Dungeon Master - Clever Floppy Disk Anti-Piracy | MVG

Dungeon Master - the classic 16 bit dungeon crawler that defined a genre was one of the best ever games for the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga. Released in 1987 by FTL (Faster than Light) it saw many ports to different systems including the Sharp X68000, MS-DOS, Apple IIgs, Super Nintendo and more.
It also had one of the most devious floppy disk copy protection schemes ever created. In an age where most games were cracked in a matter of hours, FTL's clever protection took an entire year to crack with many attempts to defeat it, resulting in failure over and over again.
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#DungeonMaster #AntiPiracy #FloppyDisk

[@DonMilo]

I used to be an Amiga developer back in the 80's and we used a similar method for copy protection. I didn't know it had a name until now :). To understand it, you need to know how the Amiga disk drive controller wrote it's data. The controller couldn't recognize a change in magnetization that occurred too quickly. It used a coding system to prevent too many null bits or too many 1 bits from following each other. So basically if you wanted to write out binary 00001111 , the OS would convert it to something like 001 001 011 011 (this is based on my memory so the actual encoding is probably different). Now with this information, we took control of the hardware directly and bypassed the encoding. We wrote 000000000000 and 111111111111 directly to the disk drive at a certain location. We made sure it would not create an error with the sync marks or track locations, so a copy program would not think anything was wrong. Later, when we read that data the controller would try to make sense out of it and depending on the timing would return a value, which wasn't always the same every time. We would read that location multiple times and look for a change in value. We didn't care what value we got back as long as it was different over multiple reads. If you tried to make a copy of the disk, the copy program would read the value and write it back properly encoded. So when we read the value, it would always come back as the same number. I think later versions of XCopy would perform a deep scan and look for fuzzy bits and write them back to the disk as we did. This is all from my memory, so some details may be a bit "fuzzy" :)

[@totallynotabot151]

Thank you so much for the explanation - the video glossed over the important parts.

[@fanzyflani3576]

For 00001111 would that have been x0 10 10 10 01 01 01 01 where x was the opposite of the previous bit?

[@DonMilo]

@@fanzyflani3576 OK, I found the details in the Amiga Reference Manual" The raw MFM data that must be presented to the disk controller will be twice as large as the unencoded data. The following Table shows the relationship: 1 ---> 01 0 ---> 10 ;if following a 0 0 ---> 00 ;if following a 1 so you are correct, in my example above: 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 = x0 10 10 10 01 01 01 01

[@gergelyvarju6679]

@@DonMilo When you expect a random value from that disc as a random number. No check, no copy protection code, nothing like that. But if the value would stay the same a few functions responsible for generating enemies or other vital content randomly could produce very bad results. No checks to disable, you would have to inject some extra code there. Which might be much harder and even harder if your game barely fits into the memory of that computer. Have fun cracking!

[@gereral1_jackofalltrades]

I played with ollysbg and once the table is read you can dump exe. I loaded a puzzle game I bought entered key and followed the program thru key process setting break points . The key is weak part as a hacker can set break points on all calls to key. If eax holds 1 usually uses a jump command to set bit. But sometimes is dumps a bit or s flag bit. Sets it to 1. Some use scramble encrypt to place these flags in a file and scramble them. Then load them and look for those flags. So even if u pass the key code loop you need to breakpoints the decrypt part and step thru the part and look at the addresses where data is decrypted. If done right you will see the scramble data become readable data. Then seconds later scramble up again. If I were to write a protection I would create s scrambled file that holds actual exe code for parts of the dll libraries and scrabble them so if the program is comprise the dlls exe code would be messed up crashing program. Using tricks like machine reboot and other things also deleting parts of the game files so next time a fresh install would be needed to run. Other tricks are terminate assembly instruction or a code to write a routine to s fresh memory spot and call it and pc processor will try to execute the bogus instructions crashing the game. So instead of going around the key they use a window command in assembly to isolate all window prompts. Once the prompt is break pointed stepping thru each key shows math to produce key. If u bought key which I did u can see the first letter load in compare length and then do some xor or other stuff on it. And see the flags being set. Once key math is found the hacker produces keygen . Better to pay for program and not steal. I only hacked the game for sake of challenge as I had a purchased key. Once u own a good key to find routine to get math formula is easy. I wrote s program with 2000 lines of code called xdr for mpcbe video player and used visual studio to write it. So I understand data, stack, registers, the push and pop off the stack. Jmp command to jmp thru instructions, the mov command to move a value into a register. Visual basic commands kinda do the same. For next loop. Jmp to call a portion of code many times and return. Put data into a variable like putting data into a memory address. Hex in hi level 01010 in ammembly. Just buy program lol

[@denismilic1878]

The best thing is that hackers must play the game to detect the next level of protection.

[@maggiejetson7904]

Which none of them have the time to. They are in it for the fun of cracking the copy right not the game, playing it to test it out is just boring.

[@denismilic1878]

@@maggiejetson7904 yes double pleasure for game makers

[@DionSquire]

honestly, it kind of required both a geek and nerd simultaneously to actually beat the game and crack it properly.

[@zeus1141]

I disagree with the general comment

[@rfvtgbzhn]

are you sure? I mean instead of identifying all the fuzzy bits, they could just tried to find all the checks in assembler, so they didn't have to play the game.

[@tairom8138]

When the C64 came out with the 5.25" floppy drive, the DRM that companies would use was so destructive, my father actually started a business repairing the drives that inevitably would fail. What they would do was laser damage a sector or sectors on the master. When the drive read head hit this sector, it would cause the read/write head to "knock" out and back repeatedly, trying to read the sector. After a few seconds, the drive would return an error, one that the software was looking for. You could never physically damage the exact sector that the master had and if I remember correctly, no software copying programs ever defeated it. Only hacking and removing the check itself. In the meantime, this "knocking" of the drive heads would eventually cause the heads to go out of alignment. My father contacted Commodore and eventually convinced them to allow him to be a local repair location for these drives. They sent him the tools and some special disk that when read would allow for manual realignment of the heads. Needless to say, this method wasn't around for too long. Nowadays, it would lead to an almost immediate class action lawsuit. lol

[@LukeAvedon]

Love that story! Thanks for sharing!

[@fredmertz4819]

Lol, my dad had enormity of problems with 8" floppy from dust in Arizona. Well unprotected spinning media just plain is unreliable. Thanks for your info.

