GameHut
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2018–2024
5:01 · 132K views · Jan 18, 2018
An episode of Coding Secrets by Jon Burton on retro copy protection, in particular physically damaging a disk with a laser so copies fail. It explains how this defeated hackers and pirates.
Cited in anti-piracy discussions as a clear explanation of clever retro copy-protection tricks, though one commenter disputes a claim about Leander.
4 comments from Hacker News
I thought the two methods described in this video were both good: this video Also, the method described here, even though it didn't result in a financially successful game, was pretty clever (pirating the game meant your game company would be defeated by pirates): [LINK]
For those who don't know, Burton explains this in depth here: [LINK] Another one of my favorite ones describes copy protection via intentionally destroyed floppy sectors: this video
I can give you an example of someone claiming there were holes in the disk, Jon Burton, but they're a goddamn liar : this video I have the original release of Leander. There are no holes in the disks. The code on the disk doesn't write anything besides hiscores. There is a protection routine exactly where he says there is, however what it does is check for a long track . It waits for the index pin, reads lots of data from the track, then looks to find two sync marks in the data it read, and they're at least a certain distance away from each other. No lasers, no holes, no writing. Standard long track protection. Here's the whole routine: [LINK] Here's a page that more accurately describes floppy disk protection methods (and also explains what a long track is): [LINK]
According to Jon Burton, something like this was actually done for the Amiga game Leander, although not with the intent to damage hardware: this video