# New ROM Anti-Piracy Software



## Another World (May 13, 2009)

*New ROM Anti-Piracy Software*
Out by December 2009



Andrew Mclennan, CEO of U.K.-based Metaforic, has announced a new anti-piracy measure for flash linkers. Specifically engineered for ROMs, and not homebrew, this new bit of software can be injected into code and will cause the corruption of ROM files which are pre-patched before launching. The code is currently specifically targeted to the R4 patching routines, due to its popularity. Nintendo is behind this anti-piracy software 100% as are 6 leading third party NDS software publishers. 

It will remain to be seen what hackers can do with the anti-piracy measure when it begins to ship, injected into retail carts, as soon as December of this year. The code can be altered to change its signature for each retail cart, potentially preventing an automated fix from being developed.

Metaforic’s goal is to “annoy the hackers” as much as possible. They admit that the solution is not fool proof but it should require a fresh hack on a per-ROM basis. Thus allowing software a longer shelf life before it is pirated.

Please view the source link for the full article and then post your comments here.




Source



Discuss


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## Frederica Bernkastel (May 13, 2009)

Doesn't this mean that only R4 users are affected?
Also, reguarly updated firmware shouldn't be affected too much...
Unless this protection changes for every game...


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## hacker07 (May 13, 2009)

The Guy in the interview said that the code detects the type of flashcart and kills the rom. So it has something to do with dldi.


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## Trolly (May 13, 2009)

QUOTE said:
			
		

> Unless this protection changes for every game...


DING, DING, DING! 5 points to Antiology 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




. Yeah, that's kinda the whole problem here, it's making it as time-consuming as possible for hackers to crack.


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## Another World (May 13, 2009)

i wish flash linkers still cost $150+. the drop below the $65 line made them accessible to more children and the current generation of drag/drop usage makes them more appealing. the problem now is that raising the cost would kill your company because these chinese companies have fine tuned the building process to the $2-4 range. you would have to offer something the other companies don't in order to sell kits at such a high price. but in the end, the higher price kits might be the ones that survive if this turns into an anti-piracy war between the software devs and the hackers.

-another world


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## DeadLocked (May 13, 2009)

QUOTE said:
			
		

> December of this year.



Maybe there is hope, Kingdom Hearts and Pokemon Heart Gold/Soul Silver may be saved!!!!!! I just hope they don't delay them both now just for ths stupid measure to be put in LOL _I'll kill someone if they do._


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## Another World (May 13, 2009)

hacker07 said:
			
		

> The Guy in the interview said that the code detects the type of flashcart and kills the rom. So it has something to do with dldi.



its just checking the rom to see if it has been patched, each flash linker uses its own patching routines. roms need to be patched for a variety of reasons, i do believe even the rpg nand has dma patching involved.

-another world


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## Maz7006 (May 13, 2009)

frivolous, but ingenious attempts to prevent piracy, i agree with another world on this, the problem is that it's so easy and so cheap to pirate DS games 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 if you ask me, the people to blame are the game developers, who don't even try to do anything to prevent it...


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## Sp33der (May 13, 2009)

Antoligy said:
			
		

> Doesn't this mean that only R4 users are affected?
> Also, reguarly updated firmware shouldn't be affected too much...
> Unless this protection changes for every game...



Well they mention R4-style cards, and with that I think they don't mean the fakes but cards like TTDS, m3real, cyclo etc.

And:  "We add so much security to it that it will take a very long time to hack," so they want it to be time consuming rather than be a indestructible security wall.


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## mysticstryk (May 13, 2009)

So does this mean nintendo is having problems blocking the current flash cards?  They have to put it in upcoming software?  If so, this could be a relief to everyone buying the dsi flash cards, they'll just have to be careful from december 09 on...


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## bowlofspiders (May 13, 2009)

If the attempts are as cheap as the DSi security, it wont take long to hack.


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## hacker07 (May 13, 2009)

Another World said:
			
		

> hacker07 said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Oh yeah. But can't they just change the patching routines.


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## Another World (May 13, 2009)

no, because patching is patching. the rom is now altered and new code is attached to it. it is very easy to see if this has been done regardless of the way in which it was done.

does that make sense?

-another world


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## TheDarkSeed (May 13, 2009)

Well everyone gear up for this war. I'm not into developing, but I'm willing to jump in and program 'til my fingers are bloody.


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## GeekyGuy (May 13, 2009)

Sounds like politics to me. Reading that report, this is what came immediately to my mind:

Nintendo, under heavy and regular request from third parties -- likely with big shoutouts from Square Enix, EA and Activision -- have partnered with a third-party company to develop this anti-piracy measure as pacification for publishers. I don't glean anything that suggests Nintendo is on a crusade. They just need to present the appearance of making an effort to combat piracy on behalf of third-party publishers who make games on their platforms.


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## xDlmaoxD (May 13, 2009)

somerandomguyO_O said:
			
		

> If the attempts are as cheap as the DSi security, it wont take long to hack.



No one has soft modded the DSi yet, so your answer is irrelevant.
Also I doubt this would even matter, people usually find a fix either the same day or a few days later.
It even encourages people to find it first and release it before anyone.
So its a FAIL!


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## DeadLocked (May 13, 2009)

Nah if you ask me Nintendo and the game companies problem, is they sell too high. I can get Great xbox games for half the price of an imagine game. 
If games were like... hmm £10 each then there would be no problem, want a game, I'll buy it. nowadays I only get maybe one rom from every 100 dumps, mainly because they're imagine and learn to speak and let's paint your house purple and how to walk correctly by Nintendo.


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## Rayder (May 13, 2009)

I guess we'll all find out how tough this protection will be around the holidays, won't we?  Doesn't worry me too much to be honest, the DS hasn't impressed me in a long time anyway.  Seriously, it's not like I'm going to buy some DS game just because it's not instantly playable on a flashcart.


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## faceless (May 13, 2009)

this gamasutra story is just an open advertisement for some company trying to sell their anti-piracy technology to ds game publishera.


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## arctic_flame (May 13, 2009)

This will stop the pirates as much as the carts that didn't reset on insert did.


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## CockroachMan (May 13, 2009)

Why are they announcing this? It's pretty stupid! They should just put the protection there without telling anyone 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





'


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## BlueStar (May 13, 2009)

Might be quite cool for there to be some genuine cracking going on on the DS with release groups racing each other for cracks.  Might mean more intros and the like as well which would be sweet.

But my prediction is either it wont materialise, or in spite of their claims about crafty protection unique to each game a fireware update or fits-all patcher will be along within a few weeks.


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## DjoeN (May 13, 2009)

Ah, back to Flashcards we used to love and paid to much 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




1 rom each flash, making the card as much as original as the original,

You know, those GB/GBC/GBA kist, where you could write 1 rom to, put it in and play as original, you could even use AR with it and other add-on hardware.
(ok, there where multigame loaders for those cards 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 )

Anyway, this is a move we all saw comming, the market got to mainstream, it is not a market anymore for the ones who really wanted such hardware, the most poor kid can buy now a kit and have money left to buy a dsi along his ds.

cheap=mainstream=kill for flashcards/backup devices.

Anyway, it's just gonna take longer now and, i can already see the huge amount of topics asking, when the rom will be patched, this game does not work, where is the patch for this etc... LOL, think it's wise to already make some new rulez regarding new topics over this 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	



I will not let my sleep for it, really don't care that much, aslong as the leave homebrew out of it


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## beamquaker (May 13, 2009)

is this not 3737 plus roms to late . so it might take a little longer to get anal brain training ten or nintendogs mongrel edition . nintendo deserve everything they get its just karma getting back at nintendo for selling crap like festers quest and ducktales to me when i was ten for 40 gbp .


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## Maz7006 (May 13, 2009)

CockroachMan said:
			
		

> Why are they announcing this? It's pretty stupid! They should just put the protection there without telling anyone
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I lol-ed badly...

wont be surprised to see this method go down the drain when it comes out.


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## xJonny (May 13, 2009)

Another World said:
			
		

> the drop below the $65 line made them accessible to more children and the current generation of drag/drop usage makes them more appealing.


Try $10. I wouldn't wish it to be expensive, but just so that you'd have to be fairly knowledgeable to be able to use it, so that people can use it if they're willing to spend time on understanding how to use it, etc.

Not that I'm saying this methos will be effective.


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## vgshaman (May 13, 2009)

My big question is, how much will the protection effect other things.  Will it simply detect patching, or will it have different type's of patching that shut it down in different ways.  Because we could have to hack a ROM several times if we ever want to see a translation patch if they are doing something like that.  I would not like to have to play games with English audio instead of Japanese because of this :/.


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## Pikachu025 (May 13, 2009)

DjoeN said:
			
		

> You know, those GB/GBC/GBA kist, where you could write 1 rom to, put it in and play as original, you could even use AR with it and other add-on hardware.
> (ok, there where multigame loaders for those cards
> 
> 
> ...


Yeah, those things were great. Still have one of those for GBA, used it to play the Mother 3 translation.

On-topic, I don't quite get why they would announce this...


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## RupeeClock (May 13, 2009)

I scoffed at the lengthened shelf-life part.

Any worthwhile game made by any of the top 6 third parties will be hacked quickly by pirate demand, at worst that's 1 or 2 days without a working rom.
The method aims to act like the current means of protecting PC software, each PC game needs an individual crack, after all. (And we know how well that works.)

No, if you ask me, this will only cause the piracy scene to grow if the need to hack each and every rom becomes an issue.


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## Pimpmynintendo (May 13, 2009)

Ok I might not know much about how the patching works but if the anti-piracy is meant to detect the auto-patching could it be possible to prepatch games? Or would it not work that way.


