How a Laser-Shot Disk Defeats Hackers & Pirates (Coding Secrets) 

"Sonic 3D Backup" "There's nothing important on this disk" I have even more respect for Jon now.

Person: "Why can't I pass level 4" Publisher: *Shoots Laser*

I love the irony that those wanting to run the pirated game probably had to pay more to buy the RAM expansions to run it than it would have cost to buy the game legitimately in the first place.

Coding Secrets has become one of my favorite video series on RU-vid.

After watching this a did a little search, and found someone who said, back in 2001, that they'd had the game for nine years and regretted never being able to complete it. Somebody else came along and said, 'That's weird, I've never had an issue jumping on that platform; here, I've taken screenshots'. He then mentions just how long he has had the game, having got the crack before it was even officially released! Isn't it a shame it took him ten years to learn he should have bought it? Very interesting, great work.

I recall someone telling me about the hole trick when I was little and I checked all my discs and held them up to the light to find the holes. I thought they were lying.

"Defeat hackers with a laser?" See, this is how it should work. See something bad happen? Fire a laser at 'em. Hackers stealing your games? Orbital laser their neighborhood down. Jon has the damn right idea.

he protec he attac but most importantly he stop hac

Well.... this is awkward, a few years back i bought a copy of this game at a yard sale and when i couldn't get onto that platform i assumed the game become corrupt somehow 😂

Jon frustrated millions of pirates with 512KB of RAM. He can *PROTEC* us.

I've always found the war between pirates and developers fascinating. Both sides equally so. Personally, I buy whenever it's an option, but I can't help but be at least somewhat impressed by some of the things modern hackers and pirates manage to pull off.

delightfully devilish

Haha! "obviously not being used for anything important"

Classic! I ran into that one and years later when Amiga emulation started taking off, the poorly cracked version was the only one circulating on Rom sites.

That's a really, really impressive way of combating pirates! Lots of modern games do similar stuff, like Batman Arkham Asylum not letting you glide or Serious Sam 3 adding the invincible red scorpion; though those games were cracked very shortly after release. I think the most impressive thing to me is knowing exactly *where* on a floppy disk to burn the hole. That seems crazy, to know a floppy disk so well that you can burn a hole in a specific spot and then have data try to write in exactly that location. Wow!

The best part of this is that this is actually DRM that CAN'T his legal owners. It's physical DRM. Modern games can't do things like this, so there're always cases where the DRM flags someone falsely and you end up with things like legal Alan Wake owners ending up with the pirate eyepatch and such (before they made it possible for everyone to get).

I was on browsing the Cutting Room Floor website the other day and saw that Puggsy for the Sega Genesis had an interesting anti-piracy scheme. From what I understand it would write onto the SRAM of third-party copying devices if they were detected. When playing this "modified' version of the game, which is essentially a demo, it ends abruptly after a few levels and displays a message from the TT Devs. You should make a video about how you came up with this idea and how you got the anti-piracy scheme to work.

he hac he protect but most importantly, he protec

That's awesome. I love reading about the devious ways developers defeated pirates.

**sonic 3D backup disc**“Now this isn’t for anything important” Sweet mother of jesus what have you done

This is flippin brilliant. I’d heard of the laser thing but had no idea how it worked. The DreadPirateRoberts protection was pretty brilliant too. This has quickly become the channel that I’m most excited to see a new video from.

Reminds me of the kind of stuff Spyro 3 for the PlayStation did -- they used a different method to detect the cracks themselves, but did similarly sneaky things with inline logic, different each time, to throw pirates off.

I remember having a pirated copy of this bought for me back in the day (my dad used to bring back games from the market each week) and it working fine, still on 3 disks, and I was also able to complete it so someone must have managed to defeat the protection at some point. I'll check to see who the cracking group were if I can get my Amiga working on a modern TV...

I recall that Codemasters later did something similar with CD games, including patterns of benign slightly bad data that they could identify if they explicitly looked for it, but which error correction would fix on an ordinary read. Therefore any simple copy would lack the iffy data, which the game noted. They pursued the fine tradition of making the game run while changing variables to make the player suck too.