[@RasielSuarez]

Ah yes, memories of error 21 and the death rattle on me poor ol' 1541 :'-(

[@customsongmaker]

They wouldn't be too afraid of lawsuits to do it again. About 20 years ago, major record companies included malware on their audio CDs that would disable your computer's CD burner if you put the CD in your drive.

[@akaimizu1]

The commodore 64’s copy protection really backfired on the companies that used it. This was because a lot of copy protection failed to check correctly on all but a certain type of drive or two. In many cases, if you didn’t have the original 1541 drive, the game would fail to load on something like the 1541c. So for many, the only games that would not play on their C64 were the ones with various amount of on-disk protection, leaving the cracked versions as the only ones that would run.

[@TheAtb85]

To sum it up: If you bought Dungeon Master you'd play a dungeon crawler. If you pirated it, you'd play a puzzle game instead. :D

[@omikronweapon]

I honestly regarded the copy-protecting as a puzzle to be solved before the game. I reverse engineered a few of the games' codes just by trial and error. Felt so satisying when I got another one correct. Eventually I got enough to play the game most of the time. And otherwise just reset for a new set of random questions.

[@SumeaBizarro]

If I ever was to get into making games, and being skilled or being backed up by skilled enough people, I would delibirately make pirate edition of the game - make it delibirately get weirder and something maybe akin to how Malklavians experience Vampire the Masquarade Bloodlines versus other races. Make it change the game style entirely and basically be it's own interesting thing, making basically "The breaking down" version of my own game, and have the full version. Maybe even including that edition with the legit ones and including unique story but without needed context in the breaking version while offering completly own but - also encouraging to buy version of the game. Of course, it would take one crazy indie without any self preservation instincts to actually get something like that out I am just shooting ideas I probably will never get to create.

[@IndiBrony]

@@SumeaBizarro I personally enjoyed how the creators of Game Dev Tycoon did it. They released their own "pirated" version of the game up on the relevant websites the same time they released the actual game. Everything plays like normal for a while, until the players suddenly start losing money and there is seemingly no way around it. You eventually get a message saying "we're losing all of our money to pirated games" which you couldn't deal with, leading a bunch of people who "pirated" the game to out themselves by asking on forums how to get around the piracy issue. it is a beautifully constructed piece of irony.

[@cdru515]

@@IndiBrony Later on, the "Pirate mode" was made available in legal copies, as an optional setting. And with the ability to make DRM to counter piracy

[@wohlhabendermanager]

@@IndiBrony Yes, was thinking about that example when I read the OP comment. That's a real good way to maybe make some people aware that piracy is a real problem. Another example, in Crysis 3, the final boss was unbeatable when you used a pirated version of the game. That's extra evil... But on the other hand, this also may lead to negative reviews if players are unaware that those changes are a result of copy protection. They may think it's because the game itself is flawed. I always liked the copy protection of "Pirates!", when you entered the code wrong you could still play the game, but the difficulty was really high.

[@MinisterSandman]

Me: I couldn't care less about floppy disk DRM Also me: Wow. MVG uploaded a video about floppy disk drm. I've always wondered how that worked

[@KibSquib48]

tbh MVG has made me interested in a lot of otherwise boring things

[@kenrickeason]

@@KibSquib48 Cause the man knows how to hold People's attention without breaking a sweat.. Someone may have the most exciting life but can make it seem boring when they talk.. Someone may have the most boring life but can it seem action packed when they talk.. It's about holding the attentions of others..

[@neSsuChan]

Exactly me.

[@TN_AU]

Hands up who was so cheap that they used a drill to drill a hole on the other side of the floppy to make them double sided (or was it HD?) because double sided floppies was more expensive back in the day? Me: Raises ✋

[@rps215]

Reminds me back then when my cousin talked about this kind of thing. I have no idea at all about it back then.

[@rmidthun]

FTL had some of the most clever anti-pirating code. A couple of their other titles: The game SunDog would let you play most of the game, but when you got to the final part a message would appear telling you that you can't see the ending because you are a thief. OIDS was the smartest though. This Choplifter-like game would let you play the game, only the shield recharge would simply not do anything. So you could play the game, and see how cool it was, but it was really, really hard. All of these protections worked in that I eventually did buy all the games. Years later, I worked on a PC game and was in charge of adding anti-pirate code. The code I added was subtle, the jump height was multiplied by 0.95. This made a fairly close jump about 15 minutes or so into the game into an impossible one. Not Spyro by any measure, but still fun to read the boards and see the players discussing that particular jump and asking for advise on how to make it.

[@codetoil]

nice

[@adempc]

That's fantastic, thanks for sharing. Would be hilarious if the x.95 jump height was only on the weekends... like, you can pirate our game, sure, but you can only play it proper Monday through Thursday before 6pm...

[@paulmeyer9149]

Sounds like Mirrors Edge. I believe this kind of protection is a bad idea btw.

[@paulmeyer9149]

@Bernhard Häussermann When I was 6yr old I played Spyro at a friend who did not know his cousin bought a pirated copy for him. (Which came with CD print and manual and stuff). I liked it, but my friend told me why it's annoying overhyped garbage and so we avoided spyro for basically forever. I found out about 20 years later what was the probable cause of the game being broken.

[@jeffwells641]

@@paulmeyer9149 That's better advice for 20 years ago than today. Also, you and your friend are probably only part of a tiny percentage of people who legitimately did not know they had pirated copies. Today people look things up. The 0.95 jump height would be doing pretty quick, and basically right away you'd get search results saying pirated copies change the jump height. The key is to pepper these things all over. People will know quickly if it's a copy protection scheme, but if every time someone tries to use the latest cracked version something new doesn't work right, they'll get frustrated and either just stop playing or go but a legit copy. Issues with cracked version will also likely prevent more people from initially trying a cracked version. You don't really care about people who won't play if it isn't cracked. You care about the ones willing to pay if they can't get it free.

[@pcfan1986]

On a CD or DVD pits and lands are NOT directly representing ones and zeros, but the CHANGE from pt to land or land to pit would be a one and NO CHANGE would be teh zero. Just FYI ;)

[@omegarugal9283]

NZR encoding?