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## Santee (May 13, 2009)

What will this do this will just make it so flashcart updates are needed even more I can see many popular flashcarts coming out with updates that only fix one game and can be downloaded from wifi as it would only allow a small change to the code or addition to it (I don't know anything about flashcart updates just what I think will happen with in reason) And why announce this so far from when it's supposed to be competed and used this just gives flashcart companies more time to make there updates easier to make and easier to use.


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## TrolleyDave (May 13, 2009)

somerandomguyO_O said:
			
		

> If the attempts are as cheap as the DSi security, it wont take long to hack.



Wait, what?


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## 11gardir (May 13, 2009)

And, as we all know, DRM is completely foolproof.


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## megawalk (May 13, 2009)

GBAtemp strikes again 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 i am sure with this post developers, hackers, coders and people are already going to study to prevent this and find any absolute answer. ahh well eventually every rom producer gets a distribution of this sort of fix and piracy isn't stopped.
Developers and Hackers are as quick as each other so there won't be a end to Piracy
(unless they implant 3000 protections which would result in anything kills lol)

i can't wait to see the attempt fail


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## Ceesjah (May 13, 2009)

LOL i dont think this will be much trouble.. If you just take a look at history, anti-piracy measures have always been one big FAIL.. Guess people will have to wait a few days or maybe weeks for a solution to this one..

And yeah, i think its another big FAIL to announce this, instead of just doing it without telling.. Not that it would make that big of a difference xD


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## Ceesjah (May 13, 2009)

LOL i dont think this will be much trouble.. If you just take a look at history, anti-piracy measures have always been one big FAIL.. Guess people will have to wait a few days or maybe weeks for a solution to this one..

And yeah, i think its another big FAIL to announce this, instead of just doing it without telling.. Not that it would make that big of a difference xD


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## DjoeN (May 13, 2009)

All New roms will be 2Gbit

- 1,75Gbit anti piracy code
- 256Mbit Gamecode






 (héhé)


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## El-ahrairah (May 13, 2009)

Huh, I figured something like this would come around sooner or later. I can't say I blame Nintendo for wanting to do something like this.

That doesn't mean I sympathize with them, I'll still pirate their stuff.


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## TheDestroyer (May 13, 2009)

Trying to stop piracy?  
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




  I don't think so..

Let's put it in this analogy.. This may be a bit off topic but... Piracy is like  a resistant bacteria.. and anti-piracy softwares are the antibiotics..

If they keep giving those resistant bacteria with antibiotics they would probably get more and more resistant to it..

So I suppose there's no way they could temporarily "stop" piracy.. but perhaps, they could slow them down.. 

And yea, i dont see the reason why do they have to announce it.. they giving hackers an idea.. i suppose..


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## Anakir (May 13, 2009)

So far, there's been one game that I know that can't be pirated to play: DJ Max Trilogy for the PC. You must have the USB Flash Drive that comes with the game in order for the game to launch. The Flash Drive also has things inside which are hard to crack at the moment. Nintendo can learn a thing or two from them.


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## faceless (May 13, 2009)

DjoeN said:
			
		

> Ah, back to Flashcards we used to love and paid to much
> 
> 
> 
> ...


indeed, back in the day, you bought one kit and stuck with it.

i still have my old GBC/NGPC kits in a box in storage, along with my old win98 PC.

nowadays, everyone has like 3 or 4 different DS flashcarts since they're so cheap.

i agree, as long as they don't do things like kill the flashcard firmware or erase the entire microsd card, i'm ok!


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## Kamiyama (May 13, 2009)

QUOTE said:
			
		

> It will remain to be seen what hackers can do with the anti-piracy measure when it begins to ship, injected into retail carts, *as soon as December of this year.*



Any bets that Dragon Quest IX will be delayed to that time?


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## P.S (May 13, 2009)

I already have 145 roms in my flashcard, i don't care


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## Sanderino (May 13, 2009)

Daamit! That means my card is targeted! ;l


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## Blue-K (May 13, 2009)

Well, at least Nintendo now tries to do something 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




. We'll see what happens...If there isn't a work-around, the world doesn't end for me...there aren't that good games for DS...Only question left is now if they're also try to do this on the Wii? I think this would even be more important than the DS...


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## kobykaan (May 13, 2009)

Anakir said:
			
		

> So far, there's been one game that I know that can't be pirated to play: DJ Max Trilogy for the PC. You must have the USB Flash Drive that comes with the game in order for the game to launch. The Flash Drive also has things inside which are hard to crack at the moment. Nintendo can learn a thing or two from them.




give them time!

they thought the same with DJ MAX PORTABLE BLACK SQUARE for PSP and they cracked that version 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




dongle protection is probably one of the lamest forms of protection ... it just gets reverse engineered and emulated ... company's have tried several times in the past and failed and they will again!


Same with DS game Encryption it will be bypassed soon enough even if it means NEW STYLE/hardware flash cards they will get around it!.... we already have some piracy protected games in circulation and are bypassed with a cheat file


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## suppachipmunk (May 13, 2009)

I was thinking of the prepatching idea too.  If each rom is supposed to have a new code, cant just one release group dump the rom, patch that version and upload the prepatched rom?

i think that makes sense..


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## dragonbladerxx1 (May 13, 2009)

My friends cousin works for nintendo even though he uses a flashcart lol!
maybe he could help us or sumin?


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## Rock Raiyu (May 13, 2009)

CockroachMan said:
			
		

> Why are they announcing this? It's pretty stupid! They should just put the protection there without telling anyone
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I was just thinking this. It could've been more of a surprise to everyone that they would do this, either they are really confident it will work or they're just plain stupid. But even so, now we know what we're up against and we can prepare and fight back when the time comes.


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## DrOctapu (May 13, 2009)

It more than likely will be cracked in hours. hackers are much faster than developers. It's safe to say this will be a minuscule obstacle.


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## Agent007 (May 13, 2009)

Here's a question, if the patching is a different way of patching, can't re just arm 7 patch the roms or something ?


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## SpAM_CAN (May 13, 2009)

Why can't they just let us pirate in peace?


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## bunnybreaker (May 13, 2009)

I haven't read all the reponses, but my honest genuine response to this news is "LOLOLOLOLOL".

Seriously, I know these people need to appear to fight against piracy, but the idea that each download is a lost sale is rediculous. I like the part where they think that hacking taking weeks or months for each game is going to make any major changes. Let's say it is succesful in that each game takes 3 months of hacking to be workable, those who don't buy games will just wait the 3 months, those that do buy games won't be affected.

There is also the possibility that some games will get less sales because there won't be the rampant pirates recommending the game to people who do buy games in the first few months, so when the pirates finally get ahold of the game and start praising it, no one that buys cares any more.

Again, LOLOLOLOLOL


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## Jdbye (May 13, 2009)

Why would they announce this? Doesn't that kind of work against their favor? (that was probably badly worded...)



			
				beamquaker said:
			
		

> is this not 3737 plus roms to late . so it might take a little longer to get anal brain training ten or nintendogs mongrel edition . nintendo deserve everything they get its just karma getting back at nintendo for selling crap like festers quest and ducktales to me when i was ten for 40 gbp .


Ducktales is a great game.


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## superrob (May 13, 2009)

Lolz... "Aimed for the r4 patching method" FAIL!!!!


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## Hop2089 (May 13, 2009)

R4 crowd

Nintendo shot themselves in the foot and they shot themselves in the foot again if it'll stop piracy since the measures will pretty much turn out to be a minor inconvenience, since they made one fatal flaw, not using their own government-class security measures on their games like they did on the DSi.


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## DarkCrudus (May 13, 2009)

wow way to announce it to every rom hacker out there, now they are all gonna prepare their weapons and get all the guns out cocked and ready to blow the protection outta the water


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## wchill (May 13, 2009)

The announcement is fail in itself. Seriously, do they not know the names of "R4-style" cards? The ones we have now are pretty much NOTHING like the R4.


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## yikkyon (May 13, 2009)

Maybe this is Nintendo's way of warning us that the rom will contain virus code and infecting our PC...?


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## sadak5 (May 13, 2009)

yikkyon said:
			
		

> Maybe this is Nintendo's way of warning us that the rom will contain virus code and infecting our PC...?


If thats true, then wait for a big DEMAND (OBJECTION!) against Nintendo. Sony tried to do the same with audio CD's and was a FAIL an lost of money to them.

If is true the clean mode of the flashcarts run as clean, maybe they will be unnafected.

Also, I'm of the people which uses the flashcart to test games and if they are good enough, I'll buy it. Or play Japanese only games.

Also, if nintendo is trying to do this, why we don't tell Nintendo to bring Japanese-only games to America?


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## zeromac (May 13, 2009)

well this is gonna be interesting, sucks for me :/


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## War (May 13, 2009)

I'm positive there will be some work-around to this. Do not underestimate the pirating community. Sure, it may not be immediate, but eventually a fix will come out.


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## Another World (May 13, 2009)

one thing that people seem to not understand is that this anti-piracy measure is designed to be injected. this means it can be added to the precompiled code before it's transferred over to the retail cart. a simple bach application that alters the code ever-so-slightly means a new patch and a new method to hack per-rom. in theory this could mean that a run of 5,000 retail carts each as 1 of 5,000 different anti-piracy fixes which detect flash linker pre-patching. while linkers advertise "clean roms" this means roms do not need to be pre-patched, the firmware does it for you. all current slot1 linkers (to my knowledge) do some type of patching before the game loads.

but until this code makes its debut everything remains speculation as the company is not releasing any details.

@ducktails: thats a great game! =P

-another world


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## stanleyopar2000 (May 13, 2009)

they will do this to LUCRATIVE games

like Kingdom Hearts DS you bet ur ass....

( no wonder it got delayed......)