I miss when copy protection was unnoticeable by the consumer.

I really love how some of the Psygnosis cover art was done by the same guy who did the classic album covers for Yes. Amazing art.

The very first crack by "The Company" released in the same month as the game works fine with a loader disk, no need for extra ram.

I used to be in the hacking scene back in the 80's. My friends and I would get audio tape copies of games from someone who had a real job. We were all college kids who could barely afford ram upgrades, let alone buying the latest software. We would rush home and begin cracking those tape copies, and later disk copies, and whoever cracked it first got to put their own logo on it. We were a team so the team name was always there but we got to be creative and put animations and whatever we wanted at the beginning to make it our own. Some people even told us they would load the games just to watch our animations because they were more interesting than the game. Overwriting the RAM vectors was the most common way of copy protecting games. Simply load a block over a RAM vector and as soon as the block was done loading instead of the OS printing OK or READY it would jump to code that was loaded and execute that instead, which would just load the rest of the program. Every now and then the code would overwrite itself to try to prevent us from keeping control. But in the end we always defeated it. Even when software companies used dongles attached to the serial port we defeated those. Sometimes they embedded their dongle check 50 times in an app in clever ways. All that was required was time. As an experiment I came up with several of my own copy protection schemes. You could format the floppy disk so that one or more sectors instead of being 256 or 512 bytes was 1024 bytes say. Reading that block would overwrite the RAM vector for the floppy disk. All you had to do was read the directory and the disk would boot. Try to copy the disk and it would boot. Try to delete a file, boot. Another trick was to punch a second sector hole in the disk and format the floppy not with 18 sectors per track but 9 sectors, twice. If you read the disk you would see a list of files, read it again and they were gone. It all depends on where the sector hole was when you began reading the disk. My protection scheme would format the disk with half the encoded data on the first 9 sectors and the rest on the other 9. The loader would keep reading the same sector until it got two different results, then it would XOR the two blocks to get the actual data. This would of course halve the actual size of the disk space but it was impossible to copy. There was no way you could format or read the entire disk without the special formatter I wrote.

I genuinely wish more game programmers from other companies would provide the same level of insight into their work as you have Mr. Burton. Thank you so much again for enlightening us these incredible anecdotes!

Excellent video, reminds me of an old Gamasutra article about Spyro 3 on the PS1. That game was also littered with game-breaking anti-piracy code. For example eggs and gems are removed from levels so the player couldn't progress to later levels.

So, this was the floppy equivalent of cardridges trying to write to non-existent memory on a legit copy. Very sneaky.

Genius! Both the first pirate check and the second! If I were a coder though... I would like to make ways to where the player thinks the pirated game is normal but instead have weird anomalies happen that make the game crash in crazy ways and have 4th wall breaks or even act as if it's haunted. It's as if the game is attacking the hacker back. Whether it be deleting save files or creating invincible glitchy looking enemies with ominous music. Something about this idea is really cool to me.

Oooohyeeeeah! Good ol' school. Did many of such timebombs and delayed retaliation tricks back at these times :)

Time to pirate Leander, thanks!

Holy shit, thats so cool that you worked for Psygnosis. I remember their games being a huge big deal back then and that I was blown away by their art covers. They went and worked on the Wipeout series too and they have been hugely influencial for me and graphic design. Super cool that you got to work with them!

Jon, I absolutely love this channel. As someone who dreamed of being a games designer as a kid (sadly my path didn’t lead me there), this channel is absolutely fascinating. Thank you for posting these. I appreciate it!

Ah, a nice little story from the time where you could just sneak in tricky code without having to fear the compiler optimizing out your shenanigans. Great vid! :D

Possibly some of the best videos I’ve seen please make more in regards to development and how things were achieved these are amazing

Enjoy watching all ya videos. None to technical or too long . Keep them coming

More of these, please!

Jon: Apologies is this has already been asked loads, but what the music you use in the background to a lot of your videos (including this one). Is it from an old game/demo/.mod ? Absolutely love these videos by the way - Been a happy subscriber for many a month and delighted with all these awesome secrets !

