Very nasty surprise.

[Cainehill]

[quote]Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:

[qb]
So the host would still check IDs but would allow other machines to play if their CD keys matched the host? Hmmmmmmm

No come to think of it someone would probably setup a site where they would host games and say "download this" so that hundreds could play for free. mmmmm I dont think that would work well.

Actually, it'd be easy to make it work well.

First - these "spawning" games would limit how many other human players were allowed - something like 2 or maybe 3 would be reasonable.

Second - spawning servers would definately check with Illwinter to verify the CD keys. One CD key per IP address, period - this keeps multiple people from doing this with a single pirated, er, "shared" copy of the game. (Actually, all server games should do this, probably, Norfleet's concerns (and my own lesser ones) be damned.)

The server might also pass on CD key and IP information to illwinter, only for the spawnees. [IE, the reporting only gets done when the same key is used for multiple players.] This makes it easy to track abuse if it turns out 37 different IP addresses are using the spawn capability, but might not be necessary.

Third, and more complicated to implement, would be to limit the number of such spawned games being run concurrently by a server. Again, possibly not necessary - there probably isn't a huge black market area for MP games limitted to a max of 3 or 4 players. But if done, it'd make it tougher for that hypothetical site hosting dozens or hundreds of bootleg games via the spawn functionality.

"Spawnees" wouldn't be allowed to play unless they allowed the packets to go out to Illwinter - they didn't pay for the program, they can't complain if they tell Zonealarm or routers to do egress filtering. No communications to Illwinter, no comm for MP games - they could still legitimately play hotseat.

[ April 08, 2004, 19:48: Message edited by: Cainehill ]