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## War (May 13, 2009)

@Another World: So basically what you're saying is that each cart will have it's own security code that needs to be bypassed? Couldn't this be easily mended by just having everyone use the one version of the ROM that was uploaded to the net?


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## stanleyopar2000 (May 13, 2009)

Another World said:
			
		

> one thing that people seem to not understand is that this anti-piracy measure is designed to be injected. this means it can be added to the precompiled code before it's transferred over to the retail cart. a simple bach application that alters the code ever-so-slightly means a new patch and a new method to hack per-rom. in theory this could mean that a run of 5,000 retail carts each as 1 of 5,000 different anti-piracy fixes which detect flash linker pre-patching. while linkers advertise "clean roms" this means roms do not need to be pre-patched, the firmware does it for you. all current slot1 linkers (to my knowledge) do some type of patching before the game loads.
> 
> but until this code makes its debut everything remains speculation as the company is not releasing any details.
> 
> ...




wanna tell nintendo how many time you shit each time a day too???

DONT TELL THEM OUR PLANS.

THEY ARE LOOKING AT OUR RESPONSE TO THIS ATTACK IM SHURE.

btw - I have Ducktales!...love it


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## anaxs (May 13, 2009)

does this meen that no more roms after december this year...?


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## stanleyopar2000 (May 13, 2009)

I fucking Hope not.


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## Tozarian (May 13, 2009)

I was almost happy when I read this article! That's right Nintendo! Focus on R4 users! M3 REAL + CYCLO + Acekard FTW!


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## Raven Darkheart (May 13, 2009)

the paranoia here is quite hilarious, if that was the case then why can we stiill pirate damn near everything? this is a minor glitch at best

if it comes down to it i would rather have intros and precracked roms uploaded to the net like the old days


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## Another World (May 13, 2009)

@PharaohsVizier: i recall that application as well but i can't remember the name. the homebrew devs i know have told me, on different occasions, that all flash linkers which run from the msd do some form of patching. although team cyclo swears up and down that their kit doesn't. 

-another world


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## stanleyopar2000 (May 13, 2009)

erm...THATS....NOT GOOD.......


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## sprogurt (May 13, 2009)

I laughed so hard when i heard this! then went to failblog (i wish it wasn't a coincidence XD) 
seriously, there's hardly any good games on ds looking forward to, kindom hearts and zelda being exceptions and tbh BUY THE FRIGGIN GAME! yes we all like things for free but at some point we'll all buy a game. Also it looks like the ds doesn't have long left (in my view). Sure the dsi has just came out but with all these crappy 3rd party games that only toddlers would buy it will die sooner rather than later. The only thing i can see that will keep it afloat is dsi ware and dsi games.


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## knuj_on (May 13, 2009)

Sounds like history is repeating itself when they thought they had an unbeatable system on the Atari ST(e). The ROMs themselves can not change contents thus code must copy itself to ram before it can modify itself. This gives 2 options for a “one size fits all” solution (but it is the same process). If the emulators are good enough, let the code execute until it starts updating the screen and snapshot the memory. If the emulators are not good enough custom firmware for the Phat in the Flashme style to achieve the same thing. The first ST(e) attempt unscrambled the entire program before executing it. Subsequent attempts unscrambled it in sections just prior to execution. However the unscrambled stuff is present in memory and can be snapshoted. An emulator would be best at recording the memory contents as it is executed or read for the first time. Once this image is constructed, it must be what the program was like prior to encryption. Re-pack as if it was homebrew, Job Done.


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## B-Blue (May 13, 2009)

just arm7 patch the rom and you're good to go.



Spoiler



:3


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## whatup777 (May 13, 2009)

This may be a plot after all they announced it and unles they are majorly retarded they may inject the games earlier. I hear remakes of Gold/Silver is being made and the first DSi only game comes in June. A plot mabye. 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




Edit: if you buy the game mabye it will inject your DSi to block things. Oh Well this tells us Nintendo can't block flashcarts for there life


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## Hop2089 (May 13, 2009)

sprogurt said:
			
		

> Sure the dsi has just came out but with all these crappy 3rd party games that only toddlers would buy it will die sooner rather than later. The only thing i can see that will keep it afloat is dsi ware and dsi games.



If that's true then American DSi gamers are screwed as most of the quality DSiware and DSi games will be Japan only unless you own a Japanese DSi.


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## stanleyopar2000 (May 13, 2009)

unless we can regionfrii them when the DSiWare is Decrypted???

LOL?


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## wchill (May 13, 2009)

Maybe we could just simply remove this security scheme from the ROM? As in, assuming that they aren't making drastic changes between one ROM to the next, just search for a certain section of code that's part of the security. Since you then know the location of this code, go back a bit further and find the start of it, then wipe everything from there to the start of the game code.


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## sadak5 (May 13, 2009)

sprogurt said:
			
		

> I laughed so hard when i heard this! then went to failblog (i wish it wasn't a coincidence XD)
> seriously, there's hardly any good games on ds looking forward to, kindom hearts and zelda being exceptions and tbh BUY THE FRIGGIN GAME! yes we all like things for free but at some point we'll all buy a game. Also it looks like the ds doesn't have long left (in my view). Sure the dsi has just came out but with all these crappy 3rd party games that only toddlers would buy it will die sooner rather than later. The only thing i can see that will keep it afloat is dsi ware and dsi games.


I was thinking the same. If the anti piracy code will be on really good games, then you will must buy only the anti piracy injected


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## cory1492 (May 13, 2009)

Ah nevermind, they are retarded if they think they are going to secure a game ROM via dumpable code. The only other thing I think they could be hinting at is a per cart rather than per title seed method, which would still require the seed data to be passed in the clear.


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## Deleted User (May 13, 2009)

CockroachMan said:
			
		

> Why are they announcing this? It's pretty stupid! They should just put the protection there without telling anyone
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Same here, they still work like a charm. Back then the backup devices were quite expensive and not as mainstream and cheap like nowadays. Honestly, I was kind of waiting for something like this to happen. Maybe it will lead to some competition amongst release groups and like someone else already said, some more intros and stuff like that.


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## wchill (May 13, 2009)

Wait, so this is PER CART?
Crap, this is worse than I thought.


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## acky (May 14, 2009)

I'm no expert on hacking the DS, but from a programmer's perspective, wouldn't it be possible to include some sort of random element in the patching process (by way of random junk code, etc) to mask the patching algorithm at every launch?


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## dewback (May 14, 2009)

this is just a company to try and get revenue from the big N.  
to quote  AC/DC 
You put it up, we'll tear it down.

this has been the model for all software and might bring in more hackers in to the table because they want to be know for jail braking the games.


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## sadak5 (May 14, 2009)

wchill said:
			
		

> Wait, so this is PER CART?
> Crap, this is worse than I thought.


I don't think this could be PER cart, maybe Per patching routine


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## wchill (May 14, 2009)

acky said:
			
		

> I'm no expert on hacking the DS, but from a programmer's perspective, wouldn't it be possible to include some sort of random element in the patching process (by way of random junk code, etc) to mask the patching algorithm at every launch?



No, the way this is supposed to work (I think) is that it'll generate a seed out of the game code. If the code is patched, then the seed will change, and the security will be activated and kill the game.


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## FAST6191 (May 14, 2009)

My thoughts. Apologies if I am less than coherent as I just woke up. I will probably add to and/or edit this as I go along.
I will spare the philosophical debate and the legal issues (law on the internet?) and instead go in for the science, I will make no other mention of the R4 no longer being updated in any meaningful way.
A note on subtle effects, the history of this piracy game has a few examples of things like save corruption/more enemies/impossible bosses. I say it is not worth worrying about, they have already said it is to be unilateral (or near unilateral) and such effects tend to rely upon them being "hidden".
I am not sure if R4 specifically means the cart or it is being used as "genericized trademark" as it appears to be a hybrid of the two.

<b>Flash cart methods.</b>
DS "roms" work as follows
Upon booting the DS various checks (which have long been bypassed and were part of the problem with the DSi) occur.
The game then loads the ARM7 binary (which may initially be compressed) and the ARM9 binary into the ram of the cart: this is the 4 meg limit (4 megabytes is quite large though) of things you may have heard about.
Now in homebrew we can easily load extra stuff thanks to DLDI or the precursors* but DS roms do not quite have this luxury so they use an older computing technique called overlays which allow the binary to do more things by sacrificing a portion of the ram which can be used for various things (the overlays then come and go as necessary). Not all games use overlays but they are there.
They game then runs and overlays may come and go and the other files hackers concern themselves with are also loaded/parsed at will.
*it is not quite how it works or at least there is a risk of misunderstanding how it works: the basic binary (with the 4 meg limit) is still there in the DS (why earlier DS homebrew sometimes poses problems) but we do not have to pack it all into the rom.

Flash carts. I will focus on DS slot carts for now.
They work as roms do (although they will invariably load their menu first), the main issue with flash carts is saving; DS games can use a whole range of save types and as they are hardware specific your flash cart maker has two ways of working around this.

1) Save type emulation aka savelists. The original EZ5 and EZ5 nye and a handful of others (that are not R4s) can use this (note the EZ5 only does this on older loaders of which only EZ5 and EZ5nye are compatible, you run a serious risk of bricking your EZ5+ or EZ5i by using them), they work by having a piece of highly customisable hardware (generally a Field Programmable Gate Array: FPGA) which is able to emulate the hardware down to a signals level.
This is why such carts can usually play newly released games where other carts can not. Saving is largely handled by the ARM7 binary though which as we know is largely the same between commercial roms (the eponymous "ARM7 fix", homebrew can and does use it for all sorts of wonderful things), while I expect them to know this it does present an interesting point.
If what I have read is to be believed the DSi carts have a renewed interest in such a method ("savelists" that is).
Most notably for hackers is that NO$GBA is able to do this and when this emulator is also the primary ASM level hacking tool on the DS....