[@spiney2291]

but we're talking about floppy disks

[@aabeastsider]

So changing the first land to a pit flips everything that's written after it. Nice piece of info. Thanks

[@encycl07pedia-]

​@@spiney2291 Floppy disks don't have pits and lands, do they? I thought they were magnetic only. Only optical disks would have pits and lands.

[@watcherofwatchers]

You do know he briefly talked about CD bits in the video, right?

[@SumeaBizarro]

1:45 "I have no fuc-" Interesting... I think I can guess how the sentence ended.

[@billytrespassers3123]

I have no fuchsia pigment.

[@sgt.thundercok4704]

@@billytrespassers3123 Nailed it!

[@maritoguionyo]

king idea

[@Clarky_AU]

"Please enter this word: I have no fuc" Some reason i doubt the remainder of that line was not the words the words on page 11 :)

[@maximal9857]

ok. this word.

[@rebane2001]

1:45

[@Mario583a]

I don't know the word "fuc"

[@vanerek]

"s to give"?

[@Mindflayer86]

king manual?

[@LGR]

Loved this! Honestly didn't know the specifics of how these copy protection schemes worked so yeah, thanks for enlightening 👍

[@ModernVintageGamer]

thank you sir. means alot coming from you !

[@davidinark]

How many folks read this with LGR’s voice in their head? ✋🏼

[@wohlhabendermanager]

@@davidinark Everyone. :)

[@garrettfrick3830]

the legend himself (you even taught me that every game has a pc port lol)

[@tranphuongnam1860]

IT'S THE LAZY GREEN GIANT

[@kara0keit308]

The Schrödinger's 1/0 bit killed me :D

[@KarlRock]

Incredible story mate. My love for computers began on my friend's C64 before my parents finally brought me an Amiga 600. It was an incredible time as a kid on those machines. The range of games and going to computer meetups to get copies of games was fun. Piracy was all I knew as a kid who had no money but an obsession for computers and gaming. This video brought back fond memories I'd forgotten. Thx

[@SeamzKing]

Oh my god, I did not expect to see you here Karl! Love your channel

[@GrandizerGo]

I remember playing this game, buying it 3 times as I broke one disk, had the disk drive mangle one other copy when the sliding cover spring failed. But I also remember Never buying it again, it was "found out" that you could slow the drive speed down with a small screwdriver to a certain speed, write to a certain set of sectors and that basically duplicated the copy protection. You could tell the "cool hackers" by seeing that their drives had a small hole in the top so that they could adjust the speed without having to open the drive cover.

[@Craxin01]

As my grandfather likes to say, "a locked door only keeps an honest man honest."

[@kenrickeason]

Your Grandfather seems like the type of man I can listen to for hours.. seriously..

[@andrew_koala2974]

Your Grandfather is correct. Another way of stating that is "Locks are only to keep honest people out"

[@pwnmeisterage]

The legal thinking of the time was that software is code and data and math, not something written by an author or created by an artist. Software authors and companies did of course claim copyright and become increasingly paranoid/heavyhanded about being paid for their work. But it technically wasn't "piracy" because no laws existed to protect software. You can't "own" math and you can't "steal" math. Everyone knew sharing and copying software was "perfectly legal", most never thought it "dishonest" or "wrong" or "unethical" at all.

[@pault151]

FWIW I didn't pirate, but I did hex-hack a copy of Deluxe Paint II so that it would include dh0: instead of df0: (hard disk instead of floppy) so I could load it off of my hard drive. I didn't want to be held hostage to the variable quality of 3-1/2 inch floppies and have my expensive program go bad on me!

[@cozymonk]

That's cute, but it's super inaccurate. It completely ignores the fact that most crimes are crimes of opportunity. Imagine a thief in a parking lot looking for a car to break into. They will stroll through the lot, casually looking inside windows and testing the door handles. If they can find an unlocked door, that's the door they're going to open first, the unlocked one. There was a string of break-ins by local teens in one of my old neighborhoods. The key similarity: all these houses left their back door unlocked, while people were home. They'd slip into the kitchen or something and snatch a laptop. Locking the door would be enough to stop that as breaking and entering is not only more illegal than trespassing, but also louder and more time-consuming, leading to a higher probability of being caught. A more accurate grandpa saying is, "Security is not about making it impossible for a thief to break in, just about making it harder than breaking into your neighbor's home." Of course, copy protection is different than a house or a car. But it's also not about hindering every single thief, just enough that it's not easy to be common-place. I disagree with it and think there are much better methods to discourage people from piracy, like fair pricing and convenience of use.

[@registerme2]

One of the better encryption mechanisms I found was on an "F16 Fighter" PC game. The actual executable files were randomised on disk. When loaded into memory & executed. The application pointed to itself as if it were data, Then it decrypted itself using an XOR technique. Then the code executed, then it re-encrypted itself. This meant you could not open the exec with a disassembler to figure out the encryption. As the code on disk was valid but not true. You had to watch it run in memory. Step by step, which took hours, to get to the part of the game in question. To make it worse, a failed check just set a variable. The variable was then checked much later in the game. So you died, millions of instructions later. Making it very hard to find the self-modifying code.

[@Kevin-vq6rv]

Fuzzybit is a genius anti-piracy solution. Even today it can give you loads of headache.

[@MindBlowerWTF]

Yeah, considering how small amount of PCs have disc readers still in them :P

[@The_Archvile]

80's Scene Hackers: "Been there, done that. Let's hack this." Dungeon Master Fuzzy Bit: "Hold my 1 or 0."

[@The_Archvile]

Thanks for that tid bit!

[@bonbonpony]

@Brad Viviviyal Plot twist: it wasn't copyright protection, just sloppy coding with lots of bugs :)

[@ucankizmiaz4289]

@Brad Viviviyal whether there never was a craked version i can't tell (well 14:05 gets me straight on that matter). what i know is that i had a 'cracked' one and played Dungeon Master on the ST1040 all the way to the end. At some point i even had a screenshot of the final screen but i lost it. Same with Sundog but without screenshot though.

[@crimehouse8851]

i laughed way too hard at this

[@0Raik]

11:07 Quantum bit copy protection... dayum! Ahead of their time by 30 years.

[@lucasn0tch]

It's amazing how a 1980s home computer game is impossible to crack, but many modern AAA PC games could be cracked within a month from it's release

[@0Raik]

@@lucasn0tch *Was impossible to crack and games nowadays face hundreds more hackers than old games back in their day. Plus it is like a sport to them (like lock picking) and groups compete to be the very first for street cred and bragging rights.

