RANDOM VIDEO GAME NEWS

[213374U]

Well, reports on unappealable automated bans from GTA5 and Take Two issuing a C&D and using intimidation tactics against the devs of the unofficial MP mod give you an idea of how much big name publishers care about bad PR nowadays, when balanced against protecting their microtransaction-derived profits. I know, I know, apples and oranges.

 

In other news, WH40K: Eternal Crusade is leaving Early Access in a month.

 

While it's obvious that this will be no Planetside, judging by comments, the launch is shaping to be a total trainwreck. Anyone here plays it?

[Bartimaeus]

 

Ban you from what ?. This is single player remember. No there's no cheats the game has only been out a day, buut, with the store system you would imagine they have sealed the game files well and good away, which probably means no mods, ever.

 

You could always have a go at the save files with a hex editor. Not sure how much they have done to prevent you from that. 

 

I don't know, lock you out of the game for disassembling the code or whatever.

 

If they are pulling this and their engineers aren't completely ineffectual, the savegames and even the way the game stores in memory how many of X you currently have, will be encrypted to prevent people from giving themselves billions of dollars worth of consumables with Cheat Engine.

 

Between this news and the previous comments about further consolization, you guys have effectively killed my interest in this game, saving me at least 10€. Thanks, Obsidian Forums!

 

 

Encryption of the save files doesn't really matter, the only thing that matters is if the game calls back to the servers to match the save games - aka, if the game is online-only. Otherwise, no matter the encryption, a memory editor like Cheat Engine will make, at the very least, basic cheating (money, quantity of items, health, etc.) ridiculously easy. It's not like a hex editor which is often times extraordinarily difficult to use depending upon the game - a memory editor reads the game's memory directly, and makes cheating a breeze.

Edited August 25, 2016 by Bartimaeus

[Flouride]

What the **** is wrong with people. Who in their right mind would think that microtransactions for those kits is okay for a singleplayer game. It feels like these companies are telling me that they don't want my money. Whoever is responsible for putting such **** in the game should be fired immediately and shot into space as a warning for the rest of these idiot executive producers / marketing people. Same goes for smartphone apps, I'm playing the game on my computer, I don't want to be poked about some app during the game.

 

I'm glad I didn't purchase the game, now I will wait until it's 5-10 euros on Steam and then I might get it, or if they start releasing DLCs I'll wait even longer.

[Lexx]

Just remember the preorder bull**** they've pulled before. Right from that moment it seems they tried to milk it as much as possible. And didn't someone already wrote that the two dlcs will be set in the middle of the main game? Once again it's like they've cut out content to sell it later... Just like it felt with The Missing Link.

[Keyrock]

I'd just like to point out that it's gotten to this point with bull**** season passes, pre-order "bonuses", on-disc DLC, et cetera, because consumers have allowed it to get to this point.  People (no names shall be included, you know who you are) that have been apologists for the publishers (Squeenix or otherwise) in the past, defending DLC and microtransaction schemes (which have slowly but surely become more and more aggressive) and continuing to pre-order and buy season passes need look no further than the mirror for who is to blame.  Publishers are always going to milk consumers dry just as much as we let them, it's the nature of business.  There is a fine line between how much the majority of consumers will allow themselves to be gouged and going too far and losing their business.  Publishers have slowly, but surely, been pushing that line further and further in their favor, and they will continue to do so as long as we allow it.

 

Anyway, on the off chance Mankind Divided ever makes its way to the penguin (as unlikely as it may seem, a couple Squeenix games have already been ported to Linux) I'll buy the GotY Edition at 50% (or more) off a year from now.  Eat a **** Squeenix.

Edited August 25, 2016 by Keyrock

[Chilloutman]

exactly reason why I am buying only complete editor cut goty ubermaster last versions of AAA games, been fed up with this bullcrap long time ago. There are some exceptions tho

[Lexx]

DLC itself isn't the problem. It's ****ty DLC for high prices and people buying them. How the hell can anyone spend 10 bucks on one or two tiny multiplayer maps that don't even add new gameplay mechanics? Or stupid weapon skins that are nothing more but a different color. It's madness.

Edited August 25, 2016 by Lexx

[Chilloutman]

DLC itself isn't the problem. It's ****ty DLC for high prices and people buying them. How the hell can anyone spend 10 bucks on one or two tiny multiplayer maps that don't even add new gameplay mechanics? It's madness.