2) Patching to match a given save type. On most DS slot carts this will occur transparently when the rom is read from the card, GBA slot carts tend to do this with PC side software as they tend to do a bit more patching for other things (like reading from the GBA slot).

It is perhaps folly to focus on saving though as there are also things like download play fixes, soft reset, savestates/text readers, cheats, DMA/similar and straight up fixes to consider: it is not exactly the same but look back to the late GBA slot/slot2 era devices like the supercard and m3 and the various options people tried to get games working properly (which did indeed fix the game on a regular basis). For this I will say it is not really any different to hack if you are the sort of person looking to hack this protection.

Some analysis of the statements and discussion of possible methods. I will include some methods that no sane company would think have a hope just for the fun of it.

<i>"It turns each game into its own security system".</i> aka <i>"game specific"</i>.
To my mind this merely means at compile time it scans the soon to be binary and injects itself at various points which indeed have proven somewhat effective although usually only in conjunction with other methods.
Ironically tools already exist to do this on a compiled binary and your cheat system likely does a similar thing although they are a bit simpler.
A note, from what they appear to be saying Nintendo are to be licensing the "fix" and integrating it into the SDK (which developers then use and will likely use the current version for each build).
This could prove interesting for cross region games (the binary usually changes between regions but in ways that matter little to a good hacker trying to tackle this protection) so while I leak (of the SDK or even better the game source code: both of which has happened and in many cases inside the actual roms and have led to several advances like the reverse engineering of the SDAT format) may be good for "us" this presents an interesting avenue, this was also exploited a little bit in the early days of the ARM7 patch.
Better yet a "v2/v1.1" version of which there have been a few could be even more interesting although seen as the code will likely be running at boot time or close to it and the actual core of the game binary (changes are usually to language/font/file/similar code and are simple enough to "ignore"). Know that such techniques have proven double useful in the past, especially in the PC world: many games use "out of region", "alternatives" (drive2drive), updates or "demo" patches and it also provides a good point to analyse the protection from and discover weaknesses/signatures. I would also be interested in the "download play" for similar reasons.
While they could delay things to possibly shake this up a bit it would be hugely counterproductive or even impossible. 

<i>"at its most basic level detects the form of patching that the R4 cards use to play ROMS"</i>
I am considering calling advertising rhetoric on this one but not because it is infeasible (it is not) but because upon hearing it my mind jumps straight to "dummy sectors" or patch detection, for those new to this the idea can be twofold with the first idea/possibility being that the methods the R4 uses to patch/detect which areas need patching can be fooled and the second. Better yet such things tend to only work on the more powerful systems and when you have the option of some level of abstraction (as mentioned with have hacker grade emulation and near total knowledge of the hardware)
As noted above the target could be less obvious things like download play fixes, all I can say is it may then be interesting to see what happens on older firmwares (especially for cards that received fairly radical updates).
Binary hashing/signing (patch detections): leaving aside technical problems (it is slow, especially on the DS hardware) the fact we own the hardware completely (we have emulation of it eve, can read the software completely and there are no real hardware level provisions (either firmware or physical hardware) that can reasonably be used.
Low level detection of the targeted areas could be employed and the game then set to "nuke" the binary in ram; with what has been said this looks like what will happen. Were I to try it I would set the game to load the relevant routine when later in the game, on or near boot is too easily detected although later in the game is not all that hard (the DS has a tiny memory and we have emulation: dumping the ram and scanning changes is trivial). Sure you could stack checks (check the checks) but this wastes precious resources (on PC this is fine but the DS lacks these for such "frivolous" uses) and is trivial to work around (a fundamental technique in ASM hacking is called tracing, the primary process is to halt on write/read or similar and then working backwards from there until you get your target, sometimes this takes several tries (iterations) as things get altered or extracted*).

*the two main uses are to find where something is found in the rom or find out how a custom routine (often compression or some other routine that manipulates/reads data) which if I am not mistaken is exactly what is called for.

Hardware detections: a crude technique is used for the likes of the Square games that need patching to run if I am not mistaken. This is a case of "if they could they would" and clearly they can not.

<i>"add so much security"</i>
Multiple methods or multiple points of entry. My guess is it will be used in varying degrees between roms, nothing new about this and certainly being a moving target is a good idea.

<i>"automated tools"</i>
Sounds to me a bit like they are thinking of cart level patching methods, while not especially suited we already have countermeasures in place for such things: many of you use cheats for such a thing and as the entire binary is in the ram..... (it could be overlays too but that is not all that difficult/different to work around) and many carts already have provisions (the likes of the resetsp.bin file on the EZ5 and I believe similar things for AKAIO, supercard DSone and the cycloDS).

<i>"I can't tell you why that is, though"</i>
In security circles this is known as security by obscurity and while it is not a sure fire indication of weakness it is widely panned as it usually means weakness. To me it suggests an inherent weakness. Coupled with the above points (regions and updates) it does not look good for them.

<i>""R4 cards are quite poorly understood""</i>
I am going to either call marketing BS (discouraging those from either trying themselves) or say they are not all that good at this reverse engineering gig or even basic internet searching (hint: what you have read thus far coupled with a basic programming or hacking guide (both exist) is enough to start reverse engineering and with a decent electrical engineer/programmer you could have the theory down in a short space of time).

<i>"“What we’re really trying to do is make hackers take on a long, slow, manual job,”"</i>
Leaving aside the legions of hackers out there (ever wondered how the Chinese can get a half decent translation of a big RPG out within the week) they appear to completely misunderstand the motivation of most hackers.


In summary: ooh a challenge. At worst (for "us") it will get makers to consolidate their hardware (which hopefully also means loaders).


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## gamerjr (May 14, 2009)

About time Nintendo did something about piracy that is hard to stop. I'm sorry, I use it too but i am a huge fan of nintendo. I dont own the cart my brother does and i just steal it sometimes. I'm kinda proud of Nintendo for stepping up.


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## jhoff80 (May 14, 2009)

sadak5 said:
			
		

> I was thinking the same. If the anti piracy code will be on really good games, then you will must buy only the anti piracy injected



Except uh, some of us buy all the games we play, and have a flash cart to not need to carry 25 or however many different games around in order to be able to switch between games.

Honestly, if I'm not able to do that on new games, I just won't buy OR pirate them, no big loss.  There's not any game out there that I _need_ to play badly enough that it's worth the inconvenience and worth being treated as a criminal for.


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## da_head (May 14, 2009)

leave the r4 alone FOR FUCKS SAKE


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## solarsaturn9 (May 14, 2009)

I'm pretty sure that one could write a program to find the location of this patch disabling signature in any ROM seeing as how the signature would not change, just it's location....


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## A-Z (May 14, 2009)

well if this is war then can sum1 send me like tutorial link on how 2 code and hack into this kinda shit? (btw never dun this b4! excitin g stuff!)


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## Deleted User (May 14, 2009)

FAST6191 said:
			
		

> An awful lot of text.


Thanks for comprehensively elaborating the subject.


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## Scorpin200 (May 14, 2009)

I wonder how many hours this will last.

p.s Nintendo concentrate on making better games in stead of wasting time with this shit.


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## stanleyopar2000 (May 14, 2009)

I bet Nintendo's plants are watching us right along with this thread lol

my source at nintendo at school said that 

http://www.gbatemp.net is on the "watched" list.....

no kidding.


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## Noobix (May 14, 2009)

It's the end of the World!!!  
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




Nah just kidding.  
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 (Apologies to anyone suffering from swine flu etc.  
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 )

December is still a long way off, so it's a bit too early to start betting on who is going to crack the "protection" first.


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## xxRAG3 (May 14, 2009)

I always laugh when i see these 'lets hate R4 together'  kind of news posts. They must really be ignorant not to look at other brands, because im pretty sure R4 isn't a hell of a lot popular than other brands.

Assuming this also deals with M3


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## mkoo (May 14, 2009)

stanleyopar2000 said:
			
		

> I bet Nintendo's plants are watching us right along with this thread lol
> 
> my source at nintendo at school said that
> 
> ...



If Nintendo watches any web site I'm sure GBATemp is in that list.

Oh And is there a flash card that runs 100% clean rom?


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## Dwight (May 14, 2009)

I am actually glad about this. This is probably one of the most hipocritical posts ever, since I'm a huge pirate, but I actually do miss when the DS scene (and GBA for that matter) was more expensive and required more knowledge than just "drag n' drop". I first got really into piracy when the Wii came out, and Nintendo went much more casual. Their sales were booming and even though this is no excuse, I felt like piracy was okay since Nintendo was doing so well. Now with flashcarts are turning incredibly mainstream, Nintendo's target market (nongamers) are starting to get into them, and that is going to hurt Nintendo badly.

So I guess that you could say that I'm having mixed feelings about this. Whatever happens happens I guess.


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## anaxs (May 14, 2009)

i just hope this isnt the end of roms......i love roms...
i hope flash cart teams can get sround this wall if its true


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## ozzyzak (May 14, 2009)

Scorpin200 said:
			
		

> I wonder how many hours this will last.
> 
> p.s Nintendo concentrate on making better games in stead of wasting time with this shit.



Yeah, because then you'd all go out and buy shit right?  Right?

ffs...


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## Tac 21 (May 14, 2009)

xxRAG3 said:
			
		

> I always laugh when i see these 'lets hate R4 together'  kind of news posts. They must really be ignorant not to look at other brands, because im pretty sure R4 isn't a hell of a lot popular than other brands.
> 
> Assuming this also deals with M3




I totally agree- this is nothing but comedy to me. I think these guys a blowing off stream; BECAUSE this generation was so easy to access and so easy to hack, I don't think the "barriers" will pose an actual Challenge. Maybe for online stuff, but, its too late man.