[@StormsparkPegasus]

@@lucasn0tch It's not impossible to crack. It was cracked. The problem was, people stopped trying to crack it for too long because they thought they already had. When it turned out they hadn't they had to go in depth into the code and figure out what they missed.

[@DxBlack]

Quantum? No...it'd have to be both 1 and 0 a while also not being both 1 and 0, not manually switched. As for 30 years, randomized pointers and whatnot were a thing somewhere in this period as well.

[@nickwallette6201]

Loss of honor? Technically, these groups are amazingly clever and tenacious. But the egos are over the top.

[@DaveGamesVT]

That fuzzy bit stuff is wild, I never knew about that before. Thanks for the video!

[@user-ro1cc8tz6d]

Its like qbit

[@1teamski]

LOL! X-Copy! Man, I completely forgot about that! Wow, talk about Amiga memories!

[@YTWanderer]

Totally forgot about it too :) Haven´t seen this interface for 25+ years. Talk about bittersweet nostalgia...

[@RogueBoyScout]

I remember getting my 1meg expansion before my 2nd floppy... X-Copy read the whole disk in one reading... so happy... kids won't understand the struggle... spending an hour after school copying games, checking newly copied games....

[@blatherskite3009]

Yep, There came a time in my Amiga-owning days when I realized I was spending more time staring at little numbers appearing in a grid on X-COPY than actually playing games. At least copying games for the Spectrum (my previous computer) didn't hog the actual computer itself while you did it!

[@Just.A.T-Rex]

Then they came back tried to be legit and released the first dvd pirating software DVD X-copy iirc

[@WingDings_666]

"I have no fu-" Yeah that is pretty much me when dealing with copy protection.

[@user-lc5xp5xd2i]

I used to crack C64 games back in the day. From the classic tape drive buffer protection all the way to copy protection that executed entirely inside the disk drive, cracking was often more fun than the game itself.

[@subtledemisefox]

It still is.

[@nosirrahx]

@@subtledemisefox Being told that you can't do something sure does make for a fun challenge. Back when I was in IT my favorite cases were the ones where the "Geek Squad" said a PC could not be fixed without a format and reinstall.

[@padmad3k63]

True, I used to crack Windows applications and make game trainers. Most of the times I didn't even care what program it was as long as I could crack it and release it as a zero day release. Gotta love Assembly X86 and C.

[@velma.]

@@padmad3k63 Do you still have any of your trainers or stuff that you cracked?

[@markpenrice6253]

@@nosirrahx ... I'm pretty sure "format and reinstall" was the Geek Squad's default position, because it was the quickest and easiest way to return a PC to a known-good, clean state without having to do any investigative work or touch the customer's data (or potentially expose their network to viruses), or more importantly conduct any particular staff training. Just give them a one-page cheat sheet that says "tell the customer you'll have to wipe their machine, put the bootable system image DVD in the drive, press [the magic keys], and come back in a couple hours". I even brewed up something similar for an old PC given away to the daughter of a family friend to guard against the possibility of support calls coming back down the line (or against them not being able to do that). Stack of CDs made with Nero Imagedrive of the fully installed but otherwise bare system, marked "if all else fails..." + instructions for starting the reimage process... Probably anything they said was a reimage job could be fixed in under an hour using rudimentary tools, by a halfway competent tech not working for a big box electronics retailer, maybe adding a few hours to run longform diagnostics for the trickier cases (actual interactive time wouldn't be much more though - set it up and then go do something else for a while). And I would expect half the things they said were fixable that way actually weren't... e.g. failing hard drives or memory, or a lack of meaningful virus protection crossed with a user who's a little too adventurous (or naive) when it comes to the internet...

[@KevReillyUK]

I hadn't heard of this one. It's very sneaky. Two of my favourite "gotcha" anti-piracy systems were both from the 1990s. The first was the Turnpike email/usenet client that like much '90s software had a unique installation key for each copy. You could install it on as many machines as you liked, but any messages it sent were encoded with this key in the headers and if you received an email with the same key it would generate a cryptic-looking Windows dialog stating "Unknown message from myself." When people got this "error" message they would invariably turn to the product's own usenet support group asking why their friends couldn't email them, only to be told that their friends should buy their own copy. Brutal. It would probably have been described as a "self-own", had the term been around. The second was the official Scrabble game for the Psion PDA. Supplied on a solid-state disk, the game had an extra zero-byte file written into the SSD's flash memory that could be seen by, but not copied by, the file system. With this file in place the game played normally. With it missing, as happened when you cloned the SSD, the game would appear to play fine but every time you played a word all of the replacement tiles you got would be "E". After two or three moves you ended up with a rack of EEEEEEE and the game became unwinnable. I don't know if anyone ever reported this one as a "bug" but yes, I did discover it first hand when I bought a copy for my brother and tried to rip it off. I had a good laugh about it and went and bought my own copy. A success all round for whoever thought it up.

[@CarnorJast1138]

I got an Atari 520ST in 1987, and had it upgraded to 1 MB of RAM. One of my first games, other than the superb SunDog, was Dungeon Master. I played the hell out of that game on my ST for the 3 years I owned my system! When I sold my ST and switched to a 286-12 PC in 1990, I really missed my ST and that game more than anything else! I still play it today on my PC using DosBox! I can honestly say I have played DM more than just about any other game before or after I got DM, even when compared to modern games on my various PC's I have had since 1990! Dungeon Master truly is one of the all-time greats, and for me, is quite possibly THE best game ever made!

[@HelloKittyFanMan.]

"Pirates at bay" seems like pun _intended_ to me, haha!

[@rashidisw]

In ancient time DRM/copy-protection only negatively affect pirated copies, in recent years its negatively affect legitimate users where pirated copy would have better experiences. Where have it gone wrong?

[@jdb2002]

They're trying too hard to beat the pirates completely, rather than just slow them down. They need only delay them for less than a month, since most sales are made in the first two weeks.

[@kilrahvp]

That's not correct, those stupid "enter code from manual/wheel/etc" were a massive pain for legitimate users too. And modern game DRM is basically transparent...