 

Expansions are not a problem, cosmetic DLC are not a problem, everything else is BIG problem - biggest one are season passes where you are paying for something you dont even know what it will be xD

[Mamoulian War]

Seriously. I do not understand the logic behind all of this nonsense. Just imagine the ****storm, if car makers would try to push something like that to market. They would go out of business imediately.

 

But people have no problem accepting from AAA publishers smearing **** all over their face and happily ask for more, because they complain, that there was not enough of it to swallow, while applauding to them for their generosity, that they are allowed pay them more...

[213374U]

Encryption of the save files doesn't really matter, the only thing that matters is if the game calls back to the servers to match the save games - aka, if the game is online-only. Otherwise, no matter the encryption, a memory editor like Cheat Engine will make, at the very least, basic cheating (money, quantity of items, health, etc.) ridiculously easy. It's not like a hex editor which is often times extraordinarily difficult to use depending upon the game - a memory editor reads the game's memory directly, and makes cheating a breeze.

 

 

Well, we're going off on a tangent here, but from my limited non-software engineer perspective (I only took some CS classes in uni), I'm not sure it's so simple. If the data is encrypted or otherwise protected in memory (i.e. the game doesn't simply read a byte that tells it how many of X you currently have), Cheat Engine would not be able to do anything. Code/memory injection-type attacks are a thing, and countermeasures exist. You'd have to reverse-engineer the protection first and then write a custom application to inject the desired values. Essentially, a second crack. Did they even bother cracking the Keep thing for DAI? And that wasn't even "encrypted" AFAIK.

 

Realistically, I don't know how much effort it would take to hide/encrypt/protect the game from such fiddling, especially if the decision to implement the microtransactions was more a management meeting thing after the basic design had been laid out.

 

edit: yes, to lock you out, the game would indeed have to dial home.

Edited August 25, 2016 by 213374U

[Fenixp]

While you can encrypt data which reside in memory and only decrypt them while they're being used, at some point, they have to be decrypted - which is where they can be messed with, albeit this is a teeny bit more difficult than when they're just plainly stored in memory. With that in mind tho, encryption and decryption algorithms are not exactly cheap when it comes to processing power - the game's performance would be even worse than it currently is if, on top of all it does right at this point, it would also have to deal with that kind of load.

[Tale]

Just imagine the ****storm, if car makers would try to push something like that to market.

Imagine the ****storm if game developers advertised the game for $60, but then required you to buy $10 of "dealer add-ons" that they pre-purchased for you and irrevocably bundled together.

 

Car dealerships push that instead.

[Blodhemn]

Usually because games that allow for both do one of the perspectives poorly.  For instance, I too play FO in first person, but that's because the third person perspective seems clunky and tacked on as a last minute concession.

 

If a game could implement the option for both, and both were actually done well, I'd be okay with it.  As it is, I'd rather them keep RE as a third person view, rather than implement a half-assed third person view to go along with their decision to go first person.

True. NV's third person is useless except for viewing your character every blue moon. Bloodlines has a good balance though, first person for interactions with people and environment, third person for melee.

[Mamoulian War]

 

Just imagine the ****storm, if car makers would try to push something like that to market.

Imagine the ****storm if game developers advertised the game for $60, but then required you to buy $10 of "dealer add-ons" that they pre-purchased for you and irrevocably bundled together.

 

Car dealerships push that instead.

 

 

Never happened to me, I guess, that's probably illegal in EU or at least in my country.

[Hurlshort]

You guys don't have different options available when you buy your car?  Usually every car model has three different packages available.  Then of course you have all the negotiations that need to be made.

 

Basically car dealerships suck and so do video game publishers.    

[Bartimaeus]

 

Encryption of the save files doesn't really matter, the only thing that matters is if the game calls back to the servers to match the save games - aka, if the game is online-only. Otherwise, no matter the encryption, a memory editor like Cheat Engine will make, at the very least, basic cheating (money, quantity of items, health, etc.) ridiculously easy. It's not like a hex editor which is often times extraordinarily difficult to use depending upon the game - a memory editor reads the game's memory directly, and makes cheating a breeze.

 

 

Well, we're going off on a tangent here, but from my limited non-software engineer perspective (I only took some CS classes in uni), I'm not sure it's so simple. If the data is encrypted or otherwise protected in memory (i.e. the game doesn't simply read a byte that tells it how many of X you currently have), Cheat Engine would not be able to do anything. Code/memory injection-type attacks are a thing, and countermeasures exist. You'd have to reverse-engineer the protection first and then write a custom application to inject the desired values. Essentially, a second crack. Did they even bother cracking the Keep thing for DAI? And that wasn't even "encrypted" AFAIK.

