geh impossible to duplicate they said? i think not -.-

Gee, didn't see that coming. Sony fails yet again.

Wow, maybe they should've opted for some extra security device? I mean, I have an (imported) e-card reader somewhere for my GBA and Gamecube.

Maybe a compacter deviced shouldve been used to first register your cards into you PS3 memory before actually using them in game?

if tho people can do this, it still wont work. if this game is online you can see if the other persons card looks real or not, because it has to go on screen.

Who knew people would try to cheat!

Cue Homer in the movie theater: "HAAAAAHHHAAAAAHAHAHAHAHHAH!!!!!!

Yeah that's how I feel.lol

Felt tip markers! Sheesh! Way to QA guys. Did no one even attempt to try and cheat the camera before going gold? I wonder what their methods were.

This is sad...huge coverup? or did QA somehow drop the ball on this one?

Huzzah!

Its kinda like how back in the days of "Bar code battlers" if you were patient enough you could design your own barcodes with random lines and such.

I figured this system worked in the same way, and this post confirms it. :/

JOY!

*no Im not really happy about this*

Felt tipped markers? I'd cry if I wasn't bracing for someone to declare crayons work as well...

@Netnavi: jinx, double-jinx, to the infinity.

"simply drawing out the basic identifying shapes by hand with a couple of colored felt-tipped markers."

hahahaha, if this is true then someone (probably a team of someones) seriously screwed up, not sure how they possibly could have made such a big mistake.

@Kaji: Id assume if you can get it dark enough for the camera to pick up, anything will work.

---

As much as I love "free market" and Ill with the gaming industry, I prefer situations where both the consumers and producers win. One sided situations of either are bad for the industry in general.

This reminds me of the old 'Magic Marker' trick to get around certain CD or DVD encryption that Sony spent millions of dollars developing.

Sony just needs to buy out Sharpie and shut down all marker production, since it's destroying their copy protection schemes.

drm is the new snake-oil.

I'm guessing cards will have ultra/rare/ rare common tendancies. I guess the true hardcore fanatics will want the original. I'm sure it won't hurt the business.

I remember doing something like this playing magic...

I took a basic land and wrote "serra angel" ha ha this was before 3rd edition was well established.

Its only a matter of time till someone makes a site where you can just print out every card. ._.

Nice work Wizards. >_>;

.......AND LORWYN IS LAME!!! ;~;

that's interesting tho, it recognizes the patterns.

I'm guessing there's going to be a DIY guide pretty soon for all the cards.

Well of course they are gonna say the cards are impossible to duplicate, why would they say "yea just grab some markers and make your own?" I doubt they could ever make them impossible to copy unless they did something like the e-card reader.

Still people well see your fake cards and not play with you.

@TheRebellion: Unless people get banned from PSN for this, it's not likely that a lot of people will care. The best thing they can do at this point is implement a reporting system where you hit a button to report that takes a screenshot for proof.

You know, it looks like a fun game, I saw one of my friends playing it and I was like "Holy Shit that looks sweet!"

I'm not really turned off as much as some of these fanboys are. Not only that, It looks like if you get the best beefed up card, it takes up resources that you are supplied with. So it doesn't really matter if you are cheating. You still have to play by the rules.

But what if your drawings are Impressionistic? Does the camera recognize the colour strokes??

@chiablo: LMAO!

While Im all for proxy decks where people want to test out shit, Im not for all those "new" folk who are most likely the breed of "free (illegal) downloads of various games and music assuming its their god given right) who will be playing with no care as to the repercussions it will have on the games longevity.

Oh yeah in my profile I think I have my PSN name added for anyone who feels like playing. Although I still know fuck-o about what Im doing in the game itself, since Ive only messed around with it for 2 hours yesterday.

@Spartan1308: uh you can't really tell if they are using fake cards since I don't believe you can see their actual physical cards.

@chainlink13: You thought the same thing? You forgot Jinx, you owe me a soda!

@Spartan1308: I think the banned route sounds like a good deal...but oh boy...there's one PS3 owner (out of what like 5 of us?) that might get upset and disown his (or hers) console. Good riddance, the damn thief!

