
The reason why malware often fails is, because it wants to run in kernel space and Proton simply doesn't support kernel commands.
The only active protection it can offer is the extra protection flatpak offers compared to

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Quoting: such

Quoting: melkemindInevitably, the "pirates" crack the DRM, so the only people DRM ends up hurting are the paying customers.

That's not quite the case anymore with Denuvo.

A. they just switched away from Denuvo.
B. Denuvo cracks still happen, but you're right it's the strongest I know of(At least every version of football manager up to 2023 and Hogwards Legacy have fallen).

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Quoting: ThibugWhat is even the point of changing the DRM years later when the game has already been pirated and later updates won't matter much?

Ooh.
I know.
A. Denuvo has a strong reputation in the industry, but maintains a subscription model causing developers to often switch away from it when a game becomes less popular.
B. Capcom just had an unfortunate clash with its modder community and wants to beef up its defenses.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: LoudTechie

Quoting: Purple Library GuyAnd there doesn't seem to be anything else in the wind that would make it worth all the expense of making the AI.

There is another reason it's worth it.
Few entities have the budget to do it.

Uh, yeah, and that makes it worth it how if there's no revenue associated? I was pointing out where the revenue seems to be coming from. You counter that not by pointing out that the stuff is expensive, which just makes the point that they better have some revenue coming in, but by pointing out an alternative source of revenue, and suggesting some reason they'd want that source instead rather than having both. (Except you shouldn't, because I'm right :tongue: )

Sorry. I didn't make my point clear.
Those using my reasoning intend to use their control of a market they already control to be their source of income for it, but want to protect that source of income from competition with deep learning(I realized we might be talking about different things under the same banner).
It's somewhat like buying a lock for your house. Is a lock profitable. It doesn't generate money, but it keeps others from taking what you already possess.

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Quoting: GuestMaybe i'm wrong but to me what seems especially funny is how quick they went from 'non-profit' to profit-oriented.

OpenAI has never been non-profit and it still doesn't make any profit(both are true, but it sounds like paradox bear with me).
OpenAI doesn't make any profit in the sense that their expenses vastly exceed their income.
OpenAI isn't a non-profit in the sense that they have always been very clear that they wanted profit. Their biggest investor Bill Gates somewhat muddled the waters, but that isn't OpenAI's fault.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: LoudTechie

Quoting: Purple Library GuyBut let's not forget that copyright as a concept is recent (unlike, say, murder, or even theft). There was no copyright in the Middle Ages or even the Renaissance.

That depends on your definition of old the printing press and copyright law were introduced in the late middle ages (1400-1500)

There were printing presses for some time before there was copyright.
Wikipedia:
"The British Statute of Anne 1710, full title "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned", was the first copyright statute."

I'd say that, as I stated, is past the Middle Ages or even the Renaissance. Maybe not quite capitalism, but certainly starting to head that way. And 1710 did not mark full blown arrival of the copyright regime, when you consider that this is the first such statute, it was very limited compared to later ones, only applied to Britain, and I wouldn't be surprised if it took a while before anyone really started paying attention.

But even if you had been right about that detail, that would still be a rather small smidge of human history and my overall point would remain sound.

The first copyright privilege granted to a publisher was in Venice in 1489 over the work "Rerum venetarum ab urbe condita opus". Certainly back than copyright functioned more like patent in that you had to apply for a copyright instead of getting it automatically.
also 1710 is still older than the US constitution(the oldest constitution still in force) 1787.
Also my statement about it being older than the concept constitution is wrong. That was introduced by Aristotle in 350BC.

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Quoting: Pengling

Quoting: LoudTechieGAAH.
I knew Nintendo was old, but that they predated the modern computer nearly half a century is new to me.

Yeah, Coca-Cola had only existed for three years when Nintendo was founded! :shock: And in some form or another, they've always been connected to entertainment somehow for all that time.

Quoting: LoudTechieThis explains to me how a mere game company managed to amass so much power.
{LoudTechie freezes and their eyes turn black and flashy}

They're actually not a very powerful company and have no real protections in Japan as a result - that's why they have to be so litigious, because basically their IPs are all they have and they're in trouble if they lose their grip on that. There's a really good ~30-minute video-documentary on that here [External Link] - give it a watch. :smile:

I was refering to them controlling their own hardware empire.
The Nintendo consoles.
That having said, it's indeed an interesting watch.

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Quoting: Pengling

Quoting: tuubiWhat are you basing that on? There's limited info available publicly, but seems like the highest selling Switch games published by Nintendo, for example, have reached about 50-60 million copies sold based on Nintendo's own quarterly reports.

Well, they've sold billions since they entered the video games industry - that much is well-recorded [External Link], at least. Last year (projected in February [External Link] and later achieved in May), the Switch's library alone hit the milestone of accounting for 1 billion of the company's lifetime 5.5 billion software units sold.

GAAH.
I knew Nintendo was old, but that they predated the modern computer nearly half a century is new to me.
This explains to me how a mere game company managed to amass so much power.
{LoudTechie freezes and their eyes turn black and flashy}

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Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: LoudTechieIt's just that Nintendo sells billions of licenses

What are you basing that on? There's limited info available publicly, but seems like the highest selling Switch games published by Nintendo, for example, have reached about 50-60 million copies sold based on Nintendo's own quarterly reports.

Truly nothing except my ideas of how big some of these companies are, but here is an afterwards justification.
Nintendo sold 123million+ switches. They would've to sell around 9 game licenses to the average customer to get on the billions list. According to the "how big is your game library" thread Valve has a chance of achieving this(most of these people achieve hundreds of games a year). If Valve can do it Nintendo can do it.
That having said their own quartily reports are a lot more trustworthy, so I'm wrong.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyBut let's not forget that copyright as a concept is recent (unlike, say, murder, or even theft). There was no copyright in the Middle Ages or even the Renaissance.

That depends on your definition of old the printing press and copyright law were introduced in the late middle ages (1400-1500)
As such it's older than the USA, western hegemony, most European countries smaller than Portugal, the entire concept of a constitution, all still existing fully democratic governmental systems and the general solution to volume calculations.

Quoting: Purple Library GuyAnd there doesn't seem to be anything else in the wind that would make it worth all the expense of making the AI.

There is another reason it's worth it.
Few entities have the budget to do it.
A problem with software companies is that in theory their entire advantage exist in having more and better employees and ideas than the rest, but that is a really fleeting position. Monopolizing ideas is temporary, expensive and hard to maintain international and employees move a lot.
In practice they also have things like hosting costs, the network effect, etc, but for this entire list of things is true that they depend on a lot of other parties.
The risk of some young upstart screwing up your entire business still exists and happens to Facebook all the time.
LLMs allows you to buy tools that nobody else can get without a massive investment and profit from it in software space.
This notion is decaying though training a full competing LLM can nowadays be done with just 100.000 euros of hardware.

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