Mission protection

[mr_shadow 4]

Hello evry1, i need your help, can u tell me how can i protect my mission from stealing, so it will not save to appcache?

Aprecciate for your help.

[maddogx 13]

There is only one way to do this: never release the mission. Ever.

If you want people to play your mission, it will end up in their appcache.

[mr_shadow 4]

I know that there is way to stop saving in it, or me be some script that will just allow to play mission only on my server. Can the bisign key help?

Edited September 9, 2013 by mr_shadow

[xendance 3]

The person can just alt tab out from the game when the mission is on and copy the files.

[mr_shadow 4]

Im not loooking for ways to steal it.

---------- Post added at 21:32 ---------- Previous post was at 21:18 ----------

Is anyone know how to extract vital server side code into addon and have it on your server so players will only download client mission which cannot be run without server having this addon.

[mistyronin 1181]

There is only one way to do this: never release the mission. Ever.

If you want people to play your mission, it will end up in their appcache.

In fact, technically, no even that. As long as he's connected to any the net, anyone can "steal it". The only security, is disconnect Ethernet wire and WiFi.

BTW, why would you want to avoid other people to play/have your mission?

[progamer 14]

Just request people give you credit if they use anything from it. Most people who want to keep credit for the mission use the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

CC BY-NC-SA

From http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

But by not allowing people to edit, learn from and possibly make other versions that could be better, you go against what Arma is about. So I suggest you just request credit be given to yourself if someone edits it. People will edit, change, build on and learn from your mission no matter what you do if you want other players to play it.

[Ezcoo 47]

Im not loooking for ways to steal it.

---------- Post added at 21:32 ---------- Previous post was at 21:18 ----------

Is anyone know how to extract vital server side code into addon and have it on your server so players will only download client mission which cannot be run without server having this addon.

I assume that you'd like to host a mission, but not to share it in public for various reasons.

You could move "the show behind the curtains" with adding a layer (interface) between the client side and server side stuff (which could be inside the addon then, for example). The client would be able to affect directly only to this interface between the client and server, and the addon (or some other solution) would then monitor the changes in the interface and function if something changes there, and if needed, then return the result to the interface and let server to broadcast it to client or clients. I'm not scripter really, but I know that it works in theory. That solution has been used on some servers in the past with success, too.

However, it would still be possible to steal the server side stuff via eg. vulnerabilities that exist on your server in general. I guess the most likely route would be the game itself. You have to secure your server quite well in general in order to make it really hard for possible attackers to gain access to the server side stuff and steal it. It's never possible to make the protection perfect though, so there's always a risk of getting your stuff stolen by unknown instances if you are connected to Internet. It's all about making it hard enough.

[Smurf 12]

What Project Reality did, AFAIK, they managed to do something similar.

[mr_shadow 4]

I assume that you'd like to host a mission, but not to share it in public for various reasons.

You could move "the show behind the curtains" with adding a layer (interface) between the client side and server side stuff (which could be inside the addon then, for example). The client would be able to affect directly only to this interface between the client and server, and the addon (or some other solution) would then monitor the changes in the interface and function if something changes there, and if needed, then return the result to the interface and let server to broadcast it to client or clients. I'm not scripter really, but I know that it works in theory. That solution has been used on some servers in the past with success, too.

However, it would still be possible to steal the server side stuff via eg. vulnerabilities that exist on your server in general. I guess the most likely route would be the game itself. You have to secure your server quite well in general in order to make it really hard for possible attackers to gain access to the server side stuff and steal it. It's never possible to make the protection perfect though, so there's always a risk of getting your stuff stolen by unknown instances if you are connected to Internet. It's all about making it hard enough.

That is usefull, thank you.

[thr0tt 12]

Make the mission dependable on a specific personal mod so it will run only with that mod set that you only release to those who can play ?

[Vigil Vindex 64]

This reminds me of how people wish they could protect content on the web. You can put a password on it up front, but if you ever actually display anything to the end user they already have a copy. It's just the way it works.

[papanowel 120]

Make the mission dependable on a specific personal mod so it will run only with that mod set that you only release to those who can play ?

Just change the classname of the unit/object used by the personal mod and people will be able to play it... It's not the right solution.

Anyway I don't get the point of protecting the mission from being used/modified by an other person...

[Vigil Vindex 64]

I am interesting in the mentality behind wanting to restrict access to content. I am an advocate of open source, but even that withstanding, if I make something that is good, I would want it to be shared so people can experience it. I would only want to "hide" something I am not proud to show. Now I try to imagine the mindset of "I have made something really good, but I don't want people to have it themselves, people can only experience it under my conditions and control". I can't fathom the benefit from that mentality. Unless it is for commercial reasons.

[Smurf 12]

Anyway I don't get the point of protecting the mission from being used/modified by an other person...

Protection against "competitors" on missions like Wasteland, or more common, Life.

[kylania 568]

It's likely a "Life" mission he's trying to make people pay to play and they won't pay if they can just play it on their own.

[papanowel 120]

Protection against "competitors" on missions like Wasteland, or more common, Life.

It's likely a "Life" mission he's trying to make people pay to play and they won't pay if they can just play it on their own.

I didn't know that such things exist in Arma (except DayZ Origins).

Thanks for clarifying it guys.