[@timothygibney159]

Or put them in the Epic store as exclusives. This has made piracy big again

[@sampleentry5253]

Timothy Gibney Steam had a monopoly on the market lmao. The only way for Epic to realistically compete in the AAA market was to buy out exclusivity rights. But I guess Epic bad, Steam good, or something.

[@bonbonpony]

@@kilrahvp And by "transparent" you mean that they can then look through all your stuff remotely? ;J As for the OP's question about where have it gone wrong: I would say at the time when people started accepting such shizzle and kept paying them money for such "broken" products. If you support what you don't like, it grows and screws you over even deeper next time. That's why I don't use any software with DRMs, nor any proprietary software whatsoever.

[@DougBell007]

This is Doug Bell, the lead developer on Dungeon Master and the mind behind the DM copy protection. Nice video. You got most of it right, except the part about the fuzzy bits. The disk protection was actually more sophisticated than the fuzzy bits used by other games at the time. Instead of one or more “random” bits (bits written with a magnetic signature on the threshold between a 1 and a 0), the bits on the sector were simply smaller than a normal bit. The position of the magnetic signature was moved in a sinusoidal pattern from one side of the track to the other side and back. This meant that the disk controller would start reading 1s (or 0s) and at some point switch to reading the opposite. So instead of random bits, it would read random length sequences of bits. This was important because a fuzzy bit could be created by a standard disk drive by toggling the write head on and off while it was writing. The bits on the Dungeon Master disk can only be written by one particular brand of disk duplicator that cost $40,000 at the time.

[@Skraeling1000]

Fascinating stuff! Back in the day we needed a form of copy protection for our training programs, and as we were a small company we didn't want to pay someone to do it for us. After a bit of experimentation I discovered a byte deep in the floppy boot sector that I set to a non standard value. Our software looked up this value at startup, (install disk had to be in the drive at startup) and if not present, it wouldn't run. An additional effect was that even doing a diskcopy wouldn't work, as the boot sector was never copied by that program. Then one day we got a call from a customer saying they'd found a virus on our install disk. Turns out that there was indeed a virus around which did the exact same thing to disks. Oddly, of all the customers we had, only this particular company had anti virus software that spotted this. Another odd form of copy protection was used by an authoring program called TenCore - it had a physical bad spot on the disk that was actually visible to the naked eye!

[@seshpenguin]

That fuzzy bit is genius! Really cool stuff. You know they were smart: stuff like the game slowly breaking is really cool. (I mean it's cool, but I'm not a fan of DRM :P)

[@theSato]

i dont think copy protection is the same as DRM lol

[@daishi5571]

@@theSato DRM is an umbrella term used for a multitude of ways to weaken and stop your right to own what you have bought, and that includes making a copy.

[@Finsternis..]

Oh yes, it is all very genius. Until the day the checks start failing on legit copies. Then it is the same crap shot that modern drm represents.

[@Frenziefrenz]

@@Finsternis.. Yup. My "favorite" was that my legal copy of Red Alert 2 thought it was pirated and blew up the base after a couple of minutes. (As an aside, the way they printed the key has practically faded completely now, nearly 2 decades later. Double DRM fail.)

[@seshpenguin]

@@Finsternis.. exactly, one of the many problems with drm

[@Lugmillord]

Correction: 6:10 Spyro the Dragon was the first game of the series. The one with the protection is Spyro 3: Year of the Dragon.

[@lmcgregoruk]

Yeah, but it's not called Spyro 3 on the cover, just "Spyro: Year of the Dragon" hence people confusing it for the first one.

[@Lugmillord]

@@lmcgregoruk yeah, that might be true.

[@robertholmes8917]

Wow. Watching this brought back so many memories. I think i played every game you used footage of. Some i thought i forgot. Watching the X Copy Pro footage brought a tear to me eye. Me and my best mate Chris would sit down for hours after school swapping and copying games. 12 years old. Thank you for this. I remembered things I had forgotten.

[@dotwithshoesofficial]

I used to play that Indy 500 game so much. Loved that game.

[@MrMario2011]

I know almost nothing about Amiga and Atari computers, so this was a fascinating look into it all. Awesome work, my dude!

[@Cuzjudd]

I pity the fool who didn't grow up with Amiga ;)

[@NeuronalAxon]

@@Cuzjudd - ProTracker FTW.

[@jamezxh]

All You need to Know is that The Amiga was heaps better

[@jamezxh]

@@NeuronalAxon I agree Spend many hours making *.mod's

[@casedistorted]

Yeah sadly us here in America really didn’t have the Amiga at all. Sucks because it looked like an amazing machine. I had a C64 tho for most of my childhood growing up

[@Paneka_]

It was way before my time, but your video fascinated me nonetheless. Always great to watch!

[@renakunisaki]

Very clever, but how reliable was it? I would imagine depending on the particular magnetic strength of your drive, the ambient temperature, the amount of electromagnetic noise nearby, etc, the fuzzy bit might not be very fuzzy and might read the same almost every time. Were there a lot of people complaining about these issues even on a legit copy? Incidentally, cartridges can do a similar trick called Open Bus. By reading memory that's not connected to anything, the result might be pseudorandom (depending how the system was wired). I don't know if any games used that, but it would have been a clever "fuzzy bit". However, Super Mario All Stars did this by accident. The variable that enables debug mode was never set, so every time you played it there was a chance it would read as "on". (Since this was in the SNES memory rather than the cartridge, it tended to be the same every time on the same console.) Also, Final Fantasy 1 uses this method for random number generation, but not for copy protection. Many SNES games do use a somewhat similar trick: write to some region of the save memory, read back another region, and compare. On a real cartridge the memory was a certain size and repeated over the whole range, so the result would match. On a copy, they usually had more memory, so it wouldn't match.

[@TremereTT]

MOST importantly, Dungeon Master's developers didn't punish their customers for the existence of piracy, but the pirates only. They didn't spy on their customers. They didn't interfere with their customers' computers' ability to function properly Their copy protection didn't create a security risk for their customers data. You could play the game offline.... And after a year you could crack and copy the disk as diskettes weren't made to last for ever. Nintendo had it right !!!!! All games should have come delivered in undestroyable, ever lasting modules. This is true for today a sixty Euro game should be shipped on a 10 Euro crypto dongle. I don't want to be online on Steam every 2 weeks to be able to play a single player game... Put the dongle with the game in and play...that's how it should be.

