Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari, made some very interesting claims yesterday when he was speaking at the Wedbush Morgan Securities annual conference. During his talk, he stated that, right this very moment, a stealth encryption chip called the TPM is being put on the motherboards of almost every PC that's currently being made.
What does this chip do?
Apparently this chip contains rock-solid encryption software with a verifiable private key. I don't claim to know a whole ton about encryption and password hacking and public and private keys, but from what I understand, they’re incredibly difficult to crack.
While I doubt that this will be 100% hacker-proof, it seems like it might put a pretty big dent into online piracy, or at least increase the amount of time that it takes for big name releases to hit the internet, which will likely cause an increase in sales.
I've pirated my own share of things I probably should have purchased, but I view this as a blessing and a curse. A curse because I can't get things for free anymore, but a blessing in that we might see the revitalization of genres that have all but disappeared from the PC. In an attempt to thwart piracy, pure single player games have virtually disappeared from PCs. Most companies include a significant multiplayer component, which is often given more emphasis than the single player game, and then require all players to log into company run servers, making it difficult for piracy to succeed. Even for Diablo II, which is about 10 years old now, it is incredibly difficult to get on Battle.net if you don’t have a legit copy of the game.
Single player games fell by the wayside, in part because it was so easy to pirate them. Companies found they made more money making games like TF2, where you have to be online to enjoy it, far more profitable because they lost less money to internet thieves. If piracy is slowed, perhaps we'll see a resurgence of adventure games and more story-driven single player games on the PC.
For people who know about encryption, do you think this will have any noticeable effect on piracy, or is it just another pathetic attempt to try and stop something that's uncontrollable. For PC gamers, do you think that, if piracy is actually reduced, it will change the landscape of PC gaming? Or are MMOs and online shooters so entrenched that it really won't make a difference?
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I'd have to agree with that whole blessing and a curse thing. I'd probably lean more towards the curse because, frankly, I get way too much of the things on my PC from pirating. A blessing of course can be argued cause it can definitely make developers more confident in their sales of PC games.
Honestly, I wouldn't trust a goddamn thing coming from that crackhead.
I agree that in won't be "hack proof." Some jack-hole will eventually crack it and let other people know how to do it. We'll back to square one where any retard can pirate a game and hurt the platform.
I think it'll be a matter of months before they find some way of bypassing the chip, you'd just have to have hardware specific software. You probably couldn't bypass it unless you have a moderately popular mobo.
Piracy will never end, there's to many kids out there with entitlement complexes who feel everything should free(or stealing from the big corporation is ok but not from the little guy), this will be cracked and as vexed said, back to square one.
If there is any kind of swing in sales related to this, is will be a downturn. Console games will be the beneficiary of people who can't pirate it on PC. I've been guilty to a certain extent with getting 'free' games...But I have a lot more emulators for old games than new stuff....
What does that old Coot know?
I hate to rain on the anti-establishment parade here but, HP has been using TPM chips on their workstations (and I would suspect their consumer desktops and laptops) for a while. It's generally used to ensure that HP licensed software gets installed on HP computers, since they offer free downloads of WinDVD and such for people who bought computers that were packaged with it. Also, I think - but I'm not sure - that Apple uses it to ensure that you're installing OSX on an actual Mac and not some wild PC.
I think they've been around for a while. All a TPM chip does is read your hardware specs and creates an "nearly unforgeable" (wikipedia) hash key from that information. It's a completely unique ID for your machine that will change if you add hardware.
It's actually kind of useful since they could potentially be used to track your laptop if it got stolen. stuff like that.
Also, from Wikipedia: "... to address these concerns, the TPM chip cannot be enabled via software alone - a "physical presence request" operation is required, whereby a human sitting at the computer must acknowledge the request to activate the device via a prompt at BIOS level.[4] Furthermore, each application that uses the TPM must register a unique passphrase when it takes ownership of the TPM in order to prevent other applications from also making unauthorized use of the TPM while it's enabled.[5]"
Reading this makes me think my above comment might be a bit off, I apologize.
Encryption isn't the end of piracy, it's the end of how we pirate right now. New ways to crack games will be developed, mark my words. See: Bioshock for PC
I was going to flip out saying how much this would suck, but after reading your blog, I can actually see how this might be a good thing.
also, There's no way this won't get hacked within a few months.
This ridiculous chip will not provide any extra sales. It's just another shitty idea by shitty R&D departments headed by people who do not understand the world we live in.
Piracy IS NOT THE ISSUE FOR PC GAMING, the sooner people stop reinforcing this bullshit the better.
PC gaming has never, since home entertainment consoles came about, been the way the masses get their fix. Console manufacturers providing incentives and a larger install base make sure of that. Do you think it was the fear of piracy that caused Bioshock, successor to two critically acclaimed PC games to appear on consoles? No. It was money.
The constant hardware arms race and the investment required in a gaming PC (for those not wanting to build their own especially) are the problem. The hardware market is extremely convoluted and difficult to navigate for a layman, as opposed to just saying "I'll have a 360/PS3/Wii please".
Games like Crysis only make things worse, that game underperformed in sales because a small of gamers had a rig that could play it properly. That is why these MMO's do so well, they are low spec and accessible.
So no, some piece of shit chip that'll be circumvented in weeks of activation won't help, unless you call cutting off more consumers helping. Neither will reducing piracy, which has been rampant since before high speed internet thank you very much.
I agree with "TIMMEH". At most all this chip will do is increase the price of the product.
The cost of hardware is what is killing PC games and the ease of it... hmm lets see $400 for a video card only or $400 for a 360 that has all I need and no drivers to install setup blah blah...
also why why someone tell me why companies think that if people can not get it for free they "WILL" buy it. I used to "get" the all the games just for fun and "got" the games that I liked but ONLY when they are $9.99(UT2007, bought in aug 2008) or less and some games at $19,99(Quake 4, bought in july 2008) that was my MAX.
one of the problems is spending all the money on the hardware then paying 60+ for the games. then upgrading because of advancements in hardware. I would say way more people "get" the games because of price.
but hey its my opinion. im just going by my self and all of the people that I know. (which is a lot)
oh and "TIMMEH" "So no, some piece of shit chip that'll be circumvented in weeks of activation won't help, unless you call cutting off more consumers helping. Neither will reducing piracy, which has been rampant since before high speed internet thank you very much."
you are dead on about this... BBS days, good old 14.4 modem. lol... high speed just gets it faster.
it all boils down to the ALMIGHTY $$$$$$$$$$$.