This was so interesting and fascinating! Please keep up the great work. It's always going to be a good day when one of your videos pops up

Oh my! How have a not found you on RU-vid before this?! I love the sneakyness. My mentor who taught me some stuff mentioned some sneaky-sneak wonderfulness like what you did with multiple checks in different locations. :-)

J'aime tellement Travellers Tales, et tes vidéos sont trop plaisantes, tu est une personne bien inspirée

I love it! One of the biggest issues I see now days are these pigs who think that they're not only entitled to steal other peoples content, they openly complain when their pirated stuff doesn't work or companies/individuals take steps to stop them. The world was a better place when people who did pirate stuff did so on the down low and there was a belief that you'd somehow get in trouble.

This might be the most awesome channel on RU-vid!

I really liked this one! I hope you have more.

very interesting to see a idea of putting a hole on disk I had years ago! Glad to see someone did it? Great set of videos, john (Runecraft).

This is utterly ingenious and I love it!

"So many publishers worked with developers to try and figure out ways of at least delaying the copying of a new game." Funny, that's Denuvo's selling point now, as if it was any different years before.

This is ABSOLUTELY brilliant!!

The problem is that laser holes are expensive, so I doubt this was actually the way it was done. I made a few methods to protect my stuff - eg speed up the system clock through the video port to make a smaller bitcell size (fit a lot more on each track than possible to write), move quickly to GCR encoding after boot rather than MFM encoding, use zero clock and data in the middle of tracks to create random noise, etc.. None of it was used, even though it could be duplicated by Trace equipment (with the correct script) - at Ablex and Spool - the two places everyone in the UK used to manufacture games (US Gold, Ocean, Psygnosis, etc) - this was because the publishers didn't have faith in new ideas, even at that time. In the end they always settle for something rubbish like slightly longer tracks, custom sync words, etc... Once cyclone arrived this meant it was game over for protection. Side note for fans of Leander... @Jon - you should make a video about the parallax technique and how you added it after seeing this at my house with Andy. Thanks for the credit in the game. ;) 'Impossible 16 colour on 16 colour scroll on the Amiga' ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-V9uUAnmOIP8.html It's 16 colour UN Squadron and 16 colour Strider on top of each other!

I loved this video Jon! I could listen to these stories all day

This code reminds me of that really cunning antipiracy code inside Earthbound, that enables "crazy hard mode" and then bricks during the Gigyas fight, obliterating your save file.

This channel is one of the best that I've found, man, I have respect for you :)

Interesting stuff man, great vid!

Very neat

That is glorious! Bravo!

The laser idea is neat. It was used by much newer game consoles too: the GameCube and the Wii copy protection both work by punching tiny little holes in the disc with a laser. DVDs are obviously read-only, but the protection worked because when manufacturing a spiral groove disc it's nearly impossible to predict how the grooves are going to line up relative to each other, so you can burn the holes in first, then use the laser again to etch a "barcode" in the inner portion of the disc that tells you which addresses were damaged by the laser (with some encryption). If you tried to manufacture a copy, you wouldn't be able to replicate the damage in the same exact locations. Then Datel figured out that you don't have to actually use a laser to punch holes in the disc post-facto, but instead you can just turn off the original data engraving laser at the right point in the data stream while burning the disc, and the effect from the point of view of the console drive is the same. And that's how they put out unlicensed stuff like Action Replay.

Man you're so genius! From pushing the genesis to it's full limits, to making somewhat impossible things possible, to even pirating pirates! you're so amazing and genius! I never saw a game developer that brilliant and probably will never see one!

Thank you for taking the time to make these videos. I love this shit

Love the variable name!

Amazing how incredibly stupid someone can be to phone in and complain that their pirated game doesn't work. Should have asked for their address. :D

Ingenious method you devised to protect your work. Very entertaining content as always .

