bit-gamer.net

Game Maker accidentally brands customers as pirates

Published on 27th November 2012 by David Hing

A skull and crossbones motif appeared embedded into the sprites of several Studio users after a recent update.

An anti-piracy system used by game creation suite Game Maker has malfunctioned and vandalised several legitimate users' projects.

Following a recent update to Game Maker Studio, some users have had game resources including sprites ruined by a skull and crossbones motif being permanently branded on top of them.

No official fix has been released although some studio suite users have fixed the issue by uninstalling the software and deleting the related appdata and localdata system folders.

Head of development Mike Dailly has suggested the issue might have been as a result of viruses on affected machines or a bug in a new updated for the software. He also urged other community members to not assume those affected had been using pirated copies.

The issue has also affected some users who have downloaded the free trial. An anonymous member of YoYo Games' forums who had been affected pointed out what a bad first impression this had made on them. 'It got me thinking, what if I had tons of graphics? I really have second thoughts now. This error is a huge time waste.'

The bug was not enough to deter everyone however. 'I think you should still buy Studio. Even though this error wasted a whole day of development for me and my team, I am not going to give up using it,' said another forum member.

Several of those affected had downloaded or purchased Game Maker Studio from Steam. Valve's digital distribution front started selling the suite in October as part of its expanded software offering.

11 Comments

Discuss in the forums Reply

[USRF]Obiwan 27th November 2012, 09:43

This is outrageous! You have designed hundreds of sprites for your latest game, taken months to create in Photoshop and other tools. And then some A-holes from which you use their software decides that you are a pirate and completely destroy your work.

Nikumba 27th November 2012, 10:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by [USRF
Obiwan]This is outrageous! You have designed hundreds of sprites for your latest game, taken months to create in Photoshop and other tools. And then some A-holes from which you use their software decides that you are a pirate and completely destroy your work.

And if you dont have a backup of all that work then your total idiot

ChaosDefinesOrder 27th November 2012, 12:08

DRM in "doesn't work" shocker. The pirated version probably has that watermark replaced with a transparent image or removed completely already...

greigaitken 27th November 2012, 12:28

false possitives en-masse could easily be avoided if checked against a database of keys + mac address and allow for say 10 mac addresses per key.

Gareth Halfacree 27th November 2012, 14:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by greigaitken
false possitives en-masse could easily be avoided if checked against a database of keys + mac address and allow for say 10 mac addresses per key.

Changing your MAC address on Linux is but a single command; doing the same on OS X or Windows is barely any harder. Any security system tied to MAC addresses is doomed to fail.

Rich_13 27th November 2012, 17:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gareth Halfacree
Quote:
Originally Posted by greigaitken
false possitives en-masse could easily be avoided if checked against a database of keys + mac address and allow for say 10 mac addresses per key.
Changing your MAC address on Linux is but a single command; doing the same on OS X or Windows is barely any harder. Any security system tied to MAC addresses is doomed to fail.

Agreed/.

Gradius 28th November 2012, 00:36

Time to sue for BILLIONS!

.//TuNdRa 28th November 2012, 00:50

That DRM system seems like a Dick maneuver. Why not just have it self-destruct a few key files inside of the program? Sure; It means a reinstall, but it does mean that false positives won't be nuking people's projects.

I accept the reasons behind DRM, and why it's not going away anytime soon, but that doesn't mean I have to appreciate completely arse-backwards methods like this.

Optimaximal 28th November 2012, 10:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gareth Halfacree
Any security system tied to MAC addresses is doomed to fail.

Correction. Any security system tied *solely* to MAC addresses is doomed to fail.

It's a good guaranteed out-of-box UID for a system. Spoofing is a problem, but you have to *know* to do it.

Gareth Halfacree 28th November 2012, 11:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by Optimaximal
Correction. Any security system tied *solely* to MAC addresses is doomed to fail.

I'd argue that any security system at all is, given enough time and incentive, doomed to fail. You can hire 100 top-end engineers to design your DRM, but you're pitting them against heaven knows how many thousands of top-end hackers. That's not an fight you're going to win.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Optimaximal
It's a good guaranteed out-of-box UID for a system. Spoofing is a problem, but you have to *know* to do it.

Guaranteed? Only when manufacturers don't cut corners. Place I worked at once had to bin a thousand or so cheap network cards they'd bought to move from thinwire to Ethernet, 'cos every single one had an identical MAC address...

stone 28th November 2012, 17:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by greigaitken
false possitives en-masse could easily be avoided if checked against a database of keys + mac address and allow for say 10 mac addresses per key.

Yes, because that code has absolutely no possibility of containing a bug or getting overlooked in an update, plus you never ever hear of people using virtualized systems in content creation, let alone ones with virtual network cards that can change their mac virtually on a whim. Also there are no other tools this could have bad interactions with. For instance, some ISPs only issue different IPs via DHCP for different MAC addresses, so there are tools that change the MAC so you get issued a new IP (for whatever reason you need that). As a sane human, would you expect your copy of the software to suddenly trash your work after 10 times of doing that, but not before?
I'm not sure how much this software phones home usually, but an extra database check and online requirement for something as stupid as a MAC database is a bad idea in its own right.

You know how this could be easily avoided? Yeah. Don't treat your customers like crap. Don't saddle them with DRM. And if you absolutely positively have to have them bend over just a little further, do something non-destructive. Like quitting the application.