[@MrMediator24]

It was 80's - 90's. Internet didn't fully exist back then so spying and online check up weren't possible

[@MakotoIchinose]

Unfair comparison, but whatever.

[@plonk420]

"nintendo had it right"? bahahahahaha!

[@BassieWorst12]

If you don't want to sign in with Steam every 2 weeks, play non-steam games.

[@noop9k]

But they did punish the people. One can easily imagine their protection system behaving erratically on some disk drives due to minor differences in calibration.

[@Frostie3672]

Loved gaming on my Amiga, that machine was way ahead of it's time. The Cyclone copy software could copy protected disks, using an extra piece of hardware that sat between the external floppy port & an external floppy drive.

[@BlaineEvans]

Why doesn't this have more likes? I just want to say here that one of the hardest things to do with a KZbin channel is bring content and stories that we haven't all seen already. MVG does this over and over again. It's especially impressive considering the topic of retro gaming is largely based on "old news," and the category is pretty heavily populated on KZbin already. Awesome work!

[@nerothos]

Schrödinger's DRM!

[@TonyP9279]

Fuzzy bit: The early stages of quantum cryptography.

[@Alexthomasgleeson]

Was thinking the same thing!

[@tonyali4715]

Quantum mechanics copy protection, 30 years before its time. No wonder FTL are now part of EA

[@bonbonpony]

I was rather wondering how did they manage to produce that bit.

[@ridiculous_gaming]

When I first discovered "Dungeon Master" in 1988 for the first time on the Atari ST my mind was completely blown. The ability to throw a shuriken at metal bars with some actually flying through the open space between them was simply jaw dropping.

[@jaysmith2858]

Somebody describing almost exactly the same scenario as the one you mentioned is what made me get an Atari ST. Dungeon Master is still the only game that has made me get a system just so that I could play one particular game.

[@ridiculous_gaming]

@@jaysmith2858 I know someone who also picked up an Amiga 2000 & monitor for Sword of Sodan...back in the day.

[@ridiculous_gaming]

@@jaysmith2858 There has been a ton of later dungeon titles built on the back of this original.

[@jaysmith2858]

@@ridiculous_gaming I know there have been a couple of fan made DM dungeons, but I've not played any of them.

[@iian0]

Love the extreme details in this video and many others. Many thanks for your time. Really enjoyed watching!

[@itemushmush]

it's really refreshing to watch a video where you *know* the dude knows his shit. Especially in the area of gaming; other YT'ers wouldn't have the knowledge to do this sort of thing properly

[@retrokludge]

I can't believe no-one has mentioned that you've used an HD floppy to depict a DD floppy at 3:45. This isn't the internet I'm used to ;)

[@RogueBoyScout]

Thank You!!!!

[@NoJusticeNoPeace]

I remember when the publishers thought they were being clever by making their docs dark brown on very slightly lighter dark brown to try to defeat photocopying. Unfortunately they also defeated human eyeballs, with which I was equipped, which forced me to hit the warez BBSes for cracked versions even for games I'd purchased.

[@NoJusticeNoPeace]

They probably used a variety of colours to try to defeat photocopiers.

[@Filelor]

@@NoJusticeNoPeace Yellow is a real bitch for some b/w copiers

[@freeculture]

The local "pirate club" over here simply copied it by hand, and then photocopied that. As an interesting piece of history, i still have that photocopy but the proper crack was quickly available in their bbs if i recall correctly. That said it was kind fun trying to see how far you could get with a city constantly getting disasters. In those days my country had banned imports, so its not like you could obtain a legit copy legally, as absurd as that sounds... I know a similar thing happened to eastern bloc countries. 98% of computer software in my country was pirated back then.

[@rchandraonline]

Not sure, but I *think* floppies (and HDDs too) are not straight 1s and 0s...but close. I think they are encoded by the transitions in magnetic flux, so a change in a time slot is a 1 and no change is a 0. MFM. NRZ. or something like that. Anyhow.... I used to hear about floppies which were intentionally encoded with errors, so that a file-by-file copy as well as sector-for-sector copies would fail, because the OS would try to read intentionally damaged sectors. If the game were file-by-file, it would simply never call for a read of the "bad" sectors. Or the game would go read a specific sector on the disk, and if it came back OK, it would know it might be a pirate copy, because it was supposed to read an error. I don't think I ever had one of those. But I did notice Marble Madness. Great game.

[@plonk420]

Yeah, they have error correction... Here's an article on CD-ROM error correction byuu.net/compact-discs/structure

[@DoomRater]

Now that's just cool. I knew about Spyro's multilayered DRM attacks but holy crap, I had no idea it was done to this degree on floppy disks! Dungeon Master, the original pirate battler.

[@karehaqt]

One of the best games I played on my Amiga as a child :)

[@superamario6464]

The best retro video game channel, No other, This!

[@alaeriia01]

LGR would like a word.

[@0Raik]

My Life in Gaming is waiting in line.

[@matuzaato]

My life in Gaming and DF retro want to know your location

[@battleonfan1]

8-bit Guy is also very good.

[@superamario6464]

Guys, all great suggestions and now subbed. But my man MVG is still the king

[@garybugler9117]

Wow what a trip down memory lane. I loved Dungeon Master so much!

[@TiborRoussou]

For it's time, it was brilliant!

[@FLYNN_TAGGART]

I miss this type of DRM. If you bought it, you faced no restrictions at all.

[@2K8Si]

Dungeon Master still to this day, holds the number one spot for consuming the most amount of time for one specific title. I played the HELL out of this game. Countless hours spent training my team *WAY* beyond what was required to finish the game.

[@sasamisa1806]

Yes indeed, although I think Captive has eked it out in recent years for me thanks to emulation. (^_^)

[@hayleyscomet3447]

2K8Si even though I wasn’t born yet I honestly think it’s one of the classic and that there are many more gems from back then. I really want to get old PCs for playing old games. The downside being the death of crts and parts in the next 10 years but I guess I should enjoy it while I can I suppose.

[@peterbrandt7911]

I even remember a friend complaining, that the game wouldn't work properly on his ST :).

[@anarchaotical]

Wizardry called, it wants its recognition back for gameplay. 1981 This was a great video on DM and old school DRM.

[@PeterRichardsandYoureNot]

DooM wizardry has some nasty copy protection as well. I still remember to this day the churning and weird noises my drive made when reading the disk.