[dmarkwick 261]

I am interesting in the mentality behind wanting to restrict access to content. I am an advocate of open source, but even that withstanding, if I make something that is good, I would want it to be shared so people can experience it. I would only want to "hide" something I am not proud to show. Now I try to imagine the mindset of "I have made something really good, but I don't want people to have it themselves, people can only experience it under my conditions and control". I can't fathom the benefit from that mentality. Unless it is for commercial reasons.

Agree. I wouldn't trust a download that made such a concerted effort to hide what it's doing :D

However. Peeps are all different.

[Ezcoo 47]

Wall of text from experienced RP player (+1500 hours), admin (+1000 hours active administration) and developer (+1000 hours):

To be honest, I don't really understand why the "Life" concept is seen so negative here on the forums... Some (otherwise friendly and intelligent) people seem to consider Life mission creators as filthy scum that can be treated like crap, just because they happen to be interested in such gamemode. I'm quite sure that most of it is caused by the quite sad story of Life missions in A1/A2, but still, I wonder why every new Life developer is prejudiced as well. I'm not pointing at anyone here in this thread, I mean the atmosphere here in general.

As an (ex-) RP developer/designer I understand it fully that he might want to protect some parts of his mission. Why? Because RP is quite different from other game modes. It's very hard and resource-consuming process to develop a proper RP platform and mission/mod if compared to most of the missions and mods here. It can take literally thousands of hours to get things working somehow properly, and often, if not always, much more.

But there are other missions and mods that have taken a lot of time and resources to develop, and they're still shared in public, so why should RP mods have some special priviledge to stay protected, huh? Because of three reasons:

- RP is based strongly on communities built around the servers, and they're hard to build but easy to lose

- there is high demand but low supply of RP content

- there are lots of of "parasite" RP communities who copy-paste the content of others, remove the credits, build a community and get players to pay high sums of money to them for the content that they've stolen (this is the real problem)

If every script and mod had to be shared on public, the people who had built them would loose a big part of their communities to other communities that would then copy them (and often remove the credits even)... So it would basically kill the motivation of RP developers, because they would do the work but others would get to enjoy the benefits, even make money with the work of others. The overall process of building a RP mod or mission, running a server, building a community around it and administrating it is super demanding process, it really takes a lot more effort than building eg. a realism unit, and especially running the server and administrating it is very hard and resource-consuming when compared to eg. PvP and COOP servers because of the complexish nature of RP.

I don't claim that RP communities should share nothing, they could share something each, but I really understand it when people want to protect some parts of their RP missions and mods, so that these "parasites" could't just steal it and start running their own server (because it does happen at the moment when it's possible) and stealing the players from the community of developers. For example, the RP platform that I've been working on with my friends (Daylight RP) will be free to use for everyone, but the private editions built on it don't have to be shared in public, simply because I know from personal experience how hard building a RP community can be, and if someone has done that effort, I'm happy to let him/them to enjoy his work instead of forcing him/them to share their work with these "parasite" communities.

It's likely a "Life" mission he's trying to make people pay to play and they won't pay if they can just play it on their own.

Like said above, the situation is much more often the opposite. He's probably trying to rather prevent others from making money with his work than trying to get money himself. I think that you agree that it's better that if they pay for playing, the money goes to the community that did the work instead of a bunch of these "parasite" communities, at least. I hope that you understand it now...

Additionally, protection of the mission is also quite effective part of cheat protection. It's a big obstacle to the enemy (cheater) if he doesn't know his enemy (the structure mission/mod), a fact known since Sun Tzu... RP servers tend to gather cheaters quite a lot, so the mission protection really helps the community to have fair game. It has a big positive effect to the gameplay, because the stakes are high often (let's say you've prepared something from hours to days or even weeks, and then some cheater comes and spoils the whole effort... just think about that feeling!)

[Vigil Vindex 64]

Wall of text

Making money from BIS content is already illegal. Releasing content with a proper recognised licence opens up avenues for enforcing said licence. The majority of people who copy missions do so to host it themselves and develop their own skills. The "solution" proposed harms the community who are not "parasites". DRM is not an effective method of dealing with cheating or hacking.

Edited September 10, 2013 by ssechaud

[freakjoe 3]

I don't think this thread was created to break loose a discussion about whether everything should be "open-source" or not. After all, it should be at the author's discretion to decide whether he wants people to be able to use his stuff or wants to keep it to himself.

In my opinion, anyone who doesn't have anything to tell the author of this thread in regards to how to protect his mission from being used by someone without his knowledge shouldn't reply to this.

Anyway, you could probably make it somewhat un-stealable by just making much of the core-functionality happen on the server so incase somebody does try to host your mission without your knowledge, the mission would just be pretty, well, (excuse my clear wording here) fucked up. With lots of effort you could probably also manage to actually encrypt your .sqf files and decrypt them on mission load or something.

Edited September 10, 2013 by FreakJoe

[David77 10]

Couple things you'll learn; Random people aren't going to be froathing at the mouth to steal your mission to begin with as much as you'd hoped. It'll be your fellow editors. The editing community here thrives off of one another. Especially when it comes to code. Often times advid scripters will compile a library of useful code snippets... from their own work & from others work.

[mr_shadow 4]

Because I'm not making money on my mission, and others want to do it.