Which is Best Protection Software Add License/Key System

[Kerlingen]

Some years ago there was some long anticipated game. It was a single player only game. It had no reason for an internet connection in any way, since at that time games didn't have all those "online achievement" features they have these days.

The basic game concept was this: You enter a room, pull a switch which opens the door at the other end of the room and then run as fast as you can before the door closes again. The room is filled with many obstacles like moving walls, falling rocks and additional switches.

But the developer decided to include a copy protection in this game which required the user to be online all the time: All the "timing" data for the rooms would be handled by the server. The communication between game (client) and server would be something like this:

C: "player has interacted with object #1"
S: "activate object #2"
C: "player has interacted with object #2"
S: "activate object #3"
C: "player has interacted with object #3"
S: "too slow, reset the room"
C: "player has interacted with object #4"
S: "are you kidding me? there is no active timer for #4"

The "objects" had random IDs and could only be used in the correct sequence.

So it was completely impossible to play the game without an internet connection (and a server who had verified serial, hwid, simultanious connections, ...).

Obviously - since I'm using this story here - the protection was a big fail. The first 4 days after game release it was impossible to play the game, since the servers where totally overloaded and people got disconnected all the time. Funny enough, it took only 10 hours after release before the first server emulator appeared on the internet containing all timing data for all levels.

I guess the first person who reached the last level was the cracker.