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Copy protection. Do we really need it?

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So why do game studios put such protection into their games? After all it's no surprise that so far not a single PC Game has managed to block crackers. The idea is to stop casual piracy, the type which you see in Copy that floppy. Your friend wants to play the game so you copy the CD and play it without paying the game makers; a little copy protection stops that. However at the moment we've come to a point in which the constant drive to improve copy protection is driving away PC gamers who pay for their games.
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Wayward - contributor
Published: 534 days 3 hours ago | Article | Gaming | PC | Industry News | Tech
 
 

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Alexander Roy - 534 days 6 hours ago
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Copy protection is an annoyance.
The honest customer gets f'ed in the A (i.e. SecuRom 6000 error).
Those who want to pirate do it anyway, be it that they have to wait two days longer than usual IF a more advanced protection is used.
Me? I buy the games I want to play. And then I crack them. Why? Because I am a lazy bastard that is a) too lazy to get up and change the disc and b) paranoid about his precious copy to break - data I can restore, a factory perfect copy I can't.
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Wayward - 534 days 6 hours ago
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Indeed. Plus the real de facto here is copy protection hurts no one but the legit buyers. Pirates have it all ripped out for them by the cracking teams. So far there has been no game not crackable in some form or another!
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pharmd - 534 days 3 hours ago
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you guys made some good points... I am not against copy protection but the system they have now needs to be overhauled. personally if i made or had a product out there i would want it copy protected, since its my work and it cost money....

but there is need for them to do something to NOT screw the buyers and more deter the actual theifs
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ReBurn - 534 days 2 hours ago
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I think that companies have a right to protect their intellectual property, so copy protection is something that they should have the right to do. They just need to find a way to do it that isn't disruptive or potentially damaging.

Without the hope of copy protection PC gaming would completely dry up. No company as millions to invest in a game if they know that everyone could take it for free.
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Wayward - 534 days ago
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I disagree. With copy protection would there be much of a change in piracy? I doubt it. Those will pirate will always pirate, it's best just not to count them. Don't give the pirates new features & online play and you've made it better for the customer, worse for the pirate.
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Revvin - 534 days ago
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Companies like Stardock have released games without copy protection and they have sold well, I think when publishers treat customers with some degree of respect and trust its returned. The threat of casual piracy I believe is over stated by the publishers to excuse the draconian copy protection methods they employ that only serve to hurt the legitimate buyers. The larger organised pirate groups cater for the crowd who will never buy the publisher software anyway but because of the draconian copy protection methods used the publishers are now creating a market within that market made up of gamers who will buy the software but will first often download a pirate copy to see how it runs on their system first. This I believe is because of the way demo's give a poor representation of the final product and the way publishers are often misleading with the minimum specs required to run the game at a satisfactory level.
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Revvin - 534 days 2 hours ago
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I don't have the answer to stop piracy but I know the answer is not copy protection in its current form. I understand why developers want to protect their IP but the current copy protection systems hurt the honest end user who buys the product while it takes the pirate a few minutes if not hours to remove that copy protection and distribute it over the internet.

I've seen an increase in discussions online amongst PC users where they will download a pirated copy because 1. the demo's released these days are often a world apart from the finished article and don't give the user a fair representation of the finished product and 2. they want to see how the final version runs on their PC because for years PC developers have had a 'release now, patch it later' mentality. Pc users have become accustomed to poorly optimised games being released in a rush to meet the holiday sales periods which run poorly and ruin the overall entertainment value of the game.

So what can they do? well for starters they could adopt some kind of quality control for the PC gaming format much like Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony do for their formats. While some games sometimes ship with a few problems its no the epidemic seen on the PC format. Perhaps if PC developers and publishers acted with more responsibility and integrity they would find piracy less of an issue, you'll never be rid of it completely but then the only pirate copies floating around would be going to people who would have never bought the game anyway but that in itself can help promote the game to a wider audience.
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4 Crazywhitie | 533 days 21 hours ago - User only got 1 bubble - Show
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kevnb - 533 days 20 hours ago
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5 - I dont sell video games
So I could care less
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Wayward - 533 days 18 hours ago
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Er, copy protect affects buyers more than sellers. So yes, I personally thing it's something you should care about!
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