[@noop9k]

DM innovation was being a realtime game, not a turn-based roguelike crawler with a 3D view (plenty of those existed already)

[@georgkuhn3986]

Just ran into this nice piece of gaming history and I love it. Well researched, great presentation, subbed!

[@alexhardline2208]

5:51 I appreciate that you mention Skullgirls ^^

[@blakegriplingph]

Spyro wasn't the first to be well-known for having such a deterrent; Earthbound for the SNES gained notoriety for having a rather insidious and punishing multi-layer copy protection scheme where if you insisted on playing on a bootleg or a disk backup, the game would play tricks on you until the final level - all of your save files will be lost for good.

[@kenrickeason]

I may be wrong but I remember Donkey Kong 64 doing that too! And Halo.. Erase all your progress and in some instances destroy your console..

[@meetoo594]

Serious sam 2 on pc had an invincible enemy spawn on pirate copies. Bit later than spyro though.

[@blakegriplingph]

@@kenrickeason Doubt they'd end up destroying your console though, not unless if the cartridge's voltage draw is way out of spec.

[@fanzyflani3576]

@@meetoo594 That was Serious Sam 3 which had the insanely fast pink scorpions. From what I've heard, it was merely *nigh* invincible... and there's definitely way more than just one. Croteam also has an anticrack for The Talos Principle, of which the best-known case is that the elevator out of World A doesn't work properly. Both games have more things in them, and both games WILL crash after a while if it detects it's been cracked. From personal experience Talos merely *looks* easy to crack (I and a few others all have legitimate copies but need to modify them for various reasons) but once the crack protection kicks in, uhh, enjoy your crashes and dysfunctional elevators I guess? Also, there's a Steam Workshop item for SS3 which adds the scorpions back in. Some people have actually done speedruns of it. It takes longer than an hour, even on coop.

[@meetoo594]

@@fanzyflani3576 Ahh, it was wasnt it, my mistake. I like the protection in that game dev simulation where pirates wreck your business over the course of the game making it impossible to finish. Another one was the anime porn game that posted your personal details (cribbed from your pc) to the devs forum and only a public apology for pirating it would get your name removed.

[@trainedtotroll9385]

MVG I love your videos man! The copy protection and pirates winning concept is very fascinating. Keep up the good work buddy!

[@jessekeighin4949]

I absolutely love your anti-piracy and "mistakes were made" videos. I come back and watch them again all the time. Thank you so much!

[@EcchiBANZAII-desu]

I have Dungeon Master on the Atari 520ST, and for it's time it was some scary shit. The atmosphere was top notch.

[@jamesheyworth3566]

It was the game I spent the most hours of my life on. That is until bauldur's gate 2 on the PC came out, which I still play today on iPad. wRPG Forever....... Dungeon Master was utter, utter class. I was a teen in an absolutely new world. I dreamt of that game when not playing.

[@EcchiBANZAII-desu]

For me it was Pacmania and OIDS and occasionally Double Dragon 2, before I got my 90MHz Pentium.

[@EcchiBANZAII-desu]

OIDS was the shit. So primitive, but still atmospheric. It had pretty long loading time though for the type of game it is.

[@PadPoet]

Nice throwback MVG! Keep dropping those awesome videos mate!

[@scottb8035]

I read about this DRM a long time ago. I always wanted to see a video about it. Thank you for creating.

[@vedi0boy]

I like how this channel covers both the hacking and the protection of video games. Thank you

[@TrickSeventy5]

The best game on the ST end of. I spent so many hours on this game. I never knew about the sophisticated copy protection system at all. Really interesting and great explanation, thanks for sharing :)

[@error.418]

@Brad Viviviyal If $29.95 was 1985 that would be $71.13 in 2019, so what do you mean "worth buying?" Game prices haven't tracked inflation very well, many game companies under charge, and games are still wroth buying. Unless it's EA and their garbage DRM that makes the pirated copies easier and better to play, but that's not most games.

[@DonVigaDeFierro]

Oh, my god. Seeing Desert Strike gave me some damn good flashbacks.

[@shadeshiest22]

That game needs a remake asap!

[@Nedemai]

I loved how you highlight a compare instruction specifically suggesting it was a single line of code that made all the difference, because it likely was.

[@gfamad]

Your knowledge about retro gaming is amazing. Great job. As a side note Dungeon Master is one of my favorite game of all time !

[@Lierofox]

Music at 6:51 is "Estrayk - The HER song 03 (trainer 2)"

[@jbirdmax]

Ahh the old Commodore 64. I actually had a Commodore vic20 too. But hacking on the Atari 2600 was the best. My god I dumped thousands of hours into that thing. Loved every minute of it.

[@krusty23]

Loved DM on the ST, as you say it had a great atmosphere that I didn't experience again until the original Doom appeared. Really interesting video as well, never knew it was so well protected.

[@dunjenkeepa]

Really interesting, love stuff like this - I had an Amiga 500 and my mate had an ST - dungeon master was the topic of conversation for months while we worked nights at Tesco ! One of my all time favourite games and I still play it now every now and again . . .

[@Kaxlon]

I was going to suggest "Eye of the beholder" but you did your homework properly. =) Thank you for making great content!

[@korky7775]

Dungeon Master....What a game, like you i had to upgrade my Amiga just to play it but WOW was it so worth it ... To this day it remains my most played game ever ( I never finished it however )...

[@archelonprime]

Why would you play it for 30 something years and not finish it?

[@korky7775]

@@archelonprime Play it and find out ( no cheats )

[@archelonprime]

@@korky7775 I never cheated and I finished it decades ago.

[@steverushforth7009]

Brilliant video, I worked for a company who produced encryption systems for radio data traffic and the only uncrackable system is the one way pad, and then only if used correctly. Thanks again for the nostalgia, its not what it used to be!

[@Ghinn]

Man, seeing that Indy 500 copy protection screen took me right back to my childhood. We had a well-worn Xerox of the manual.

[@Alexthomasgleeson]

I absolutely love the copy protection videos you create

[@maxpheby7287]

When ever I think of speedball 2 I hear "ice cream ice cream" in my mind lol.

[@huzcer]

speedball 1 was the purer better game imo!

[@fka.z3ro]

This is interesting - thanks for the awesome videos! As an 80s kid myself I went through the whole 5.25 and 3.5 inch floppies - ah the good old days

[@JodyBruchon]

This was an amazing thing to learn about. I'm glad you covered it. I'm totally subscribing because of this video. Thanks so much for your hard work!