I somewhat agree with others though after reading- I am appalled but how many idiots have tools like this and don't even use their brains to work them out (so easy) the GBA days, as furstering as they were, were a lot better.

In any case, there is a reason why it (flash carts) has become so big, and that is due to all of the changes that are happening with commerice and systems as a whole- Nintendo can do what the like, they can't stop a spiritual revolution (thats pretty much what its amounting to) when it already has started. What surpises me is even some of us, the "prates," are complaining about how flashcarts going somewhat mainstream their are as well.

but really, I think that they are just blowing serious smoke. It'll be like that "R4 new firmwire out by SEPT to counter shitty R4 CLONES" crap- nothing noticeable actually happens. I mean, like, SHIT, why are people so sacred!? Media does this ALL THE TIME. like fuck,

take a fuckin look at the artcles for when the DSi came out- now granted, R4 and older carts will not work on them anymore, but I will bet your life that if its something like Gold/Silver/KH/Zelda that gets this treatment, it'll be CRACKED and available within seconds for almost ALL flash cards- as another poster had said, their is likely a weakness, that is probably real easy to exploit.


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## anaxs (May 14, 2009)

hopefully this protest wont effect other flash carts rather than r4


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## DxEggman (May 14, 2009)

If Nintendo stopped putting so much emphasis on shit games, I'd legit buy more of their products.


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## Hakoda (May 14, 2009)

anaxs said:
			
		

> hopefully this protest wont effect other flash carts rather than r4



I think it will effect all flashcards but we're going to have to wait and see. It affects all flashcards because, like said by many tempers, your flashcard will patch the ROM before launching no matter what kind options you have set. Because of this patch, an added code to the game will cause it to "self-destruct" and the security will be activated. The game will be killed and no longer playable. Bottom line, if a patch is applied to the game and outcome key for new code is different than it is if it were launched by a retail cart + DS operation,  the security system will be  activated and the game will no longer be playable. This got me thinking, "Does this affect AR users?" By AR users I mean, people that use retail carts and and original AR. The AR must patch it it somehow and if the security system mistakes it for a flashcard patch the game will destroyed all because you wanted some rare candies in your new SoulSilver game.

But most likely, the patch is different than retail AR units than it is to flashcards. So hopefully, Nintendo won't make that mistake. 

~ Jon


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## anaxs (May 14, 2009)

so..if we pack our flash carts with as many roms as it could hold b4 this thing happens then nothing could happen to thoes roms...right or wrong


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## TheRealDude (May 14, 2009)

In all honesty, I doubt that their "Anti-Piracy" code will work.

If they "inject" the code into each and every game, all it requires is for someone to flash a copy of the game, figure out what the code is and remove it all together. If they try to incorporate a sister code into the DSi to check for the key, it'll take an eternity for the console to identify a genuine key since each cartridge will essentially have a different one.

Can someone say "talking out of the ass"?


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## BoxShot (May 14, 2009)

Doesn't this only effect newer games? So I'm guessing no more translations if this goes well. >.> (Does this count as a form of patching?)


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## anaxs (May 14, 2009)

i agree with" the real dude"
i just hope hes right tho


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## Raven Darkheart (May 14, 2009)

its just the mass paranoia, just relax a bit kids, the hackers havent been really tested in a long time so i actually wanna see this play out


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## anaxs (May 14, 2009)

yeh...this is actually really exiting..lets see what hese hackers are capable of..were just wastin our energy worryin bout this  "problem"


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## BASS ULTRA (May 14, 2009)

Okay...? I don't get how this new protection thing works.

Is it like the new games get a code. We rip the game from the catridge, then we play it on our R4's, and then the code has an atomic explosion and makes the game unplayable?


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## Deleted User (May 14, 2009)

jonjon95 said:
			
		

> ...
> This got me thinking, "Does this affect AR users?" By AR users I mean, people that use retail carts and and original AR. The AR must patch it it somehow and if the security system mistakes it for a flashcard patch the game will destroyed all because you wanted some rare candies in your new SoulSilver game.
> 
> But most likely, the patch is different than retail AR units than it is to flashcards. So hopefully, Nintendo won't make that mistake.
> ...


That's absurd, a retail card can't be "destroyed" because of this as those aren't writable.


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## omatic (May 14, 2009)

I was wondering when they'd use this method, and I'd assumed they didn't really care about piracy since they weren't.

This'll mean that people will have to wait a few weeks after a dump for it to be playable. If they're doing this the way I think they are, then there will be a relatively simple way to find the security for each individual game after the first few "secured" games, unless they have completely unique methods  for each game.

I predict this'll eventually boil down to something as simple as an AR code. Fortunately, I have a life to live in the mean time while I'm not playing whatever game can't be played temporarily.


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## BoxShot (May 14, 2009)

BASS ULTRA said:
			
		

> Okay...? I don't get how this new protection thing works.
> 
> Is it like the new games get a code. We rip the game from the catridge, then we play it on our R4's, and then the code has an atomic explosion and makes the game unplayable?


Flashcards patch their games that you run someway I don't really know. This code basically finds if you patched it, and if you did it will stop working. (IDK if patching would also mean translation patches and such)


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## triassic911 (May 14, 2009)

Pokemon Gold & Silver better not have this.


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## TheDarkSeed (May 14, 2009)

A-Z said:
			
		

> well if this is war then can sum1 send me like tutorial link on how 2 code and hack into this kinda shit? (btw never dun this b4! excitin g stuff!)



me too.


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## mrfatso (May 14, 2009)

@ A-Z and TheDarkSeed: first, do a search on ar code tutorial and if u still can't find it, i suggest giving up and just wait for ur codes


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## Smartpal (May 14, 2009)

I hope it's only limited to R4 cards *fingers crossed*. Otherwise this is a bummer.


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## TheRealDude (May 14, 2009)

If you do the math, you'll see that the genuine key code is bound for failure. Every game that gets released often runs on a 20k print. That means 20k keys to be made and programmed on a first run. Now take the number of games released in a month (about two or three). That totals out to 40 to 60 thousand individual keys. Coding wise, that's already a good sum, but if this continues out throughout a year at three games a month, that's 720,000 individual keys and the console must compare them to a list of valid keys.

Now, take the current memory space on the DSi. I'm not sure how big it is but storing 720k keys after a year would take up quite a bit of space. If Nintendo tries to force a "Internet Connection Required" gig on all games with this code, how would the sales of their games go with people who lack a wifi connection? Would a person without Wifi be able to play that brand new game that they just bought?

Note: The numbers I'm using for the games per month/year is hypothetical, but the first run release numbers are always around 20k.


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## luneth22 (May 14, 2009)

Apparently they're doing everything they can to blast piracy down. But it doesn't seem that hackers will simply stop there.....you know how clever they are. They'll find a way to break the security.


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## DSGamer64 (May 14, 2009)

Maybe they should stop letting the DS (and the Wii for that matter) be dumping grounds for absolute dog turd titles like Petz 2 and Horses, movie spin offs or games based off of any books or TV shows. Once they consistantly provide good worthwhile games that people will pay for and imo if they didn't cost 40 bucks a pop, I would easily pay for every game that I deem is worth paying for and so would a lot of other gamers. I have the same issue with console games though, there is no way in hell I am paying 80 dollars for a game that won't even last me 30 hours of gameplay which is why I think the current generation of consoles is a joke, even PC games are still under 50 bucks.


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## nl255 (May 14, 2009)

Takeshi said:
			
		

> jonjon95 said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



It could destroy the retail card, but it would require special hardware (or programming) on the card.  The easiest way to make retail cards self destruct would be for the "self destruct" code to write certain data to the save area (which is writable) and have the game refuse to run if that data is found, similar to what Comex did with his DVDX installer.  You could also do the same by deliberately burning out a fuse on the card (mabye an efuse) or even using a capacitor to store enough power to fry the card (and even the DS or AR, depending on how nasty they want it to be).  In fact, if the self destruct system is hardware based (and not based on save data), the cart might be able to detect dumping software being used on it and then destroy itself, but that would require considerable extra circuitry to detect the data reading done by the dumper.  Not to mention that the more protection you put on it, the more likely the card will destroy itself due to low batteries on the DS or other false positives.


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## thebert (May 14, 2009)

If all it takes is extra patching time for each rom before we see a release, then I don't care.  In fact, I'm all for that, because the hackers will only have time to focus on releasing good games, and we wont see a never ending avalanche of shoveware all the time.  Like is anyone really going to take the time to hack Horsez 14, or a crappy brain training game?  Of course then there is always the issue of determining what a "good" game is.  Everyone can agree on Kingdom Hearts or Zelda, but I bet there will always be someone that makes requests for obscure games or bad ones like,

"zOMg can saHm onez plz hax0r Babiez fur NDS plz!!!!!111 I wunts to tatch da Babiezzzz on mai DS plz!!11okthanksbye"


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## rklamer (May 14, 2009)

This is a meaningless effort on the seller's end -- all it does is add a tiny step extra to the people who extract the ROMs from the cartridges, which they'll probably set up to batch-script anyway. :/


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## Chris_Skylock (May 14, 2009)

I sometimes dont play badass games like zelda so it's now a problem for me to play casual games like Happy My Sweets, for example. Though there are really borings and should have not been released like all US movie games like Monsters VS Alien or Harry Potter.

I just hope the new set of hackers will not be picky on the games they will hack. It's a 50-50 as they say


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## TheDarkSeed (May 14, 2009)

I'd feel bad about pirating DS games if they were good, but they're not, with the exeption of a few titles(VERY FEW).


