DaCoder:

Thank you all for engaging in the thread.

Oscar K:

/me decompiles the .ccgame, extracts the key generating algorithm and publishes it on the InterWebs! Ooops, there goes any possibility of content filtering.

Security through obscurity is never the answer! And as XNA does not allow any more secure cryptography, one should not try!

You didn't expect this would be so easy, did you?

1) No one would give you a .ccgame that is not obfuscated and no one would give it to you at all - games downloaded from Live can not be read and decrypted easily

2) No one is allowed to do as you tell (ie hack the game) and it would be against the law to do so

3) All Live communications are encrypted nad protected with strong algorithms

4) To enforce additional protection, the game would connect only to a specific gamertag, selected in menu - you can query Live for a specific's host session

Oscar K:

DaCoder:

Thank you all for engaging in the thread.

Oscar K:

/me decompiles the .ccgame, extracts the key generating algorithm and publishes it on the InterWebs! Ooops, there goes any possibility of content filtering.

Security through obscurity is never the answer! And as XNA does not allow any more secure cryptography, one should not try!

You didn't expect this would be so easy, did you?

1) No one would give you a .ccgame that is not obfuscated and no one would give it to you at all - games downloaded from Live can not be read and decrypted easily

2) No one is allowed to do as you tell (ie hack the game) and it would be against the law to do so

3) All Live communications are encrypted nad protected with strong algorithms

4) To enforce additional protection, the game would connect only to a specific gamertag, selected in menu - you can query Live for a specific's host session

I was a little tipsy last night (hence the callous yet amusing post), but nonetheless I'd like to reply to your counter-arguments:

1) As already mentioned I can simply obtain your .ccgame during peer review. Alternatively it is very possible to connect your Xbox 360 HD to your computer and copy across the retail version. This version is of course encrypted with Microsofts Private key, so I could not make changes and still expect the game to run, but I can decompile to look for the key generating algorithm.

2) Reverse engineering is actually not a crime in most countries. In this scenario the only illegal act is distibution of copyrighted material (your key generating algorithm). Additionally I would argue that anyone that would go to such lengths would either ensure his/her anonymity or not care about the consequences.

3) This is true, but completely besides your point. Your proposed game design does not utilise the security of LIVE (instead security through obscurity) and that re-enforces my point.

DaCoder:

I didn't know you have to send .ccgame, I thought games during peer review are downloaded from Live directly onto XBox which I believe has protections that don't let you read the data. I have abandoned the password concept for the peer review needs anyway so it doesn't matter.

You don't get a CCGAME when downloading on Xbox 360. At that point they've already decompressed the CCGAME and done whatever they need to in order to support stopping and resuming downloads. However that doesn't change the fact that you'll still somewhere have an EXE and/or DLL files. I don't know the challenge of getting them off an Xbox 360 HDD, though, without modding the system.

Indeed I think you should consider reconsidering the idea. There are so many factors:

1) How long will the hardware last?
2) How long are you really willing to keep entering this data?
3) Can you actually prove to reviewers that you are unable to inject inappropriate data (this is the big one).
4) Is it really even necessary for your game?

I can't see any way of you achieving that third point and without it, I'm confident you'll get some failures as that's a big hole for you to get around the prohibited content. Sure your game would just get pulled in that case, but it's always better to prevent than to react. I would advise you to strongly think about this and see if it's really worth all the work to get it running and keep it running.

This sounds a lot like a conversation that was going on in the Penny-Arcade forums about a very similar idea of user-content sharing.

Oscar K:

DaCoder:

I didn't know you have to send .ccgame, I thought games during peer review are downloaded from Live directly onto XBox which I believe has protections that don't let you read the data. I have abandoned the password concept for the peer review needs anyway so it doesn't matter.

Your gamertag locking mechanism will not work either. Whilst Xbox LIVE enabled gamertags are enforced to be unique, the same is not true for local accounts. There is nothing stopping me creating a local account of the same name and using it to inject content into my version of the app, ready for sharing. This type of attack will work whether you employ a server-client or a peer-to-peer distribution model.