[@Peluceus]

"It held the pirates at bay, no pun intended" nice

[@recklessroges]

You didn't explain how the fuzzy bit changed.

[@x0myspace0x]

Or how someone finally figured out that was the culprit all along.

[@shachar2]

Suppose a 5v is 0 and 12v is 1. if you put the voltage in-between then you'll supposedly get sometimes this and sometimes that. That is ROUGHLY what he meant, not the exact information.

[@spud1252]

This was my job way back I would program the trace disc duplicators that made hundreds of copy’s a day . the disc image was mapped out like a menu written in unix and if I remember right a flakey bit was if you wrote two bits of data closer than they should be something easy to do on the trace copy system as you programmed everything how you wanted ,so if you speed up the disc faster than the compute could and wrote a few bits of data when the host computer red the sector it would produce a different result every time ,,think it was Rob northern who came up with the idea ,

[@StaticWrap]

I absolutely love these videos. Thanks for putting them out. Something comfortable about them. Makes me happy lol!

[@batman1338-1]

hands down the best youtuber there is! i'm glued by the pc every monday.. you are the reason why mondays are good again.

[@BrilliantDesignOnline]

Super interesting; I would love to see more on the developers vs the hackers battles. PS BBS: a blast from the past :-)

[@GeorgeMichaelArt]

Haha! X-Copy brings back memories...

[@ezoray]

Your comment in the video reminded me of my friend's pirate copy of Carrier Command on the Amiga. It seemed to play fine for 15-20 minutes then the sound started to go eerily distorted and the game would eventually crash. I did buy the game for PC and played it for hours in glorious CGA. I remember it came with the theme tune on cassette.

[@stonytina01will-not-be-ban78]

Did I see SilkWorm IV?That game had the most massive sound in those days. I got my Amiga hooked up to my stereo and my stereo hooked up to my bass-guitar amp and it was awesome... those explosions made the whole house tremble. Literally!

[@JaimeWarlock]

My first big software project was writing this whole game from scratch (except for copying the graphics).

[@shuntarofurukawa5577]

I love these video formats!

[@mysterymayhem7020]

what a trip down memory lane. I forgot all the different crap I had to deal with the play games and get around the program to play copied disks. Thanks for the memories.

[@user-cc8vc8vr4b]

This game takes me back. I used to have it on the PC, and spent too many hours on it. Really interesting video, I wasn't aware of this. Thanks for uploading!

[@Slamy4096]

The whole video was interesting but I've found some errors: 3:20 This is technically not correct. NDOS just means that the inserted disk has no file system. It could still be a normal disk that can be copied. 4:15 The Amiga and the Atari ST have 80 Tracks per Side if no over formatting was in use. The Amiga usually uses 80 Tracks * 2 Heads * 11 Sectors * 512 Byte -> 880 kB The Atari ST usually goes for the ISO format of floppy disk which is 80 * 2 * 9 Sectors -> 720 kB. Some Atari ST games use 81 or 82 tracks to have more data. Turrican did this for example. The C64 on the other hand used 40 Tracks.

[@johnfrancisdoe1563]

Slamy's Music & Programming 80*2*9 is the PC format.

[@Slamy4096]

@@johnfrancisdoe1563 This is correct. But Atari ST and the PC share the same disk controller. It's the very same sector format.

[@Mycon]

How about making a video about copy right protection going wrong and causing more trouble to legit users than actually preventing piratism. I bet there's lots of cases.

[@bonbonpony]

Isn't it, like, _most_ cases? :J BTW it's "piracy", not "piratism".

[@disasterincarnate]

like the limited install time protection games like Spore used to have? what was it, 3 installs or something and then it would refuse to ever install again?

[@pow9606]

C64 not loading tape cassette games with standard included tape drive. The same game works in computer game store on their non standard tweaked to perfection drive making people unable to get a refund or another copy. So what did people do - fook up part of the tape before taking it back to the store so it would be guaranteed to not work and they could get another copy or refund.

[@simon-ricardokuhn1713]

Like Worms 4 Mayhem, one of my favorite games being ruined by a malware called StarForce?

[@wheedler]

Well they got their wish, now Spore can't be played as intended at all.

[@caferockgarito3310]

I'm addicted to this channel, the voice, the music, the videogames... Omg

[@pusheadmetal]

This channel has become one of my top 5 favs. Great stuff.

[@V1VISECT6]

Ahh Dungeon Master, I never played the original but Legend of the Skullkeep is one of my favorite 90s Mac games.

[@extrudersfx4571]

”...managed to keep the pirates at bay” Internet won for tonight.

[@garfield1415]

playing the Amiga and Atari takes me right back to being a kid, some very cool games of that era, great video im sure i remember playing some copied games too! great video!

[@A1i1988]

hey man, I'm really impressed by the knowledge you collected and your storytelling of it. As a software engineer, I feel so hooked in the details and can't stop watching your videos till the end. Keep up the great content!

[@birgerolofsson2347]

Dungeon Master is the best game I've ever played since 1981/82

[@nonegiven2830]

eye of the beholder was pretty good too

[@birgerolofsson2347]

@@nonegiven2830 True, it was good but Atari ST's Dungeon Master still comes on first place for me and on the second place comes Black Crypt to Amiga, mostly for its great graphics All three Eye of the Beholder comes on third place for me.

[@CakePrincessCelestia]

I didn't have DM1 back then, started out with EoB2 and 3, then got DM2 and Stonekeep after that. Of course, also MM3-5, but they're a different class of RPG already. What I still love about DM2 today is the trading system. Totally unbeaten with that haggling, different coin and gem types and those trading tables. As for the genre in general, I can totally recommend both the Legend of Grimrock games though. They're modern, but feel like playing the good old games and especially the second one does some very nice things that I always wanted in the games back in the day.

[@musashinagatsubo9574]

I loved the FTL games of the day. Dungeon Master can still be played on the PC today.

[@PaulMillard1973]

That was a really intuitive video. I played Dungeon Master on the Atari ST way back, and yes, an original copy. I still have an original copy of Ultima Underworld II for PC though. What a great game that was!

[@kaw203]

I've always found copy protection videos fascinating as it's so original how they came up with some of the copy protection methods