“Once it’s cracked, it’s cracked. You can’t keep trying to stop them. We use DRM mostly to give payment options…[1]” – YoYo Games CEO.
If you want to find a Game Maker 8 Pro crack online you can, it really isn’t hard so I amazed at the number of people that end up here looking for one.
But surely it is in YoYo Games’ interest to at least try to stop some of this. I find the fact that they no longer seem to be even trying to remove crack videos from YouTube quite infuriating.
Yes, Game Maker is their product so they are free to take their own position on this but I am not particularly pleased with the approach they appear to be taking to this. As a paying customer I would like to think that at least something is being done to stop others downloading for free a product that I have paid for. I would not pirate the product because of my moral values so the lack of action on YoYo Games account is not encouraging me to obtain future versions in this manner but I believe this may be different for many others.
As for choosing Softwrap for its payment options – these are just credit/debit card and PayPal. All of which could be handled directly using PayPal. As a lot of the users of Game Maker are children they may not have access to these payment options, especially when you consider the large number of countries Game Maker users come from. When it takes 5 days for an initial response to my enquiry about purchasing what was, in effect, a gift registration it is clear something is wrong. Whilst I agree that the Softwrap upgrade process is pretty smooth for a brand new Game Maker 8 registration, I experienced no problems whatsoever when paying via PayPal, I would like to think that things are made as easy as possible for everyone to spend their hard earned money.
Incidentally, if you purchased Game Maker 7 last year you have just a few days left to upgrade to Game Maker 8 for free if you have not done so already.
I welcome your opinions on this matter and anticipate that many of you may disagree and believe that the right approach is not to spend any time whatsoever trying to prevent people who are obviously out to illegally obtain the software from doing so as it will always be found.
where can i get yoyo’s bank account number, branch & swift code?
Encrypted or not, this will not make any sense to true crackers. It will just slow the application, and make it impossible to run under certain non-emulators like Wine.
SVPTEAM, DRXJ, XFORCE and BRD all have automatic dumping tools that can dump almost any encryption. because soon or later, the application, or parts of it must be decrypted to be used. When they dump the functions, relocate them and the new clean executable is OKAY. Then some assembly level of searching to modify the RETN of the functions that are about licensing. Soon or later Game Maker 9 will be cracked. The nasty part is that altrough GM7 wasnt compleely and truly cracked, GM8 was even before the public spread…
And if Sandy or Mark asks themselves WHY and WHO?
Look at these projects that aim to port game maker to flash and java. And most important, there is a project to port game maker to linux unser GPL.
The last project will use MingW for true compiling and true performance…
Game maker is excellent software. But it is slow! Version 8 may have faster runner, but the code editor is extremely slow. And finally, if Mark is professor, he might find some ASM guru, even the crackers themselves, and write true compiler.
For me, as a part of SVPTEAM, it was NOT my decision to crack game maker 8. The rest of our team however did. Without my acceptance. Now I am no longer member of SVPTEAM for several reasons. Because I respect game maker, but it MUST be better.
Yes, I will no longer use GM, now I am contributing to G-C++, because Linus and Open world must have similar game making tool.
But G-C++ will target the professional game design, and not the educational.
DCMA notices have no effect outside the United States (and Australia who has a trade agreement with the US). Encryption is also useless (Software encrypts the executable now and clearly there are pirated copies of GM).
The fact that the program is heavily pirated is not the real problem.
If the program could not be pirated in the first place, there would be no copies to download.
In the next version Mark needs to:
1) Remove Softwap. Use his own system, with which he can shut down individual copies and remove illegal serial codes without having to contact Softwrap.
2) Start sending some DMCA emails to websites which host the cracks
3) Start sending some DMCA to Phil’s “advert” websites. They do not host the files but they damage reputation. They remove the listing for “ds game maker” even though the system is designed to work for any title.
4) Encrypt the source! I am not a C++ or Delphi programmer so I do not know how he will go about this, but in .NET there is a fantastic tool called ‘Eazfuscator’ and thus far, none of the recent DS Game Maker releases have ever been cracked.
Adios
True.
People Buy, or not. The not people has 2 groups: They download it anyways, or they don’t
People who download will not have bought it if there wasn’t anything like piracy 😉
A total of 30,989 downloads of supposed GM8 cracks. Or in terms on monetary loss:$774,725 lost. This is just one quick site search. Imagine all of the money YYG would have if GM8 had not been cracked and downloaded multiple times. Suddenly that mere $25 your paid seems a lot bigger.
http://i62.servimg.com/u/f62/15/02/28/04/gm8cra10.jpg
That is actually just an advert, see http://gamemakerblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/none-existent-software-item.png