serial codes and online games
 

i am just curious...

you can use this serial /key generators for various games, but the minute you want to log in or register for online gaming, the key doesn`t work...

joint operation, battlefield vietnam/1942 for example.

i really would like to know, how you can pass with this key generators the copy protection but then fail on the online gaming ... how can they find out that this is not a real key?

maybe some of your professionals can enlighten me?!

I would say its because of the algorithm the key must pass. For online gameing the keys are registered i think but on the cd is only an algorithm which the key must pass. Here is an Example what I mean:

2+6 = 8 //online algorithm but:

6+2 = 8
4+4 = 8
5+3 = 8

Maybe I'm totaly wrong but this are my thougts about the online keys.

I think EA Games (for example) knows which keys are "produced" so they only let you access their server when you have one of the "produced" keys.

Yes it simply works on a 'whitelist' principle. They know what serial numbers they have issued. So when you are online it checks your serial against it's database of numbers.

Why not just use the serial/key that came with the original game you bought. It should work fine for online gaming.

I think they work on different levels. The first level is a simple algorithm, that creates a very large base of keys to choose from. The check for this simple algorithm is used in the software, so anyone can reverse engineer it and make his own key gen. The trick is, the real keys are most of the time a SUBset of the large collection that the simple algorithm generated. This uses a different algorithm, and this algorithm is closely guarded and never used in the software itself, but is used on the keycheck servers which are controlled by the publishers. So they don't need to keep a huge list of keys, they can just use the second algorithm. It's very very difficult to write a keygen for the second algorithm because 1) you don't have acces to a binary that uses it (it's only on the keycheck servers of the company) and 2) You can't test each key of the first set to see if it's a member of the second set, because almost always the ratio is 1:10000 or even worse, and the only way to check it is using the keycheck servers and believe me they will notice 10000 attempts with invalid keys.

I'm not in the know, but based on what I could gather about it this seems the most likely. Whitelists CAN be used but are very difficult to maintain and to check, even Windows XP does not use whitelists.

All in all I'm pretty much in favour of cd keys, they usually work at deterring pirates and the important thing, they are the LEAST annoying for legal customers.

I don't think the intent was asking for a serial or why one that he had wasn't working. More or so in general on why they wouldn't work, somewhat of a adetailed analysis.

Ah! that makes sense. ;)

that was nearly the same i said.