Ohhh man that is some incredible code!! I love how people kept calling in not knowing what was happening 🤣

Holy shit dude, you nearly gave me a heart attack with that beginning! I imagine if they ever got through that bit, you would simply add three more variables in random places that do similar things, with five additional decoy variables? Joking aside though, man you are a _genius._

I'm a coder myself and this is fascinating to me! Subbed and liked good sir! xDDD

XboxAhoy has a wonderful video on the history of anti-piracy measures, which opened my eyes to how fascinating it all can be. Regardless of your stance on piracy, videos like this one are (imo) a pleasure to watch. Top quality content as always, Jon, thanks for taking the time to make & share this with us!

How did you ensure with manufacturing that the hole was always burnt in the exact right location? Would you think there were any false positives in this?

This is soooo cool! You're one seriously smart guy.

Whenever I watch your videos, I have to listen to "Charly Lownoise & Mental Theo - Wonderful days" afterwards, because the background music always reminds me of that classic!

Fun episode!

Very insightful and clever. Great!

Ingenious! Thanks for that!

I would love to see more of this topic, its really interesting

This is genius. You made my day with this one. :D

At least this copy protection isn’t so bad, but what do you think about the more damaging ones, like the one on the C64 that causes the head of the disk drive to knock against the edge of the track and eventually gets the head misaligned? Still, a very interesting look into copy protection nonetheless.

My favorite Amiga game. This is genius. Love it! Well done.

just beautiful

Another fantastic video. Thank you

Hello Jon! One of the greatest things of gaming back in the day was the battle between developer and pirate. Games that I'd really enjoy always ended up getting my money. However, I'd always poke around inside to see if I was able to crack the game myself. Not because I had any interest in ripping it off, but just to understand the scheme used. Manual look-ups, code-wheels, that sort of thing wasn't hard to get around. It was the sneaky stuff I really appreciated. Physical defects on the disk are great like that. You could let someone copy the disk with a bit of effort, and then wreak havoc on them when they tried to play. Stuff like that was beyond my ability to get around. Besides, I had the disk, I didn't worry too much about it. You sir, are the sort of person I'd love to have as a guest on our podcast. Hit me back if you'd like to make an appearance.

Did any of the pirates ever figure out the hole in the disk? Great video, I love learning about these techniques.

I love looking back at a time when games were much simpler and there was still plenty of room for experimentation!

I love learning about stuff like this

This is really awesome.

Amazing. Best channel on RU-vid

Gotta love it. I thirst for more coding techniques.

This reminds me of reading a book discussing about copy protection and cracking it... It also praise laser lock as one of the ultimate lock, but the author came up with a rather interesting low cost way to achieve the same near impossible to duplicate lock at a very low cost. The author calls it "seamless lock", and it relying on the "seam" of the track on floppy disk. Where magnetic head finish writing and turns off. Due to the seam (outside of normal useful sector) being the start and end of the track, every time when you write to the track, the data is a little different. Even the publisher couldn't really duplicate the discs themselves either. Thus every copy of the program will need some sort of config tool to read the seam of the track and configure the program to look for the seam signature, and refuse to run when the signature check fails. It is so interesting in the 90s to see them come up with these so very unique and cool methods of protection...

this channel is brilliant :D

Remember all those “top 10 unbeatable/unfinished games” lists? I wonder how many of those games are finished, but the people who make those lists don’t have legitimate copies?

Nice Phone picture at the end. Something rang in the back of my mind, on further analysis, I noticed the Entel Argentina logo on them. Used to see that often back when I was a child and my dad used to purchase Entel tokens to call on public phones.

That is a very clever trick! I do wonder though, what did you do when someone write protected the original?

Just adding that Leander is a great amiga game. The genesis port Legend of Galahad is also pretty good.

Nice, I love it! So elegant :D

Fantastic!

I can't stand the audacity of people who pirate then call the developers complaing after.

Where is the Gamehut intro music from?

Excellent story, very clever.

Hats off to you, Sir. -428. It took ages to be sure. One of the sneakiest. Comparable to the later Spyro on the PS1. :D

This is ingenious. Also +10000% coolness for Psygnosis.