Mon, Feb 25, 2013 | 08:28 GMT

Sony ‘load time’ patent points to PS4 anti-piracy measures – rumour

PS4 could have anti-piracy measures after all, according to an unearthed patent from Sony. Although the filing was first submitted in August 2011, it has now gone live, and suggests that PS4 could measure a game’s load time to determine whether or not the game has been acquired illegally.

Darkzero reports that the patented tech would compare the load time of a certified, legal game against that of a pirated version.

Here’s the filing’s key excerpt:

A system and method for detecting piracy of a software product that is distributed on a particular media type is described. Embodiments of the invention track a title load time of a software product that is distributed on a particular media type, and compare it against a benchmark load time for that media type. This comparison is used to detect if the title may have been illegally transferred or pirated to another, unauthorized media type.

The patent also comes with a flow chart that explains every step of the process:

It certainly sounds better than rumoured PS4 NFC tech that was rumoured to combat both piracy and preowned games by locking discs to a single console. Luckily SCEE president Shuhei Yoshida has since stated that PS4 will not block used games.

What do you make of the above rumour?

Thanks MCV.

9 comments

ps3fanboy
25/02/13, 8:45 am

i just hope someone don’t get a bad disc or get a hd replacement that read faster etc.. then your fucked.

melonbuster1
25/02/13, 8:50 am

He never said no it won’t block used games. He said he didn’t expect that I would. Plus why put out flame bait like that? they won’t approach that until either Microsoft does it first or the system is out lol.look your going to have to enter passwords for every game before you play them for the 1st time

DrDamn
25/02/13, 8:51 am

Sceptical as to whether this is practical/workable. Is there that much of a variation in pirated software? Wouldn’t it be easy enough for them to work around by ensuring parity with the original?

Talkar
25/02/13, 8:52 am

@2
You mean like CD-keys?

ps3fanboy
25/02/13, 8:55 am

there are already online passes… what more do you need???…

Myth
25/02/13, 9:05 am

Were we really thinking the PS4 would have no Anti-piracy measures, Dave?

dizzygear
25/02/13, 9:23 am

“A system and method for detecting piracy of a software product that is distributed on a particular media type is described. Embodiments of the invention track a title load time of a software product that is distributed on a particular media type, and compare it against a benchmark load time for that media type.”

This sounds like a disaster waiting to happen if sony half asses this method. Does it take error correction for scratches/dirty lenses/aging drives into account? If the HDD swappable does it also take 7200RPM or SSD’s into account?

Erthazus
25/02/13, 11:37 am

That won’t help because Piracy teams with X86 architecture can do whatever they won’t.

they just need to receive access to hypervisor and that’s it. System is done.

deathm00n
25/02/13, 1:33 pm

Lol people, do you know how to read this kind of graph? There’s a check to see if the time is acceptable, if it isn’t they “perform secondary validation” with the “user identification information” if this doesn’t pass they “block user”. I don’t think they will be blocking people with damaged media. This isn’t just to block users because of load time. The load time verification is just to help removing normal BDs from the check.