BlackShark cracked on day zero :(

Topper

Topper

Topper

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Hopefully this is not a reposting but I read recently that the new high fidelity flight sim black shark which was protected (or not) by Starforce was available cracked via torrent within days of its release in Russia. Got me thinking about what steps the publishers might take next to protect us from pirates. Flight sims devs need all the support they can get but where to now for them? There's a thread on the official website about how they intend to counter the problem.


Peace
 
Farcry 2 utilized securom and was cracked and released in piracy form on the Wednesday before it's official launch date on Friday. Fallout 3 which as far as i know doesn't use any copy protection was all was also released in piracy form on the Wednesday before release.

This to me indicates, copy protection does very little to prevent piracy.

[EDIT] Meh apparently Fallout 3 does use securom, but in a far less agressive form compared to that used by Farcry 2. Still, both were available to pirates before they were released to the public.
 
as does the fact that spore is one of the most cracked games ever due to their copy protection methods (i've not got the stats to hand tbh).
 
IMO the only real way to discourage piracy on the PC at present is to build a fantastic online mode that requires a legit CD-key to play. It helped CoD4 sales and many other games like it immensely.
 
If they can crack any current Protection. What is the point in Devs paying these proction companies any money to proctect thier games. As it does not stop anyone.
 
Streeteh said:
IMO the only real way to discourage piracy on the PC at present is to build a fantastic online mode that requires a legit CD-key to play. It helped CoD4 sales and many other games like it immensely.
Click to expand...
It worked wonders for half-life, sales of which were driven massively by counter-strike of course.

That and HL was an awesome game that gamers wanted to own. I still remember getting the box from Game on release day, my hands were trembling when I opened it :). Reading the back of the CD, about intelligent AI, ground breaking graphics, gameplay and so on. I was so genuinely excited. I completed HL the weekend I got it because I played it non stop. Because, unlike any game I've played recently, I didn't want to stop playing it.
 
platypus said:
That and HL was an awesome game that gamers wanted to own.
Click to expand...

Very true, Half Life 2 was also available in piracy flavor in the first week of its release, i personally didn't even consider pirating it and neither did any of my torrent-happy friends. Make something special, and people will want to own it.
 
Remove all protection, people are going to illegally download games regardless, and as such there is no point hurting the people who buy games by putting lame restricting protection on them
 
If they released unobtrucive copy protection, it would stop many of the pirates who do it out of principle. I'm fine with buying games, my large collection shows that. CD keys have always been the way for stopping cracked versions playing online. Sure some people intrested in single player will just download it, but they would do it either way. So you may as well make it as easy as possible for the legit buyers to play so you don't force them away. As mentioned, look at Spore. And RA3's cracked and on the torrent sites now as well. Sure, Sins of a Solar Empire was torrented, but they made a ton of money from it, and thats with just a cd key protection; and you aren't even asked for the key on install, just when you try to play online.

Also, why do people use starforce? I was under the impression it was accused of breaking hardware?
 
CD-Key only, it will take away from the crackers desire to be the first and best to get it cracked.
 
I still dont get the facination with starforce but lots of publishers seem to like it. Even x3 has it i think. I remember when it was first introduced and the positively agressive and arrogant reaction of the starforce devs in responding to a lot of peoples claims that it killed their dvd players etc. They lost a lot of "freinds" during that time.
 
I think next stop will be the cloud computing method employed by MMO's, Streaming content from the internet will pretty much eliminate zero day piracy. I think we as consumers need protection from publishers at the moment, not pirates. Current copy protection just doesnt work, It causes problems for legitimate consumers and is absolutely no obstacle for pirates. Were effectively being punished for dareing to pay for it. Dont get me wrong publishers have every right to protect their IP but they aren't achieveing that at the moment they are just causing us legitimate customers a royal pain in the arse.
 
Stop selling PC games on disk. Sell all PC games through download only services requiring an account and having games locked to that account, a la Steam.

Cant remember Valve ever complaining about Pirates....
 
Skeeter said:
Stop selling PC games on disk. Sell all PC games through download only services requiring an account and having games locked to that account, a la Steam.

Cant remember Valve ever complaining about Pirates....
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That won't fix it either. HL2 was cracked as well, as have most (if not all) other steam games. Obviously, you get severely reduced functionality (No online, updating and so on) but once you have someone with a legal version of the game, they have all the files they need on their system. Just crack the exe as they would for any other game*

*At least I assume this is how the steam games were cracked, I've never looked into it.

Though the large multiplayer component of most steam games means there's not much point to cracking them anyway.
 
Skeeter said:
Stop selling PC games on disk. Sell all PC games through download only services requiring an account and having games locked to that account, a la Steam.

Cant remember Valve ever complaining about Pirates....
Click to expand...

I do believe (though I can't say for sure) that most Steam games have been cracked.
 
Streeteh said:
IMO the only real way to discourage piracy on the PC at present is to build a fantastic online mode that requires a legit CD-key to play. It helped CoD4 sales and many other games like it immensely.
Click to expand...

this

half life sales must've gone through the roof, when cs was on steam
 
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