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## chillyp (May 14, 2009)

TheDarkSeed said:
			
		

> I'd feel bad about pirating DS games if they were good, but they're not, with the exeption of a few titles(VERY FEW).
> 
> Why would you pirate bad games then, personally, I'd rather not play bad games. Furthermore, do you happen to buy the good games that come out? If you're like most people I'd say no. Look at GTA: Chinatown Wars, that game got pirated to HELL and bombed in retail markets. This is exactly why developers are pushing for anti-piracy options on the DS, because its too convenient to download, drag it on to a micro SD card and play for free. Its pretty ironic that the people complaining about how they'll have to wait for patches are the reason why games are getting protected in the first place.
> 
> ...



It's just as crackable, but its significantly different enough that you couldn't get a signature for it and remove it. The beauty of this system is you could include multiple variants throughout the game, say the first one when you start the game, and the second one when you reach the first boss. Many scene crackers don't actually play the games very long as they are trying to release as fast as possible, and this sort of attack has been used successfully in a Playstation Spyro game which resulted in a fully working patch coming out 3 MONTHS after its initial release. Keep in mind that the majority of game sales are made in the first weeks - first month of being on shelves. Even a few days will frustrate casual pirates to go and buy the game if they want it badly enough.

Of course this protection will be crackable, the developer is absolutely correct, its just designed to piss off casual people enough that they will buy the game instead because its easier.


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## triassic911 (May 14, 2009)

Corporate heads are stupid, just lower your prices and piracy will drop drastically. It's like they WANT to start a war with hackers. Piracy increased over the years because of pricing on video games.


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## Domination (May 14, 2009)

Sighs.... 

Good thing that Starfy is released in June  
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





But you know.... some games are more fun with more players on wifi....


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## funem (May 14, 2009)

I thought of a method like this ages ago, more based around the testing of what media the game was running from , but I have also ( in my head ) worked out a way to produce a new type of card that in theory would not need to be patched and would work 100%, I will keep quiet about it for now as I may be wrong. They could have killed piracy completely by just adding a chip to NDS cards that decrypts on the fly at the hardware level, different games with different decryption codes, if the overhead was to much for a whole game they could just encrypt portions of it making it unplayable at those points. Using a method like this the flash card manufacturers would have to add the same type of chip to their cards and have to add the decryption algorithm for each game, firstly they would need to be able to read the key, which would cause a problem in itself. In so doing this they would be saying "hey look our cards are for pirates, not just for homebrew" any legal argument they have about the legitimacy of the cards would then collapse, not that I think they are worried about that anyway.


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## BlueStar (May 14, 2009)

If a game can be read, a game can be copied.  This company's just blowing its own trumpet, if Nintendo discovers there's any danger of the protection causing errors on genuine carts or anything it may never see the light of day anyway, quit worrying.


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## deathking (May 14, 2009)

This is overhyped , look at chrono trigger and the massive day it took to hack , im sorry Metaforic but this seems a pr job to get nintendo to use your service.
i bought ds games as gifts for people and the reason i chose the games was by testing them on my piracy cart. For games like soul bubbles and other minor titles if implement this will equal less sales as people arnt playing their games and spreading the word while bigger games will be hacked in little time and piracy will be rampant for those titles.


Make games a worthy purchase , add maps , add sound tracks , for music games chuck in some decent custom headphones or screen protectors for games like pokemon ranger dont waste your money on adding minor annoyances to games .

I wonder what the cost per game is and what else can be done to lower piracy as this method has been tried before and failed .


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## funem (May 14, 2009)

BlueStar said:
			
		

> If a game can be read, a game can be copied.  This company's just blowing its own trumpet, if Nintendo discovers there's any danger of the protection causing errors on genuine carts or anything it may never see the light of day anyway, quit worrying.



While true that if it can be read it can be copied its not true that it can be run from another medium, which essentially a flash card is.


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## Sarvesh50 (May 14, 2009)

if there is a flashcard where dldi event is needed cause it reads the rom onpatched abnd can started than there is no problem


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## shakirmoledina (May 14, 2009)

there must be a big loophole in this thus they are waiting till 2009 to fix this completely but remember that not always can these news be scary but infact most of the time nintendo screws up


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## fermio100 (May 14, 2009)

Ceesjah said:
			
		

> LOL i dont think this will be much trouble.. If you just take a look at history, anti-piracy measures have always been one big FAIL.. Guess people will have to wait a few days or maybe weeks for a solution to this one..
> 
> And yeah, i think its another big FAIL to announce this, instead of just doing it without telling.. Not that it would make that big of a difference xD



Fail? PS3, PSP slim, DSI in DSI mode. What about them? There are some anti-piracy measures that really work!


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## elixirdream (May 14, 2009)

i am not worried about the game can/can't be hacked!!! if we like the game so much, i think it is fair to buy the original!

the only thing i anticipate that will happen before the game is being hacked is all the whinners and kids will spam gbatemp to paralyze! just look at the naruto thread......


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## wchill (May 14, 2009)

elixirdream said:
			
		

> i am not worried about the game can/can't be hacked!!! if we like the game so much, i think it is fair to buy the original!
> 
> the only thing i anticipate that will happen before the game is being hacked is all the whinners and kids will spam gbatemp to paralyze! just look at the naruto thread......



I agree with this 100%, though I would like to have a copy of the original on my flashcards.
We need to enforce an anti-whine policy or something that will prevent GBAtemp from being slow and crappy again.


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## Domination (May 14, 2009)

Narutro thread huh... is it closed yet?

And yep n00b-flood. But thats inevitable isn't it? Except when n00bs learn to WAIT and READ.


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## skawo96 (May 14, 2009)

I'm gonna post the same thing as 90% of the thread:
This will annoy us for a while and that's it. 



Actually, Nintendo is gonna LOSE more money than they would if they sit quietly and let us pirate in peace. 
It's not like

"Oh crap it doesn't work on my card! *runs to the shop*


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## Rock Raiyu (May 14, 2009)

fermio100 said:
			
		

> Ceesjah said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


And thats why the PSP Slim already got hacked. Some guy found a way to load ISOs but it hangs after the loading so we're getting close. Nothing is unhackable, there will be a way no matter how hard it is. Like the PS3 can run homebrew too. It's only a matter of time before the DSi Mode is hacked too.


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## jan777 (May 14, 2009)

watdafuc---?

i'm already runningcfw in my slim

dont you mean the psp-3000?

also i think it would be mucj more effective when they just do it without telling

like when people try to run super mario galaxy deluxe dsi

then they "WTF? my sd is corrupted?!?!!!!"


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## elixirdream (May 14, 2009)

If the new piracy scheme can deter us from playing the game for a while~! some of us who actually like the game might go get the game from the shelf~! that equivalent to a success! 

for instance, some analyst reported the new NAND card that block some flash card was the reason that makes made in ore no.1 in this week's japanese sales chart! 

a little off topic 
we can use davee's HEN to run homebrews on psp3000 or psp2000 v3 boards


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## playallday (May 14, 2009)

Well, I think this will help get some more good games out there.  No one is going to put a years work for something everyone will just download.


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## Maz7006 (May 14, 2009)

playallday said:
			
		

> Well, I think this will help get some more good games out there.  No one is going to put a years work for something everyone will just download.



Hopefully it will *crosses fingers* has anyone noticed the immense amount of crap that's coming out for the DS lately ?


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## Deleted-119707 (May 14, 2009)

'code is currently specifically targeted to the R4 patching routines, due to its popularity. '

not that popular hahahaha


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## Overlord Nadrian (May 14, 2009)

They should spend their money on better games and not on those bypassable anti-piracy things, because when you really like a game you might buy it.


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## Hopawarty (May 14, 2009)

^^


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## Islay (May 15, 2009)

Overlord Natie said:
			
		

> They should spend their money on better games and not on those bypassable anti-piracy things, because when you really like a game you might buy it.



Agreed:

P.S:
wouldn't just make there games 10GB + be a better idea, that couldn't be hacked ? you would need to rewrite the game lol.
the only reason I see for this not happing is the cost of making 16gb game carts.


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## Ferrariman (May 15, 2009)

Oh lawdy, we will all die. 

Or not.


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## ojsinnerz. (May 15, 2009)

Ehhhh.... I was going to stop pirating once I got my DSi anyway. Doesn't really matter.


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## SuperOwnag3 (May 15, 2009)

omatic said:
			
		

> I was wondering when they'd use this method, and I'd assumed they didn't really care about piracy since they weren't.
> 
> This'll mean that people will have to wait a few weeks after a dump for it to be playable. If they're doing this the way I think they are, then there will be a relatively simple way to find the security for each individual game after the first few "secured" games, unless they have completely unique methods  for each game.
> 
> I predict this'll eventually boil down to something as simple as an AR code. Fortunately, I have a life to live in the mean time while I'm not playing whatever game can't be played temporarily.



Hit the nail on the head right there.

Seriously, WTH 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




  were Nintendo thinking? Ever since the dark days of electronics there have been h4xorz guys taking apart code and putting it back together. Haven't they learned there's no such thing as 'uncrackable'. It seems that every single major software developer has underestimated the hacking community.

Only thing I'm worried about is DSi exclusives...that means buying DSi and suitable flashcart. Hopefully by then I will have disposable income and they'll be much cheaper.


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## Jim~ (May 15, 2009)

I can't wait to see the creation of a dedicated NDS reverse engineering/cracking scene trying to break these new roms. 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 Time to start learning ARM.


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## agentgamma (May 15, 2009)

PharaohsVizier said:
			
		

> But the DS, all it takes is a $10 cart, a $5 MicroSD, and a 10 second download.  There is no reason not to pirate...  Anything that hinders piracy even a little is bound to help.  If this "code" can buy Nintendo even a week, it's a success...  at least imo.


Also remember that DS flash cards are much easier to obtain compared to modchips for other consoles 
Example: 
I went to the markets recently and found about 10 stands selling R4s and 1 stand selling a DSTTi (for $60AU/$45US) D
Yet I didn't see a SINGLE modchip or flashcart for any other console.


