ust to pwn pirates who try to play using illegitimate copies.

something daft already!! · 7 Sep 2009 at 17:43

This is nothing new as others have said. GTA4 had the drunk effect IIRC.

Jay662 · 7 Sep 2009 at 17:43

A little bit late!

Just after the game was leaked the fix was out a couple of hours later!!

sniffy · 7 Sep 2009 at 17:44

Richie said:
Anti-piracy measures may be configured/coded on a computer but its still a human that enters the coding and if its made by a human it can be broken by a human....

Exactly. Some of the crackers are exceptionally talented too; only ridiculously expensive measures will stop them cracking the SP aspects of games.

They need to stop screwing legitimate customers and make good games with online content. They can never eradicate the impact pirates have but they can reduce it.

Streeteh · 7 Sep 2009 at 17:44

Th3D0n said:
Looks like a new way to stop pirates

This is nothing new, it's simply a bad crack and will be fixed, probably before the official release too.

[EDIT] Just saw the above, looks like i was right to assume it'd be fixed.

colinuk · 7 Sep 2009 at 17:45

i am not one to say let the pirates be, they do cost the program writers and the publishing people a lot of money, but maybe if they release a playable demo it would stop a lot of people i know who get a pirate version, try it, and if they play it for more than a day, they buy the game.

What happened to good demos of games? £30-50 for somethign you have not tried is not the way to go.

Yes you will still get some people who will not buy it even if it cost 5p, but i reckon 50% of people would if they could try it for a day 1st, then pay if they like it of uninstall it. Or do the game sompanies know that the game is that bad that no one after a demo would buy it??

Just a thought.

ColiNfr.

Shamikebab · 7 Sep 2009 at 18:07

colinuk said:
but i reckon 50% of people would if they could try it for a day 1st, then pay if they like it of uninstall it.

I would be surprised if 5% did that.

HungryHippos · 7 Sep 2009 at 18:23

Let's face it, the only way to make sure games don't get pirated is to have most of the game feartures function online and keycheck that instead, you don't see people pirating WoW or such games because they need the right key to play online and the whole game is online, there is no single player.

Either that or come out with a protection method that is not crackable, though I must admit i've not seen such a method successfully used yet.

jamie2497 · 7 Sep 2009 at 18:30

Eulogy said:
Let's face it, the only way to make sure games don't get pirated is to have most of the game feartures function online and keycheck that instead, you don't see people pirating WoW or such games because they need the right key to play online and the whole game is online, there is no single player.

Either that or come out with a protection method that is not crackable, though I must admit i've not seen such a method successfully used yet.

WoW can be played for free on free servers. Which is exactly what crackers would do if they introduced this online function, just use private servers.

HungryHippos · 7 Sep 2009 at 18:36

jamie2497 said:
WoW can be played for free on free servers. Which is exactly what crackers would do if they introduced this online function, just use private servers.

This is true, but for the most part this will reduce piracy a large ammount

Also things like Steam I think are good, in itself not limiting your ability to play the games but acting as a kind of user friendly anti-piracy device. But Steam has it's downsides in the cost of some of the games. Weekend deals are normally great though.

Developers need to embrace the digital era better, offer their software for sale on the internet at a reduced cost, and they would make up in sheer numbers of sales what they might lose on individual copies.