Gaming Piracy

Soldato
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In-depth article by Koroush Ghazi of TweakGuides.com on piracy in gaming. Talks about both console and PC piracy, but the subject gets brought up a lot here so I thought this would be the best place for it.

Important quote from the article.

You can skip straight to whichever section of the article interests you, but I recommend reading the entire article from start to finish at some point despite its length, as every section contains important information, and the arguments and data spread throughout this article form a complete picture of piracy. Taking small portions of the article out of context in some sort of half-hearted attempt at debasing it is meaningless. If your only interest in reading the article is to quickly skim through it to see if it supports your preconceived notions of piracy, then you're probably better off not bothering with it in the first place.
 
i was a long term member of tweakguides forums before they closed down recently and can vouch for Koro's guides and articles as being a great read.

thanks for the headsup :)
 
Really interesting article, at this point in time I am about halfway through. So far it angers me a bit when it talks about PC vs Consoles, becasue in makes so much sense, but also shows that PC Gaming is quite likely to go downhill. The fact is that my own opinion (note I say opinion) is that although piracy is there and is defintately having an impact on sales, I don't think it is as free from consoles as developers seem to be making out. I would be interested to know if it is easier to program for a console (Gut feeling = it is, due to the lack of hardware difference in the platform) which would lead me to concur cost cutting and laziness from the developers' part. DRM also = bad news, but I'll post more on that later when I read what this article has to say...

Thanks for the heads up mr sly.
 
I'm slightly confused by this article. I havn't bought a PC game in a long time (Not because I pirate them; because my PC is junk) but it seems this 'DRM' thing on retail games may limit the amount of times you can install them? Is that right?
 
I'm sure nvidia and ati will not be too happy to see major game development move over to consoles! I wonder how many graphics cards were sold because of the game crysis?
 
Looks interesting. Will read it a little later with an open mind.

This thread will probably turn into an arse sandwich though.

I'm sure nvidia and ati will not be too happy to see major game development move over to consoles! I wonder how many graphics cards were sold because of the game crysis?
Because pixies and witchcraft power consoles!

:p
 
Excellent article, good to see some decent research into the issue and well presented.
I'm slightly confused by this article. I havn't bought a PC game in a long time (Not because I pirate them; because my PC is junk) but it seems this 'DRM' thing on retail games may limit the amount of times you can install them? Is that right?
The idea is to limit the number of simultaneous installs, so they normally decrement the count when a game is uninstalled. The main issues with that is when it can't be uninstalled, due to a hardware issue or borked Windows for example.
I'm sure nvidia and ati will not be too happy to see major game development move over to consoles! I wonder how many graphics cards were sold because of the game crysis?
Probably not that much, seeing as though they supply the graphics chips for the consoles as well.
 
I'm slightly confused by this article. I havn't bought a PC game in a long time (Not because I pirate them; because my PC is junk) but it seems this 'DRM' thing on retail games may limit the amount of times you can install them? Is that right?

Some DRM does some doesn't DRM ranges from something to stop you just copying the disk, to needing a cd in the drive, or a serial number, to the one that was planned fr spore which would contact a server every few days, so if you didn;t have the internet it would call you a thief and not let you play.

Wonderfully though spore, had some of the strictest DRM ever, limiting installs etc and is now the most pirated game in history.

Bethesda's way is best simple key check, don't even ask for the disk after install.
 
I'm sure nvidia and ati will not be too happy to see major game development move over to consoles! I wonder how many graphics cards were sold because of the game crysis?

Well they make chips for the consoles to, so yeah they're ecstatic they just massively expanded their markets.



Edit: has the ps3 been cracked properly yet?
 
Well they make chips for the consoles to, so yeah they're ecstatic they just massively expanded their markets.


You read the article? The guys talking about ten's of millions of units shipped by nvidia (add in graphics cards). Yeah your right though they wouldn't miss those sales? Think of the price of a console and the price of a top end graphics card.
 
Well they make chips for the consoles to, so yeah they're ecstatic they just massively expanded their markets.



Edit: has the ps3 been cracked properly yet?

No the ps3 hasnt been cracked yet. So hopefully they will be able to move that type of protection over to the pc and then drop their prices.
 
Edit: has the ps3 been cracked properly yet?

As far as i know, not at all. There are rumors of it being possible to somehow copy certain games to the harddrive and play it from that though i am yet to see any form of solid evidence (or any form of evidence at all for that matter)

Someone has managed to do... something to the Home application that could apparently be key to figuring out how the PS3 OS actually works so it can be cracked. However i imagine any software modifications to the operating system would be quickly dealt with in a firmware update or some such.

No the ps3 hasnt been cracked yet. So hopefully they will be able to move that type of protection over to the pc and then drop their prices.

sadly not possible without eliminating many of the advantages of owning a PC. One of the main reasons the PS3 is still secure is because it uses a closed operating system, another is that the hardware is near enough identical across all units.
 
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No the ps3 hasnt been cracked yet. So hopefully they will be able to move that type of protection over to the pc and then drop their prices.

From what i read last poart of it was you couldn;t update just part of the firm ware like xbox360, when you get new ps3 firm ware it completely overwrites the old one, so a hacker/home-brewer would need to make a whole firmware/cannibalise the old one.

And sony did get rid of the only legal justification for mod chips by making the games region free.


Also having 25GB games helps :p

Although i guess the complicated hardware, makes it much harder to write firmware for it. and the cost of failure:eek:
 
Its a good and I think a fair article.

I would have liked to of seen a bit of a mention of:
PC v Console pirating and the difference. while I agree with most of what was said i think some mention of the simplicity of console games when it comes to actually 'installing' and configuring with the often 'harder' and time consuming installation, driver update and configuration on the pc.

Also, I would have liked to of seen something about the potential correlation between those looking for pirated music/films and stumble across pirated games on the same site i.e. does downloading films increase the chances you will be downloading games.

However, I think his conclusions with respects to DRM, copy protection is pretty fair.
 
I'm sure nvidia and ati will not be too happy to see major game development move over to consoles!
It already has moved really. I'd wager the large majority, if not all, major games companies in the UK have consoles as their primary development platform.
 
Got a question that might have some interesting replies (hopefully). :) Towards the end of the article he mentions how PC gaming will never die, due the wide range of games played (Solitaire to World of Warcraft). But it's definitely going to change.

Would you care if you could only play free-to-play MMOs, casual PopCap games and flash/browser based ad supported games on the PC? And move your "hardcore" gaming to the consoles?
 
Would you care if you could only play free-to-play MMOs, casual PopCap games and flash/browser based ad supported games on the PC? And move your "hardcore" gaming to the consoles?

If free to play MMOs became more common i would be incredibly pleased and my PC would see far more use for gaming. I'm not the sort of person who would get his monies worth out of these games and am therefore put off of paying the monthly fee. Guild Wars was sub-free and i've bought every expansion its had and put more game time into it than i have any other PC game in the past few years.

So yeah, if free to play MMOs became the staple of PC gaming, i would be well involved.
 
If free to play MMOs became more common i would be incredibly pleased and my PC would see far more use for gaming. I'm not the sort of person who would get his monies worth out of these games and am therefore put off of paying the monthly fee. Guild Wars was sub-free and i've bought every expansion its had and put more game time into it than i have any other PC game in the past few years.

So yeah, if free to play MMOs became the staple of PC gaming, i would be well involved.

They're ***** tho.
 
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