Nick Gravelyn:

3) Can you actually prove to reviewers that you are unable to inject inappropriate data (this is the big one).

I can't see any way of you achieving that third point and without it, I'm confident you'll get some failures as that's a big hole for you to get around the prohibited content. Sure your game would just get pulled in that case, but it's always better to prevent than to react. I would advise you to strongly think about this and see if it's really worth all the work to get it running and keep it running.

I feel that there's a difference between "it's not the fault of the game if you're playing a match against a filthy-mouthed guy because we can't control what he says" and "this content that I'm broadcasting out to all of the players should be exempt from content restrictions because it's being downloaded in-game and is not in the compiled package."

The first is simply a disclaimer that protects against bad player behavior; the seconds sounds like someone who's trying to simply abuse a technicality as a way to get around content restrictions with what you (or your staff members) will be putting into the game.  What if someone wrote a game that was a simple RSS reader (to borrow the current example), and after release, broadcasted nothing but pornography?

DaCoder:

Could anybody give an official statement on how are online interactions to be rated in community games? If they are not to be rated (like eg ESRB doesn't rate them), I would need potential peer reviewer of my application to know this:)

You are not going to get one... the list of things in review and the help files with those (click the blue ?) are the official statement.

You have the opinion of your peers about how your game would be reviewed - if you choose to go ahead and you don't agree with how your game is failed (if it fails) then you can appeal to Microsoft and THEN maybe they would let the lawyers decide.

This isn't an 'online' interaction in the way that ESRB rates it anyway. Online interaction is to do with things outside the bounds of (peer) review that the PLAYERS create, be it sound/chat or content. You are a developer you are expected to follow the rules not hide behind "its as if I was a player"/

Bottom line here is that you are trying to push the boundaries of peer review to get content into your game which is not reviewed. To me that is a violation of the whole process. Whenever someone does something like this that then its a risk. So either choose to go with the risk and accept the possible consequences (which is what risk management is all about) or change your design such that the type of content you can update is something acceptable to the reviewers and doesn't break the game if one day you choose not to ever update again.

DaCoder:

Nick Gravelyn:

3) Can you actually prove to reviewers that you are unable to inject inappropriate data (this is the big one).

I can't see any way of you achieving that third point and without it, I'm confident you'll get some failures as that's a big hole for you to get around the prohibited content. Sure your game would just get pulled in that case, but it's always better to prevent than to react. I would advise you to strongly think about this and see if it's really worth all the work to get it running and keep it running.

Nick, honestly - I don't see any way to get against anybody entering prohibited content in any game that allows content creation.

Not if the users are making the content, but you are the developer. It's very easy to restrict you to following the rules; that's why peer review exists to begin with. You can't get around the rules by trying to play the user generated content card when the content isn't user generated at all; you're just injecting it into the game after launch.

The ZMan:

DaCoder:

Could anybody give an official statement on how are online interactions to be rated in community games? If they are not to be rated (like eg ESRB doesn't rate them), I would need potential peer reviewer of my application to know this:)

You are not going to get one... the list of things in review and the help files with those (click the blue ?) are the official statement.

You have the opinion of your peers about how your game would be reviewed - if you choose to go ahead and you don't agree with how your game is failed (if it fails) then you can appeal to Microsoft and THEN maybe they would let the lawyers decide.

This isn't an 'online' interaction in the way that ESRB rates it anyway. Online interaction is to do with things outside the bounds of (peer) review that the PLAYERS create, be it sound/chat or content. You are a developer you are expected to follow the rules not hide behind "its as if I was a player"/

Bottom line here is that you are trying to push the boundaries of peer review to get content into your game which is not reviewed. To me that is a violation of the whole process. Whenever someone does something like this that then its a risk. So either choose to go with the risk and accept the possible consequences (which is what risk management is all about) or change your design such that the type of content you can update is something acceptable to the reviewers and doesn't break the game if one day you choose not to ever update again.