 

Realistically, I don't know how much effort it would take to hide/encrypt/protect the game from such fiddling, especially if the decision to implement the microtransactions was more a management meeting thing after the basic design had been laid out.

 

edit: yes, to lock you out, the game would indeed have to dial home.

 

 

The problem is, encryption in live memory becomes increasingly complicated (...and not really worth the effort) when you have tools like Cheat Engine provides at your disposal. So the real value you're looking for is encrypted, O.K., fine. Are modifications to that value encrypted as well? Is the game constantly switching around where it's reading the value from in your physical memory? For the game to realistically pose any true difficulty for Cheat Engine to be able to find a given value, it really has to do all three of these things: be unpredictably encrypted in the first place, unpredictably encrypt any changes to the value in question (for example, if the original encrypted value is....5000, but is encrypted to be some random value, the encryption then must encrypt, for example, a +100 change to not be detectable as a +100 change), and then furthermore, the game must have the value changing where it's located constantly. Why is the last one important? Because even if you do the first two, it is still remarkably easy for the player to deliberately and predictably cause a change in the value they're looking to edit (for example, for the most basic thing typically being money, selling or buying something repeatedly), which an experienced Cheat Engine user will be able to notice rather quickly if they know what they're doing...and in the Cheat Engine community, it only takes one person knowing what they're doing (and there are a relatively decent amount of these people around) and pinning down a path to the true value to create a table that everyone else, experienced user or random shmuck, can use with relative ease. And even then, if all of that is done, I'm sure there are probably other ways I'm not aware of/experienced in to figure out how to bypass the encryption. I am not in any way - not even close - a Cheat Engine expert and I've dealt with the first two things I've described with varying difficulty (it depends on a case by case scenario - sometimes it's pretty easy, sometimes very difficult) and have yet to see a real implementation of the third.

 

A true calling home feature, on the other hand, is probably less performance-decreasing than that sort of live encryption would be (as so much would have to be encrypted and swapped to prevent easy vectors of attack from an experienced Cheat Engine user) and much easier to program...but on the other hand, it requires the player to always be online, because if it allows for an offline mode, then the player can always just use Cheat Engine in the offline mode before coming back online, because the call home will then have no real choice but to accept that what the client is saying is true.

Edited August 25, 2016 by Bartimaeus

[Tale]

You guys don't have different options available when you buy your car?  Usually every car model has three different packages available.  Then of course you have all the negotiations that need to be made.

 

Basically car dealerships suck and so do video game publishers.  

My last car was from family. But I helped my mother buy her last car and there were no real "packages." They toss on window tint, nitrogen in the tires, and wheel locks. She settled on the place that promised they would absolutely not charge anything extra for it, then charged $20 for it instead of the $100 the first dealership said they couldn't go lower than.

 

I hate salesmen so much.

[ShadySands]

Regarding DX:MD, there are already trainers and hex editor tables so I doubt they really tried to lock it down

 

It reminds me of the NBA 2K series since 2K sports sells virtual currency which is used for upgrades and such but the player files are all stored locally so you can just edit it and cheat without spending money 

[Malcador]

Ah, gaming as a service.

[Raithe]

One that might interest a few folks...

 

Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines - Unofficial Patch History

[Gorgon]

The thing with the shop is about collecting from the 17% of users who are 'whales' like in a casino and will spend tons of money on nothings. The thing is there is sortof a stalemate and there are rules to it, you get to offer pointless visual stuff, a gun and a hat, special missions and offering people cheats for money, that's going to leave core fans mad.

 

It's all about the bottom line though, so if pissing people off is going to make you more money then that's what you are going to do. Damaging the brand and the reputating of the publisher, that's hypothetical and 4 years down the line, well 1 if you are Ubisoft. 

[Fenixp]

So uh... That's what happened to Duke 3D in all e-shops. Classy move, Gearbox. Classy move.

[Hurlshort]

These weird triangles I keep collecting in Deus Ex are frustrating.  I love collecting tchotchkes, but they want you to scan it with your phone using their app.  That's pretty absurd, but then it turns out that the app doesn't even work for most people.  Lame.  

[Raithe]

These weird triangles I keep collecting in Deus Ex are frustrating.  I love collecting tchotchkes, but they want you to scan it with your phone using their app.  That's pretty absurd, but then it turns out that the app doesn't even work for most people.  Lame.  

 

And what you basically get are linked to videos of background interviews. A couple of the design people talking about the why and wherefores of certain decisions. 

[Lexx]

Wish I could just disable this stupid triangle feature. I don't use it, and I don't want to be remembered of it all the time.