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## TheDarkSeed (May 15, 2009)

Hmm, theres no way to tell what this new software will do until it comes. 

I realy don't think we should be acting cocky.  
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




 This is a threat and we should treat it a such.


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## jalaneme (May 15, 2009)

who gives a crap about the R4 anyway, i have a cyclo.


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## khangnguyen1 (May 16, 2009)

What does this mean? Whenever I go download a ROM they would get suspicious? I need a simple answer... (You can assume I'm an R4 user)


----------



## BASS ULTRA (May 16, 2009)

BoxShot said:
			
		

> BASS ULTRA said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



This code is on where...?


----------



## wchill (May 16, 2009)

It's injected several times at certain points. The location of the code will vary from game to game.


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## gacktgacktgackt (May 16, 2009)

I love how loads of users in this thread are all "it'll work this way, it'll do this, this is what will happen" when in reality none of you have a single clue about what it will actually be.

I bet my right bollock that the very first game to come out with this "protection" (if it does ever happen, I'm doubtful it will) will be cracked within about 30 minutes, making all subsequent protected releases crackable within the same amount of time.

It's a case of yet again another company thinking they can get one-up on people who pirate material, the recording industry has been failing for years, the movie industry has been failing for years, the games industry has been failing for years and now it's time for yet another company to try and solve the problem, only to fail miserably.

This won't change ANYTHING. There won't be a big massive war, there won't be any huge problem to overcome, this won't be the end of DS piracy, it's a complete non-story.

EDIT : Just noticed this lovely quote from the man :

He claimed that Metaforic's solution is firmware patch resistant. "There is no firmware patch that they can apply that will stop our protection -- I can't tell you why that is, though."

Yeah, you can't tell us why because you've more than likely just lied through your teeth, not because you've made some magical security routine.


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## Rayder (May 16, 2009)

I'm wondering if this "new protection" is the reason many of the more decent games are getting pushed back.  As if they're banking on the fact that it will actually work to stop (or at least drastically slow down) piracy.  

I also wonder if it will prevent cheat codes from working.  From what the article says about how the protection works, there's a very good chance it will.

I really hope that good games will start getting released for the DS because of this protection. Of course, the term "good game" is highly subjective. It seems a vast majority of games that people call good are complete crap to me.  But you know what I mean.

I hope the hackers don't let us down when this protection starts being used.....if, in fact, any of this protection talk is even real.  I don't know about anyone else, but I've gotten way too comfortable with the free-ride on the DS to go back to actually buying games for it.  Everyone seems to think the protection will be cracked instantly, but what if it's not?  There is the very real possibility that this protection might just destroy our comfortable little piracy party.

Then there's the release list.....will the list suddenly become full of completely unplayable games?  Will the method at which games are released to the scene change from the "clean ROMs" to only being cracked ones, complete with useless intros and whatnot?  Or will it just become a mess of unplayable games and any cracks will be separate from the releases, ruining the release list as we know it?

Very valid questions, I think.


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## Domination (May 16, 2009)

Rayder said:
			
		

> I'm wondering if this "new protection" is the reason many of the more decent games are getting pushed back.  As if they're banking on the fact that it will actually work to stop (or at least drastically slow down) piracy.
> 
> I also wonder if it will prevent cheat codes from working.  From what the article says about how the protection works, there's a very good chance it will.
> 
> ...



We should test the prototype hacks on those n00bs that register just to ask "OMFG... Jesus Christ why doesn't this work on my r4?"  
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





But im sure i will buy games if they are that good and i have spare cash....


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## GameSoul (May 17, 2009)

Ever think one of us is working behind the scenes giving info to the enemy?


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## iPikachu (May 17, 2009)

gacktgacktgackt said:
			
		

> I love how loads of users in this thread are all "it'll work this way, it'll do this, this is what will happen" when in reality none of you have a single clue about what it will actually be.
> 
> I bet my right bollock that the very first game to come out with this "protection" (if it does ever happen, I'm doubtful it will) will be cracked within about 30 minutes, making all subsequent protected releases crackable within the same amount of time.
> 
> ...


hahaha! well spoken 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	



long live the ARM!


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## Acenima (May 17, 2009)

GameSoul said:
			
		

> Ever think one of us is working behind the scenes giving info to the enemy?


It's possible... Could be someone we wouldn't expect like bill gates or another world


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## baronluigi (May 17, 2009)

One thing. The new says that the anti piracy code would be different in each retail cart.

But, as far i know, all the copies of one game wich are in the net are 1:1 copies of a original SCENE release, is not this right?

So, making a patch for THE SCENE RELEASE would correct the problem no?


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## Rayder (May 17, 2009)

GameSoul said:
			
		

> Ever think one of us is working behind the scenes giving info to the enemy?



The "enemy" doesn't need anyone feeding them info, they can come to this site and see everything without ever having registered.

Ever notice on the portal how there is almost ALWAYS 2 to 4 times as many "visitors" as there are registered members on the site?  I wonder how many of those visitors are what you called the enemy.  

Now, this extreme amount of visitors disturbs me on many levels (enemies gleaning info anonymously, server load, every little kid having access to the cheats without registering, etc.) and I suggested to the admin that maybe something ought to be done about it, but they didn't seem to think it's anything to worry about.


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## Hop2089 (May 17, 2009)

Rayder said:
			
		

> GameSoul said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Yeah the portal and everything else should be for registered members.  This will keep most of the so called "enemy" users at bay but there is a very small chance some small or big rep from Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft may register and leak everything to their company and make our lives even worse.  Only about 1% of visitors on this site are the "enemy".


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## BAHIM Z 360 (May 17, 2009)

Sigh....................why cant they just leave us alone


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## Dominator (May 17, 2009)

Then whats ? the protection will be cracked, the flashcard will be upgraded, like everythings else before.
That doesn't change my life, plus since i have a Macbook and an iPod touch i haven't played a any DS game exept Dragon QUest V


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## Golin (May 17, 2009)

Antoligy said:
			
		

> Doesn't this mean that only R4 users are affected?
> Also, reguarly updated firmware shouldn't be affected too much...
> Unless this protection changes for every game...


1. No. It's using the R4 as the gold standard to stop, but it will affect other flash cartridges too.
2. That depends.
3. That sounds like what they're getting at. It changes with every game and at that, it changes with every copy of the same game just enough to "annoy" the hackers.

Sounds like just another push/pull with the big companies and hackers. I'm not too worried.


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## Another World (May 17, 2009)

@rayder: the piracy party could come to an end tomorrow and i would still have 3,000+ roms to play, 700+ nes games, gamegear, gameboy, gameboy color, gameboy advance, sega master system, 100+ doom wads, quake 1 and 2, snes, megadrive, wonder swan, tg-16, etc.

with that said, even if this code is injected on a per-cart basis it isn't like most people rip their own retail carts. the scene only needs 1 rom to hack and that 1 rom gets distributed. i honestly wouldn't mind intros again. some were pretty good, with fun retro music. i'm not one of those poeple that flip out when i have to hold an extra button each time. pressing "A" to skip an intro is not a big deal. 

the real worry is how this will change the possible dsi scene. but then again loopy has already stated that he found the common key for the dsi security. a bit of injected patch blocking code shouldn't slow us down, not that much.

@dominator: flash linkers MUST patch certain things. be it the save, soft-reset, a dma mode. firmware upgrades can't fix this, the patching is what allows the rom to run on the msd and work properly. you have to keep that in mind.

-another world


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## A-Z (May 17, 2009)

all i can say is what is made by man can be broken by man and was the dsi not claimed to be "unhackble"?


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## Dominator (May 17, 2009)

@Another World, i know, i was meaning Flahscard Hardward Upgrade


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## KazoWAR (May 17, 2009)

If it is a program that is in the rom, then it most likely does a check as soon as the rom boots but before the game begins, this means its running in the ram so an AR code can fix the without a doubt.


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## adgloride (May 17, 2009)

This is going back years ago.  On the Amiga it was either Batman the movie or Robocop that was released with this protection (Maybe both).  It required a dongle to be placed in the joystick port for the game to boot.  This was meant to be unhackable.  The hackers just changed the code so it skipped the part were it checked for the dongle and loaded the game.  The code wasn't just put on to check for the dongle at the start of the game, it did it at random times.


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## teonintyfive (May 17, 2009)

Great job. Now I have to shell out 60 euros every time I wanna try out a new DS game. We're not shitting money, Nintendo.


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## zeromac (May 17, 2009)

imo opinion this is stupid.. why would they annouce it to everybody? are they that confident?


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## cephalopoid (May 17, 2009)

*Why I Pirate Games: A call to Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony*

The fundamentals of capitalism are relatively easy to grasp.  Business compete to offer a quality product at a price near or below their competitors.  Those companies that can offer a quality product at a cheaper price thrive.  This is how Big Box store have proliferated.  What these companies do not understand, or maybe they forget, is that the law applies to consumers.  As consumers we want the best products at the cheapest price we can find them.  And while there ARE regulations against consumers (no shoplifting or downloading illegal or pirated things), these regulations are hard to enforce.

Unless you are Apple.

I hate iPods and I hate iTunes.  However, one thing that Apple has realized that Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft have yet to realize is that if you change with the trends of the consumers rather than the trends of the business, you can profit.  Apple realized that there are a few factors into why people pirate music.  One reason is that it is cheap (or free).  Secondly, it is convenient.  Finally, it gives consumers more control over what they purchase.  Apple realized that people pirated because consumers were tired of spending $17 on a CD for a few good songs.  Furthermore, the consumers didn't have a way to listen before they bought.