DaCoder:

The ZMan:

DaCoder:

Could anybody give an official statement on how are online interactions to be rated in community games? If they are not to be rated (like eg ESRB doesn't rate them), I would need potential peer reviewer of my application to know this:)

You are not going to get one... the list of things in review and the help files with those (click the blue ?) are the official statement.

You have the opinion of your peers about how your game would be reviewed - if you choose to go ahead and you don't agree with how your game is failed (if it fails) then you can appeal to Microsoft and THEN maybe they would let the lawyers decide.

This isn't an 'online' interaction in the way that ESRB rates it anyway. Online interaction is to do with things outside the bounds of (peer) review that the PLAYERS create, be it sound/chat or content. You are a developer you are expected to follow the rules not hide behind "its as if I was a player"/

Bottom line here is that you are trying to push the boundaries of peer review to get content into your game which is not reviewed. To me that is a violation of the whole process. Whenever someone does something like this that then its a risk. So either choose to go with the risk and accept the possible consequences (which is what risk management is all about) or change your design such that the type of content you can update is something acceptable to the reviewers and doesn't break the game if one day you choose not to ever update again.

The fact is... I'm not going to create any additional content myself:) I told it's going to be simply copied from the internet. And to add more, users will ask for that content for themselves:)

This whole thing sounds like a potential legal nightmare. Do you have copyright or IP to this internet content that you want to pipe into the XBOX live network and distribute, that you then don't have the ability to recall? What happens if you distribute something online, and the owner asks you to not distribute it any longer, or retract it?

I personally think you need to either just forget about this idea, or fully disclose what your interested in doing. (Do you really think someone here is going to rip off your concept, and go through all these problems, as well as needing a dedicated xbox in order to do this? Also while I can't speak for the anyone else, I think the community would honestly have problems with someone that did indeed do this)

-Zenroth

Centurion Games:

Do you have copyright or IP to this internet content that you want to pipe into the XBOX live network and distribute, that you then don't have the ability to recall?

And since you can pipe the content in there is no way to prove you will have the rights to any future content you want to pipe in.

DaCoder:

The fact is... I'm not going to create any additional content myself:) I told it's going to be simply copied from the internet. And to add more, users will ask for that content for themselves:)

I wonder about the technical side of this: How are you planning to get this content into the game anyway? It is not possible to copy content from the Internet into the game, not even if you have some "master-instance" of the game running on your Xbox with special password access.
The only content you can "pipe" into the game would be content that you create in the game itself. I.e. the game would have to contain an editor that would let you create this content inside of the game.
The only feasable type of content I can think of would be pure text (or number) content, i.e. if your game contains a text input field and you plug a USB keyboard into your Xbox and type the text into the input field (copy & paste is of course not possible).
For all other kinds of content, I see not feasable way (for example, to get an image into your game, you would have to program an image painting "editor" inside of your game, and manually re-paint the image that you see on the internet - obviously not feasable...).
Or was it only text content you were thinking of (like sports stats, weather stats, stock quotes, etc.)?

Doc

The only way that immediately comes to mind is that he could make a regular Game Studio Connect game with the content he wanted, avoiding the peer review process. Then, the clients running the Marketplace version connect to that Xbox (via Gamertag or whatever) and then the content is sent out to them that way.  Can regular Marketplace games communicate with Game Studio Connect games?

Perhaps there's another way that I'm overlooking.

No once a game is approved the ID gets changed so that released games and in development games cannot communicate.

Based on the original posts he is going to manually type in the information into the system console view hidden behind a password. Then this 'server' would distribute the content. Remember a keyboard can be attached to a 360. He did say images too at one point which would be much harder to do.

The guy in the Penny Arcade forum thread was suggesting having a program that transcribed binary data into a sound file on his PC, then he would have a portion of the program in his game that would analyze the sound when played and end up with the data on the xbox.