Sad to see such a promising idea dying such a horrible death, but this latest IS pretty hilarious. It's bad enough you can fake them with lo-rez scan and a desktop printer; when they can be faked by hand, someone needs to be fired, Futurama style, from a cannon, into the sun.

its exactly what i expeted, no matter how much raw power the ps3 has, we are still very far away from seen programs/games that can recognize COMPLEX forms trough a camera...

More copy protection could also mean harder for the cam to detect. It's the same as all copy protection, it always comes as a cost. Most people playing this would probably like to collect the cards anyways.

@Netnavi: Haha...holy crap, I heard about this today at work: "Jinx, poke, you owe me a Coke". What the hell, I'd never heard of that before in my life...although I'm only 24, and she's like almost 40. Holy hell. What an auspicious day.

@TheRebellion: I have the game in front of me, but have been too distracted by the absolutely superb Zack and Wiki on the Wii to play it yet. As I recall the cards - when being used in a multiplayer game online - are scanned into the camera before hand, then displayed (as your deck) onscreen. I'm pretty sure the opposing gamer never gets to see your REAL cards as such. This is to prevent you 'pretending' to draw cards from the top of the deck but instead having them off to the side of the camera then declaring "wow how lucky am i look what was on top of the deck!" and producing some kinda killer card.

Even though copies are possible obviously, the actual game experience doesn't change that much. You are still limited by what the game draws for you from your scanned deck (albeit perhaps the very finest cards), and two high quality decks are pretty equal. It's similar to the WoW card game - having masses of EPICS and RARES doesn't help you beyond giving you an excellent starting choice. It's not as if you can use every single EPIC all at once and actually win any game like that - or so I understand.

I imagine something must have gone down between Sony and Wizard, because the copy protection for this game is absolutely pathetic. I'm pretty sure very early on Wizard must have been told Sony would be putting very little marketing behind it or something - hence Wizard pulled out of developing an expensive anti-copying system. Just a thought.

I like the idea of EoJ. But it's not my kind of game. I think Konami should look at this and use it for Yu-Gi-Oh!

I think this game will have a clut classic but won't be really popular.

internet is smart, man, you exec sould not pretend to pass ugly lame protection schemes. stuff has to be engineered so this will not hurt the core business, and stuff.

good luck with this game, i support innovative gameplay, and this one game graphics look really nice to me.

EoJ FTW!

Actually, the notion that this won't hurt the company are a bit off. Why in their right mind, would anybody play somebody in a Magic game if that person's deck was made entirely of proxies? They wouldn't be allowed to do that and people wouldn't want to play it. The number of collectors for something like this will always be smaller than the number of players and I for one am now questioning my decision to buy this as I actually bought the whole thing for the game. Might have to hold off on buying cards until I see what if anything they do about this.

I think if they did use a camera that could pick up complex patterns and such, even more so people wouldnt touch the game due to the price.

Don't just ban em' lock out their consoles!

I'm afraid this game is broken. I was joking yesterday when I said that Sony would unleash the Arbiters of Judgment, but who knows.

First cheaters in Warhawk, now cheaters in this. Unless they fix it, I'm not sure I'm buying it, and this was honestly one of the reasons I wanted a PS3.

Also, I caught when people say that technically because of the card restrictions, this doesn't hurt the game. Again drawing on my Magic experience, when there is no cheating, people have to use a combination of both cards and skill to win the game. When people have access to all the cards at once, it really defeats the entire purpose of the game.

Why would I want to play somebody who has access to every single card in the game, while one card won't let you win, do you really thing having 30 of the best available cards against a mixture of a starter deck and a few boosters is fair?

At least for now you cant copy a PS3 game and play it on the console, you cant say the same for the 360 and the Wii, the torrent site and the newsgroup already have all the games before their release date.

Time to try random patterns of black blocks and try to unlock some secret cards?

@Witzbold: They do not need military level protection, just something a step up from bar codes. The system would still be cracked, but at least it would not be this easy, and the harder something is the fewer people there will be to take advantage of it.

@Ultraseamus: As wise as a comment as they come, bravo!