Why hasn't the game industry realized this?  They slowly have, yet Nintendo's new DSi doesn't account for any of the consumer trends.  Why, for instance, didn't Nintendo include 8 GB of flash space in their units? If Nintendo (and Sony) were smart, they would *control and distribute the ROMS to be used on SD cards.* 

Users download roms for the same reasons that people download music: it's cheap (free!), convenient (I don't need to sell my soul to Walmart), and we have control (We can demo a game, and we can put what we want on the SD cards).  Right now, there are about 6 DS games that I enjoy playing regularly.  Who likes lugging around 6 DS games?  Who likes lugging around more than 3???  Who even likes turning off . . . ejecting . . . injecting . . . turning on.  This might sound like laziness, but it isn't, it is convenient.  

Furthermore, many find $30 per cart a little steep, especially for something that might suck or be short.  3rd parties AND Nintendo would benefit from selling roms at half that price (hell, they could afford to sell it even cheaper if they weren't greedy like the RIAA and Apple).  If I could buy ROMS at $10-15 and get them directly from Nintendo or the DEV, so long as I had rights to that ROM, I'd would, and so would many.


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## fryguy (May 17, 2009)

adgloride said:
			
		

> This is going back years ago.  On the Amiga it was either Batman the movie or Robocop that was released with this protection (Maybe both).  It required a dongle to be placed in the joystick port for the game to boot.  This was meant to be unhackable.  The hackers just changed the code so it skipped the part were it checked for the dongle and loaded the game.  The code wasn't just put on to check for the dongle at the start of the game, it did it at random times.



Yep Robocop 3 on the Amiga had the dongle protection. IIRC Scala required a dongle too but was of course cracked.


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## funem (May 18, 2009)

Dont know if anyone has looked at it yet ( not read entire thread ) 

http://metaforic.com/content/

Look here as well...

http://tinycartridge.com/post/107446999/ha...to-keep-ds-game  ( Chat with Narin )

I am guessing the next gen flash cards will have a dedicated eprom chip where the game will be uploaded to from the memory card and will then run from the eprom chip without patching as it will the same as running it directly from a cart not from a memory card.. that should bypass the need for patching and would also ( possibly ) not be detectable from within game code.

In my opinion Nintendo should have stayed quiet about this. Its hard to crack or hack something when you don't know what you are looking for. They should have put the games on the shelf with the protection in it already and sat back and watched. Now hackers have a head start as they know where the protection comes from and what ( roughly ) to look for...

First mistake was to say what software was going to be used, second mistake is Metaforic has basically put their rep on the line by saying its basically unhackable, if this proves to be wrong, their software sales and peoples confidence in it will fall flatter than an MP in the UK expenses rows...


----------



## Hedgehogofchaos (May 18, 2009)

so if they can tell if a rom has been patched, will this affect even action replay codes?


----------



## jesterscourt (May 18, 2009)

Hedgehogofchaos said:
			
		

> so if they can tell if a rom has been patched, will this affect even action replay codes?



It should


----------



## Xarsah16 (May 18, 2009)

Stupid question, cause I'm stupid.

Is this just currently being developed for European ROMs, or is it also being developed for American ROMs?



			
				QUOTE said:
			
		

> Unless you are Apple.
> 
> I hate iPods and I hate iTunes. However, one thing that Apple has realized that Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft have yet to realize is that if you change with the trends of the consumers rather than the trends of the business, you can profit. Apple realized that there are a few factors into why people pirate music. One reason is that it is cheap (or free). Secondly, it is convenient. Finally, it gives consumers more control over what they purchase. Apple realized that people pirated because consumers were tired of spending $17 on a CD for a few good songs. Furthermore, the consumers didn't have a way to listen before they bought.



I disagree with you, as of April 7th 2009, Apple changed focus. Possibly because of hard economic times, they increased a lot of popular music in price from .99 cents to 1.29, and the less valuable music, which is rare to find, is now available for .69 songs. The stuff people want in general is much more expensive now, and a ton of users, myself included are going to resort to less expensive ways to obtain their music.

But your point does spend true that we don't want to spend 30-40 bucks a game (DS) when we can get a 14 dollar flash cart from DealExtreme that plays the same games for free.


----------



## Crass (May 18, 2009)

lacrymosa967 said:
			
		

> Stupid question, cause I'm stupid.
> 
> Is this just currently being developed for European ROMs, or is it also being developed for American ROMs?




Yes this is a stupid question. Read the article. Read this thread. BAM! Now you know as much about this as everyone else.

In other words, to answer youre question: No one knows yet.


----------



## elixirdream (May 18, 2009)

lacrymosa967,
I speculate all regions 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			




Since Nintendo (one of the company that utilise this method) sells their game on all regions


----------



## TheDarkSeed (May 18, 2009)

@ Nintendo: Stop fighting it, just lay back and accept the rape. 

Nintendo's last atempt to stop pirates might be to make DS cards that selfdestruct upon uploading. 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




  What regular ds owner would buy them then? 






 To what extent will Nintendo go?


----------



## Man18 (May 18, 2009)

ah shit.


----------



## MicShadow (May 18, 2009)

Excellent... hopefully some sort of piracy war. I love a challenge!

I will fight teeth and nail to combat this anti-piracy protection, hack it, code it, write GUI's for it and what not.

Although, on the other hand...
Call me elitist, but it would be awesome if it would disable r4's (at least without some sort of advanced hack) and in general make it hard to play new games. To be honest all these flash cart noobs sicken me.

Bring piracy back to its more 'underground' roots, its just too easy to pirate on the DS.

But then again its more than likely a very easy to hack protection sceheme and it would be probably disabled within a day.

So Nintendo, make decent games and include useful extras with the retail games. For example, the cd-key method would be a good start if it was easy to implement


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## Kuschel-Drow (May 18, 2009)

Very cute indeed. 
Thinking of the roms I would play at all, most of them will be published before December this year, and the one's that aren't are too common and too long awaited not to be cracked fast enough. 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




So I'm not afraid to miss something at all. ^^

They may save some time, but true hackers will always find a work around, it has always been that way and it won't change, because where there's a will there's a way in any case. Plus, there is ALWAYS a backdoor to be used... 

I'm not saying that piracy is okay, because it isn't. And if I love a game I still buy it, no matter what, IF it is published in Europe, that is. Some of them aren't so I HAVE to use the Rom. And then, I don't want to carry a bunch of games around if I do not have to and a single cartridge is enough.


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## radorn (May 18, 2009)

We'll have to see if these claims stand still in the end.
If the process for developpers to inject the anti-copy stuff in the game's rom is automated, then an automated reversal procedure can be done, even if it requires offline patching, but it may take a lot of time for someone to come up with it.
Anyway, I saw someone mention DLDI here. Just wanted to say that DLDI has nothing to do with the loading of commercial roms, since DLDI is meant for providing an universal hardware driver interface to to apropriatelly crafted lifbfat based homebrew. Commercial software cards don't use libfat since they don't have a FAT formated memory device in them, only a chunk of ROM memory and a save chip of varying type and size. Only homebrew software uses libfat or DLDI.


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## funem (May 18, 2009)

radorn said:
			
		

> We'll have to see if these claims stand still in the end.
> If the process for developpers to inject the anti-copy stuff in the game's rom is automated, then an automated reversal procedure can be done.



Not totally true. If the injection uses a random element that is different for each game it is injected into ( which I believe is the chosen method according to the developers website ) then it may not be possible to reverse it by automatic methods, because there is nothing specific you can look for. The only way I can see this being hacked is if the code that is being executed to test for the checksums ( this is how it is done according to the developers website ) is hacked to always agree the checksum regardless of if it agrees or not. This is the only possible route ( given the information I have seen about the method used ) that a hacker can look to, in an effort to crack the protection. I have seen this sort of protection in the past and the only way then was to use the method above, you look for the consistent element rather than the random ones...... Until it is applied to a ROM and there is something to take apart all this speculation is academic anyway.

I still think the only way forward for cart manufacturers is to have the memory card used in the flash cart as a storage area and a re-writable chip in the cart that the software uploads the game code to then executes it. This way it wouldn't matter how the game was protected it would be running from a chip the same as a legit cart and wouldn't need patching ( a bit like the way some GBA flashcarts handled large games ). There is a way to check for this as well to see if it was a legit game but I will just keep that quiet for now.


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## playallday (May 19, 2009)

I think this will stop the R4 since there are no more updates for the R4 menu!  (Yes I know, there's YSmenu but most n00b's don't know about it.)

Most likely all this will do is make n00b's give up on getting pokemonz.


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## Martiin (May 25, 2009)

deleted


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## acesniper (Jun 4, 2009)

Martiin said:
			
		

> GameSpot news:
> http://www.gamespot.com/features/6209660/p...topslot;thumb;3
> 
> ;O ohsnaps!


Interesting article.


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## Fatboy12345236 (Jun 19, 2009)

yikkyon said:
			
		

> Maybe this is Nintendo's way of warning us that the rom will contain virus code and infecting our PC...?



Go Deep Freeze!


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## evandixon (Jul 16, 2009)

Hedgehogofchaos said:
			
		

> so if they can tell if a rom has been patched, will this affect even action replay codes?
> ARDS Codes (at least with the original ARDS) are loaded into Memory (RAM), so I don't think AR will trigger the security.
> 
> 
> ...


The DSi security only checks for _completely_ valid headers.  Once hackers found out how to replicate a _perfectly_ valid header, the DSi flashcarts were released.


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## antonkan (Sep 3, 2009)

Refer here: http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=177500

Nintendo hates pirates! The end the flashcart dealers (and some ROMs sites) has begun!

http://ap.nintendo.com/


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## anaxs (Sep 3, 2009)

i knew this was coming
i just hope it doesnt effect the awesome nds games that are coming out this month


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## Jose VX (Nov 4, 2009)

Good aport


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