The whole thing seems rushed because the CEO of Unity, John Riccitiello, was the leading advocate of microtransactions when he was at EA, and now he is instilling the same culture at Unity.
How will they differentiate between pirated copies and legitimate copies? How will they distinguish first-time installs from repeat installs? Can we trust their algorithm? It just doesn’t seem possible.
You can usually tell a unique machine apart from another via MAC address, but even that has issues, and that’s giving Unity the benefit of the doubt when they haven’t earned it.
Are MAC address even shared ocer IP? as I understand MAC is for routers and other equipment to connect themselves, what MAC address are they going to receive? The one of the PC or the one of my router?
The game could read the Mac address and send it. It would probably violate GDPR because it’s not required for the game to perform its function, but it’s technically trivial.
Except iOS will randomize its mac adress at each boot / after a while to prevent users being tracked by rogue WiFi networks, which is actually a thing being used to track consumers in commercial spaces etc. So that wouldn’t work.
I think this is rather about checking the MAC “from the inside”, as a program running on the computer.
This will work on a PC, as I think neither Windows or Linux systems restrict reading the MAC addresses of network interfaces and such, by default at least.
On phones, I don’t know. But the point is that now the “attacker” is not on the wifi network you want to connect to, but inside your computer, and wifi mac randomization is worthless. Not just that they might have access to the original MAC of the wifi interface, what about the MAC of other interfaces like the cellular data interface or ethernet (over USB, when its supported), and then theres tons of other info too by which they can identify the device.
Well, if your mac address changes every time you connect to a different network, Unity would be detecting and billing for a lot of false positives, so it would be a bad method to identify unique devices.
There is still a lot of questions. How many components can I change and it still be the same computer and not a new computer? If I replace one component every two months after about a year I’ll have a new computer I’ve kind of ship of Theseused may way to a new rig. At what point would I have to buy a new licence?
If I don’t ever have to buy a new licence in that scenario why do I have to buy a new licence if I buy a new computer outright, it’s functionally the same difference.
The MAC address is the address of the network card, which can be either built into the motherboard, or on a replaceable card… so if that was the only thing they tracked, you could replace everything except that… unless you have a network card with an editable MAC (they don’t need to be unique worldwide, only on the network they directly connect to).
Microsoft seems to use a slightly different system, where they’d generate a sort of hash for all the components, then allow a limited number of changes per year, so you can change the while computer a limited number of times a year… but they call home all the time.
My phone at least has a setting where I can choose what it does regarding a MAC address.
It can either use a randomised MAC address or it can use the MAC address of the router itself (can’t really see why you’d ever want to do that). So while I am sure traditionally the MAC address comes from the network card it’s clearly not the only way to derive one.
Also I’m almost positive that I went to change my graphics card and that changed my MAC address. It was years ago so I can’t remember the details but I remember it causing some problems with some work software until I realised that’s what had happend and just remapped the licence.
The MAC address is the Ethernet address of a network card endpoint, whether fixed or not. Multiple network cards, multiple MAC addresses. A single network card can also respond to more than one MAC address, or use randomized ones like in the case of your phone. They still tend to come with a factory fixed one, that is just used as a default when nothing else is changing it.
it can use the MAC address of the router itself (can’t really see why you’d ever want to do that)
That’s… are you sure is what it says? There are MDM managed networks where a router can push an MDM profile to a device, and set its MAC that way, maybe it’s something like that?
A graphics card “shouldn’t” have a MAC address… unless it has an output which can push Ethernet traffic (FireWire, HDMI HEC, etc.). A bit weird to have a licence locked to the GPU’s whatever-port MAC, but possible.
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The whole thing seems rushed because the CEO of Unity, John Riccitiello, was the leading advocate of microtransactions when he was at EA, and now he is instilling the same culture at Unity.
How will they differentiate between pirated copies and legitimate copies? How will they distinguish first-time installs from repeat installs? Can we trust their algorithm? It just doesn’t seem possible.
You can usually tell a unique machine apart from another via MAC address, but even that has issues, and that’s giving Unity the benefit of the doubt when they haven’t earned it.
MAC addresses are absolutely trivial to spoof, to the point that it’s just a drop-down option on linux lmao, so yeah good luck with that one
Are MAC address even shared ocer IP? as I understand MAC is for routers and other equipment to connect themselves, what MAC address are they going to receive? The one of the PC or the one of my router?
