Sony seems prepared to unleash a new tool in its never-ending battle against game pirates, using measured load times, of all things, to detect certain illegitimate copies of its games.
Sony's patent for "Benchmark measurement for legitimate duplication validation" was filed way back in August 2011, but it was only published by the US patent office late last week. The patent describes a method for a system that would measure load times for games loaded into a system against a previously measured threshold for what those load times ought to be on a standard, unmodified game and system:
For example, if an authentic game title is distributed exclusively on [Blu-ray discs] having a total benchmark load time of 45 seconds on a game console BD drive, the acceptable range of load times could be from 40 to 50 seconds. Thus, a total measured title load time of four seconds would be outside of the acceptable range of total load times for a legitimate media type.
Even if the pirated media results in similar overall load times to the original media (if a hacker added an intentional delay, for instance, or if a pirated game on a hard drive loaded similarly to an authentic game on a flash drive), the method described in the patent also measures load times for individual segments of the game code to detect fraudulent copies.
As described, the system depends on the different rotational delays for different media types to detect illicit copies. If a pirate managed to make a whole-disc copy of a Blu-ray disc game to another Blu-ray disc, the identical load times would presumably be undetectable by this method.
But the patent also describes a secondary validation method that would compare a game's serial number to some database of valid, active serial numbers. This system could also look for duplicate serial numbers to detect "a single serial number that has been registered in conjunction with multiple products, or that has been contained in the collected user identification information of multiple unique users." Besides preventing pirated games, this part of the method could also conceivably be used to detect and block games purchased secondhand from being played, though Sony has publicly stated that the PlayStation 4 won't have any such restrictions.
Other console makers have used physical methods to try to prevent piracy in the past. Microsoft releases its Xbox 360 discs in a proprietary "Xbox Game Disc" format that can't be copied directly to commercially available blank DVDs. Nintendo used an exclusive mini-DVD format for the GameCube to similarly thwart pirates, though it wasn't long before hackers got around that issue.
Even with the patent application (which has yet to be granted), it's not clear this kind of anti-piracy system will actually be used in the PlayStation 4 or any current or future Sony hardware. Still, the patent itself shows Sony is thinking outside the box for ways to thwart piracy going forward.
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