@Hengst2404:

Wouldn't you be able to see if they're using fake cards or not?

Again, I don't think we should publicize piracy issues like this. If it wasn't posted here, a lot less people would know about it. You might as well post about every piracy threat out there. Obviously Sony had to say it was impossible to break, and even more obvious was the fact that people were going to break it.

@Hengst2404: I really think the whole setup where people can buy their way into a better position in the game is stupid. If I'm going to play a competitive strategy game, there should be a level playing field. My suggestion above about the screenshot thing is just an idea that I thought might be in the works. I don't actually think it would be so horrible for everyone to have access to all the cards. That's the only way it would really be a "fair" game. I'm not into card games anyway, so it really doesn't matter to me.

How fun would a game of chess be if someone w/more money to put into the game could start w/8 queens on their front line instead of pawns or buy some other kind of piece that would have extra power?

@Ultraseamus: Did I ever say they needed military level protection?

Something as simple as even slapping on a special hologram sticker could have worked. But the next question is getting the camera to work with such a thing.

@VIZION No you can't tell if you are playing online. Before I was kind of upset by the copying but this is just plain said you can't base a game around such easily copyable things. Primarily people like me will just feel ripped of attempting to collect a deck to play against people with full access to all the cards from the get go.

Dumb ass Sony.

This sucks. It looked like such a cool and innovative idea. It's a shame that cheating is so easy.

@Spartan1308 How funs is a game with no possibility of expansions because they can't make any money in the cards.

@Amazing_Steve:

Yeah, this game is going to get owned by all the cheapskates. Quite sad.

cant believe people are even going so far to copy these cards..lol although this might be a wake up call to sony to revise their whole strategy for the cards in general. kinda sad to see people refusing to contribute hard earned cash to a game that seems very promising. this is like the whole copying games to disc, i remeber when that became the rage i refused to do it. as it is music and movies are constanly being pirated daily. gaming is the last thing that we have that truly needs our money in order to survive.

Maybe they should've gone with QR code.

They can see you place your cards right? Anyway, this'll be good for people who don't have money to buy booster packs and stuff.

@Volomon: Dont forget WotC. Since its not 100% sony`s doing. Im sure WotC had a large hand in the design of the game since sony doesnt exactly have a lot of experience in the TCG scene.

@Veltis: You have to mod your 360 to use those rips. This can mean running the risk of having yourself locked out of Live. I'm not sure about the Wii thing. I think you'd have to mod it now too if you have the latest firmware that which renders Freeloader useless.

Someone seriously dropped the CTCG ball and Sony has another promising title crap out.

@Witzbold: I admit that I do not know much about cameras or recognizing light patterns, but I would think that it would not be too expensive to have a complex series of cuts in the corner of the card and have the camera read that (i would think this would be much harder to forge then a series of colors). I realize that this solution would have issues, and may not even be possible, but my point is that with a little bit more time in R&D would surly have saved them large amounts of money in the end. I am not sure about the general public, but knowing that people can easily cheat in a game has ruined many games for me.

I'm still lost on the part where this destroys the game for other players? Sure, you've "stolen" all the cards by copying them off the internet, but you still have to deal with the rarity rules ("only 1 of this card allowed," or the even more restricting "1 of this species").

You still have to draw the cards.

You still have to have the skill to use them properly (says the guy that just last evening summoned a fire creature onto a water panel and watched it promptly die).

Does the download/print/copy of cards screw Wizards/Sony? You bet, and I won't be doing it as I dig having the cards in hand. Do you believe that nobody ever realized this would happen? Do you really, really believe that? Because if you do, you are as dumb as the guy who thinks pumping his deck full of rares and powerful creatures will make him teh win.

The game is a blast and cheating does not necessarily help you in any way. There is no one "win" card. The CPU still shuffles/draws for you in online matches. And most matches are won by using small 1 mana creatures rather than the big heavy rares. Is card copying a problem? Sure. Is it one that will doom the game? I doubt it.

If playing fair means I have to buy 4 dollar booster packs, then I don't care - lets me support a game I truly enjoy.