Fighting fire with fire

The fight against online piracy, fuelled by the distribution of code across peer-to-peer sites, is an ongoing battle. A quick glance at torrent sites reveals pre-release, new and old games for all home consoles, handhelds and PCs that are freely - if illegally - available to download. It's one of the most complete gaming libraries you could ever come across.

Format manufacturers and publishers try to stem the tide, but the token efforts leave them treading water. That title due for release next week? Google it with the word 'torrent' after its title and it'll be available.

Independent developer Introversion is all too aware of the problem, but it doesn't bury its head in the sand, promise magical security measures, or threaten murky legal action. It takes the fight to the downloaders. It gives as good as it gets in an effort to cause disruption and quite frankly, piss the downloaders off. These are the guys threatening Introversion's very existence, after all.

Here, Tom Arundel, sales and marketing director for Introversion, reveals how the developer faces the reality of peer-to-peer piracy and fights fire with fire.

Tom Arundel: Well, it's frustrating, but at the same time one has to recognise that not everyone downloading stuff via peer-to-peer would buy the product. Indeed, we've found that a lot of the users that initially download our products do so almost for the status of having a newly pirated release.

So, there is some lost revenue which is definitely annoying, but because we're independent, we've definitely had a lot of people write in saying, 'I've downloaded your game for free, but it was so different and so compelling, I feel guilty not to have paid for it. I don't want a copy, but here's £20 anyway - keep making great games.'

Sometimes we get 'donations' that are twice the sale price. Of course we don't get all the revenue back so you have to factor that into the revenue model.

Do you think the state of peer-to-peer piracy has improved over the past 12 months, or has it gotten worse?

We haven't seen much change. There are always new systems emerging, and existing systems declining as they get polluted with fake content.

What encouraging signs do you see in the war to fight online piracy via peer-to-peer?

You can't stop peer-to-peer file sharing. So the best route to combat it is to subvert it, and turn it around to your advantage. For example, we will release a version of our game that looks like it's been hacked at the same time as a pirate version gets out - usually a couple of days after release.

Our version, which is modified, repackaged and distributed by our user community of around 1000 active participants, looks like the real game, but is in fact a demo. After the third time of downloading the demo, the peer-to-peer user will be very, very frustrated, and will do one of two things; give up or buy the game from us. We subverted the Bit Torrent network for Darwinia very successfully this way, and to a lesser extent eMule / eDonkey.

The other development is of course multiplayer games where the metaserver which connects clients together will do some key checks. If there are too many people using a common key, that key will be banned, and those players using that key won't be able to participate in any multiplayer games. That's pretty effective also. Unofficial metaservers do spring up, once crackers have reverse engineered the comms prototcol, but they often suck as they don't have enough players to gain critical mass - something that's essential for game matching servers.

Do you think new formats such as HD-DVD and Blu Ray, and the new home gaming consoles, will go any way to halting online game piracy?

To an extent, but someone will always break any copy protection. It won't be too long before someone makes a mistake, and someone else exploits it. You might call that human nature.

Is it inevitable that the pirates will eventually figure a way to surpass the latest encryption technology? How do we stay one step ahead of the criminally minded?

There are many smart people in the world who just love the challenge of breaking the protection. The problem is not crackers, or people who break the protection, but customers who would have paid for the product, and are now not going to do so, because they have access to a copy.

It's a failed fight - rather than attack the cause, with peer-to-peer it's better to attack the symptoms. The key is to make it difficult enough or risky enough for those who would pay to buy a legitimate copy. So you can pollute peer-to-peer networks, or you can set out rumours about how the X pirate release of product Y contains a virus, or make it difficult to have a reliable multiplayer game.

How well do you think the games industry is currently tackling the problem of online piracy?

Well we each have our methods. I think some are woefully outdated, and there are some pretty crap protection systems. The other problem is that many protection systems devalue the user experience for legitimate purchasers. Gamers like to listen to CDs while playing games, and many games would only run with the CD in the drive.

What happened? Many people downloaded a crack so that they could play the game without having the game CD in the drive. You shouldn't be punishing a user for purchasing the product - you should make it too difficult or risky for them not to.

How can the games industry take bolder, more productive steps to tackling online piracy?

By using more subversive techniques. I would never download an executable product from a network. Why not? Because I don't want to mess up my PC. If you can get someone to run a program on their computer, you can do pretty much anything you want with that PC. It's much smarter to install a fear or have a high penalty risk than try and stop the product from being copied or distributed.

In the majority of cases, new games are up on torrent sites at least three or four days before their official release. Where do you think the majority of leaked code comes from?

Well, remember it only takes one copy. It could be the post boy at the developer, publisher, replicator, the distributor, or even the guy delivering units between them all.

Get a purity control version ready and release it at the same time as the pirate version - before it takes hold. Then you can cause mayhem on peer-to-peer networks. It's quite fun really, and it gets a lot of people talking about your products also.

There seems to be an encouraging mindset that states the entire industry must work together to combat piracy - do you think it's time to name and shame those companies that aren't helping?

I don't think anyone would take much notice unless there are major leaks from a single point in the distribution chain. We can't win the war on piracy, but if you work smart, you can definitely reduce it. The golden rule I think is to keep things simple - especially for the legitimate user.

Tom Arundel is the sales and marketing director for Introversion. Interview by Matt Martin.