DaCoder:

The fact is... I'm not going to create any additional content myself:) I told it's going to be simply copied from the internet. And to add more, users will ask for that content for themselves:)

Same difference. You are getting content that wasn't peer reviewed into the game. As such you have a hard process of trying to convince reviewers why we should pass a game that can potentially add offensive content without it ever being reviewed.

Zero Altitude:

The guy in the Penny Arcade forum thread was suggesting having a program that transcribed binary data into a sound file on his PC, then he would have a portion of the program in his game that would analyze the sound when played and end up with the data on the xbox.

In essence a acoustically coupled modem? That's so Wierd Science! :)

Tommy McClain

Zero Altitude:

The guy in the Penny Arcade forum thread was suggesting having a program that transcribed binary data into a sound file on his PC, then he would have a portion of the program in his game that would analyze the sound when played and end up with the data on the xbox.

Might work with a native XDK game (assuming any of that is allowed through cert), but XNA GS has no access to audio input on the Xbox 360 so there's no way for the game to hear the audio.

Zero Altitude:

The guy in the Penny Arcade forum thread was suggesting having a program that transcribed binary data into a sound file on his PC, then he would have a portion of the program in his game that would analyze the sound when played and end up with the data on the xbox.

Thats a little over complicated...  plus impossible since he 360 can't read the microphone.

SInce the 360 can read a USB keyboard all you have to do it fake one of those - I'm sure there is programmable hardware that looks just like a keyboard then stream the data using keypressed... whatever you like encoded into typable characters

The ZMan:

Zero Altitude:

The guy in the Penny Arcade forum thread was suggesting having a program that transcribed binary data into a sound file on his PC, then he would have a portion of the program in his game that would analyze the sound when played and end up with the data on the xbox.

Thats a little over complicated...  plus impossible since he 360 can't read the microphone.

SInce the 360 can read a USB keyboard all you have to do it fake one of those - I'm sure there is programmable hardware that looks just like a keyboard then stream the data using keypressed... whatever you like encoded into typable characters

In fact, I'm pretty sure you can just write yourself a USB driver that sends the scancodes. 

DaCoder:

Oscar K:

DaCoder:

I didn't know you have to send .ccgame, I thought games during peer review are downloaded from Live directly onto XBox which I believe has protections that don't let you read the data. I have abandoned the password concept for the peer review needs anyway so it doesn't matter.

Your gamertag locking mechanism will not work either. Whilst Xbox LIVE enabled gamertags are enforced to be unique, the same is not true for local accounts. There is nothing stopping me creating a local account of the same name and using it to inject content into my version of the app, ready for sharing. This type of attack will work whether you employ a server-client or a peer-to-peer distribution model.

I don't see how would you inject anything if I let clients connect to a session of type NetworkSessionType.PlayerMatch, searching by gamertag.

Oscar K:

Your application will work in one of two ways:

1. Client-server model. Every Xbox will connect to your 'server' Xbox via a specific Gamertag search. This approach has two issues: the first is that specific filtering by gamertag is not possible; the second issue is scalability - such a network topology is unsustainable beyond a small number of clients (less than 100).
2. Peer-to-peer model. Your server issues content but is distributed between peers via a peer-to-peer topology. In this case, I simply have to fake a local gamertag of the same name, allowing me to inject content onto my own Xbox. This content is then distributed as normal via peer-to-peer.

Either way the idea is unworkable!

Actually, I think the idea was to use the audio visualization APIs in XNA.  You take the data you wish to inject, transform it into an audio file (mind you, one that you'd never want to actually listen to), place it in your library, and then open the 'song' and use the visualization APIs to decode the data.

Obviously, the tricky part is the encoding. In the simplest case, you could just take the data, convert it into a binary stream, and then use that binary stream as a series of 'beats' -- which are easy to detect with the visualization APIs.  In this case, the bandwidth would be very low but hopefully you get the picture.  Throw in some Reed Solomon error correcting codes if you like.  With a better encoder/decoder, you could get better bandwidth and data density.