The video game industry lost more than $1.8 billion to global piracy through illegal copying, counterfeiting, and distributing in 2004. In latest issue of IBM Systems Journal researchers present two novel approaches for game protection.

In 2004, when sales of video games in the United States set a record at $7.3 billion, the industry lost more than $1.8 billion to global piracy. That lost revenue was due to a variety of piracy-related attacks, including illegal copying, counterfeiting, and distributing.

In latest issue of IBM Systems Journal, now available online, researchers present two novel approaches for game protection.

The first is based on a software watermarking technique, the branch-based software-watermarking algorithm developed at the IBM Almaden Research Center.

The second approach makes use of current copy-protection technologies for physical media in the battle against video game piracy. In particular, the IBM researchers focus on the broadcast encryption technology developed by 4C Entity, LLC, a consortium founded in 1998 by IBM, Matsushita Electric Industrial Corporation, Toshiba Corporation, and Intel Corporation to implement CPRM (Content Protection for Recordable Media).

Copy protection is one of nine papers in the journal on the subject of gaming, particularly online games. Other gaming topics include a look at an on demand platform for online games, how to run Quake II on a grid, and aspects of programming the Cell Broadband Engine processor.

Source: IBM