The game could read the Mac address and send it. It would probably violate GDPR because it’s not required for the game to perform its function, but it’s technically trivial.
GDPR would probably allow it under “legitimate interest”
MAC addresses are per network Interface, my computer has three technically and uses two of them on a regular basis.
A terrible tracking method.
Vendors also re-use MAC addresses to cheap out on costs.
And nowadays you have randomized MAC addresses on IPV6.
Except iOS will randomize its mac adress at each boot / after a while to prevent users being tracked by rogue WiFi networks, which is actually a thing being used to track consumers in commercial spaces etc. So that wouldn’t work.
So did Windows at one point at least.
I don’t think it randomizes its actual mac address, it just gives a different one to different wifis
I think this is rather about checking the MAC “from the inside”, as a program running on the computer. This will work on a PC, as I think neither Windows or Linux systems restrict reading the MAC addresses of network interfaces and such, by default at least. On phones, I don’t know. But the point is that now the “attacker” is not on the wifi network you want to connect to, but inside your computer, and wifi mac randomization is worthless. Not just that they might have access to the original MAC of the wifi interface, what about the MAC of other interfaces like the cellular data interface or ethernet (over USB, when its supported), and then theres tons of other info too by which they can identify the device.
Well, if your mac address changes every time you connect to a different network, Unity would be detecting and billing for a lot of false positives, so it would be a bad method to identify unique devices.
If I buy a new computer, they shouldn’t be charged again because I installed on the new machine.
his is ignoring the “we don’t collect personal data” but “we will definitely know if you install it once or multiple times “we have ways””
There is still a lot of questions. How many components can I change and it still be the same computer and not a new computer? If I replace one component every two months after about a year I’ll have a new computer I’ve kind of ship of Theseused may way to a new rig. At what point would I have to buy a new licence?
If I don’t ever have to buy a new licence in that scenario why do I have to buy a new licence if I buy a new computer outright, it’s functionally the same difference.
The MAC address is the address of the network card, which can be either built into the motherboard, or on a replaceable card… so if that was the only thing they tracked, you could replace everything except that… unless you have a network card with an editable MAC (they don’t need to be unique worldwide, only on the network they directly connect to).
Microsoft seems to use a slightly different system, where they’d generate a sort of hash for all the components, then allow a limited number of changes per year, so you can change the while computer a limited number of times a year… but they call home all the time.
My phone at least has a setting where I can choose what it does regarding a MAC address.
It can either use a randomised MAC address or it can use the MAC address of the router itself (can’t really see why you’d ever want to do that). So while I am sure traditionally the MAC address comes from the network card it’s clearly not the only way to derive one.
Also I’m almost positive that I went to change my graphics card and that changed my MAC address. It was years ago so I can’t remember the details but I remember it causing some problems with some work software until I realised that’s what had happend and just remapped the licence.
The MAC address is the Ethernet address of a network card endpoint, whether fixed or not. Multiple network cards, multiple MAC addresses. A single network card can also respond to more than one MAC address, or use randomized ones like in the case of your phone. They still tend to come with a factory fixed one, that is just used as a default when nothing else is changing it.
That’s… are you sure is what it says? There are MDM managed networks where a router can push an MDM profile to a device, and set its MAC that way, maybe it’s something like that?
A graphics card “shouldn’t” have a MAC address… unless it has an output which can push Ethernet traffic (FireWire, HDMI HEC, etc.). A bit weird to have a licence locked to the GPU’s whatever-port MAC, but possible.
You’re asking all the same questions we asked 15 years ago, when DRM started limiting installs on games like BioShock.
Guy just sank the ship
Seems like every tech company lately
I’m not sure why they hired him.
“Hey we’re looking for a new captain, why don’t we go for the guy who repeatedly sails into rocks? He’ll be good.”
Unfortunately a story as old as Wall Street. CEOs designed and hired to kill companies are a thing.
Meaning that this is on purpose? If so, who would profit from this? (besides the incompetent CEO themselves)
Short sellers, and the corporation that absorbs them at bargain prices.
Unity: Everyone really seems to hate EA
Also Unity: Let’s hire the CEO of EA
🤦
It may have been more like:
Unity: “We love money and hate our customers, who can we hire to realize that vision?”
EA CEO: “Finally, a job that understands me”
Ftfy
Key bit feels like “can we trust their algorithm”
It’s hard to enforce a “just trust me, this is what you owe”
If there was a foolproof way of checking for a pirated copy they wouldn’t be making a game engine they’d be making DRM