*Warning, this ones big. It’s a huge subject that I personally feel very passionate about, I hope it’s a good read, though very long.
Copy protection has always been something of a controversial subject for gamers, but why is this? Is it because gamers (and by gamers I actually mean PC gamers, just because you’ve played Halo and Call of Duty on your Xbox doesn’t mean you’re a gamer) are totally uptight whiny little bitches? Admittedly they are, but there’s something more than just that. The copy protection con that causes so much grief and hassle for the PC population goes far back, back to a point beyond time itself, okay it doesn’t, but lets start with somewhere near the beginning.
Copy Protection has been around for as long as my little mind can remember, it’s always been there. And as soon as copy protection was made, some guy went “fuck this, it’s shit” opened it al up, tore it to piece and bang, pirating. Now pirating is a term slapped on anyone who downloads anything, but no one questions why they are downloading, why is it they would rather download something than pay for it in a correct manner? Now I’m no expert here, and according to the ‘experts’ people download simply because it’s “free and easy”. But to be fair, it’s not exactly free and easy, you pay for the internet connection, you spend ages (especially if you’re on shitty Virgin Media and their disgraceful bandwidth limits) for the download to finish, then you have to go about installing it and cracking the copy protection. Something that is rather simple, but considering 90% of computer users don’t know the different between RAM and a Hard Drive, it’s hard to contemplate that those people could ever do such a thing.
The first time I came across pirating was on the Amiga, those floppy disks were so damn easy to copy, but why is it people bought copies? Well, first things first, the price. I don’t know how many of you had the Amiga, but a brand new game could cos anything up to £60 at release day. One example, Beneath a Steel Sky, I had this, it cost my dad nearly £50, and to be fair, although it is a magnificent game, you can complete it in about an hour (it’s freeware now, go get SCUMM and have a play). Now, I don’t know about you, but for £50 I expect full blown sex, and I expect it to last for more than an hour. This was the same story for allot of the games, and allot of people turned to piracy for the much less cost heavy option, and can you blame them? £50 was a weeks food shopping for my family back then (I’ll just point out that I did actually own Beneath a Steel Sky, don’t sue me please), to think of spending that on an hours worth of ‘entertainment’ is absurd! When asked about prices, every publisher and developer has always said the same thing, “Pirating costs us allot of money, we have to gain that money back”. So, the games were pirated from the release day of the console to such an extent that you in fact had to raise the price to a stupid amount to recoup losses of money you never actually made? Right, that sounds like bull shit to me. Thing is with these money grabbing idiots is they seem to think that these pirates may have actually bought the game. Wrong, if someones going to download or copy games, they’re gonna do it, nothing you can ever do is going to make them buy it. Counting the pirated downloads and classing it as “money lost” is stupid, it isn’t money lost, you never had it and you never will, then making it worse for yourself by upping the cost of genuine purchases is just, well, moronic. Lets just say the Amiga isn’t around anymore.
So, back to PC and the modern world, is it easier now to download illegal games than ever before? Well that’s what publishers keep saying, so of course if you’ve never done this sort of thing you’d probably think “yeah, they’re right”. Well let me tell you, they’re not. Over the past 13 years (I remember when google didn’t exist! Shocking!) nothing has changed on the pirating front. Games are cracked in the exact same way as they were 10 years ago. If you’d like to know how, search google. More people are, how ever, downloading illegally, but as I’ve just stated, it isn’t because it’s easier to do or that they’re easier to get a hold of (if you know where to look, you can find anything). So, why are people downloading illegally? Well, I’ll go through the two most common copy protection systems and tell you the reasons people hate them.
‘Please insert the Disk and Start the Program again’
This is the common message for a CD locked program. Basically, when you start the game, the game is told check the CD drives (if you have more than one it tends to take a while as they check them all), if it doesn’t find a disk with a corresponding file it simply refuses to launch, showing the message in this sub header. So in theory, if you don’t have the disk you can’t play, good idea, works for consoles, right? Well it doesn’t work for consoles as they can be cracked (or chipped as it’s commonly refered to) very easily, but that’s a different story. But what happens is, you create your own disk, this sometimes doesn’t work, depending on what program is used for protecting the software. When making your own disk fails, you simply find what is known as a ‘No CD Crack’. All this is, is a modified version of the games executable file (it’s the file that makes everything work) and the cracker modifies the coding that tells it to check for a disc. Once it’s replaced the original file, it no longer looks for a disc and runs just like a legitimate version, except you don’ need a disc.
So why do people dislike this? I personally don’t mind too much, popping a disc in and out of your PC can be a pain in the arse, but there is another reason. At set intervals the game will check the Disc drive to see if the disk is present, on a PC the entire game is on the hard drive, there’s absolutely no reason to keep checking the disk, it isn’t needed. So all that happens is your disk gets worn out rather quickly. So far in my collection of PC games these disc have worn to the point of having cracks (yes, cracks due to the game constantly checking for them and constantly spinning them): Oblivion, STALKER, Black and White 2, Halo, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Doom 3. Doesn’t seem allot, but these all happened whilst I had no internet connection and couldn’t get No CD Cracks for them. This is the time space of about 6 months, it doesn’t happen to all games, but as you can see, it’s happened to a fair few. So that is one very good reason not to have a disk in your drive. Another good reason is that it often prevents you from making a back up disk. Here in the UK our law states you can copy any software disk you physically own as a personal back up. Games publishers releasing this copy protected disc are in fact breaking the law by trying to prevent us from making back up discs (the above being a very good reason for making such discs) giving us an alternative of “send us £7 and we’ll send you a new disc”. Piss off, the game only cost a fiver! And a disc only costs 50p, I’ll make my own thanks you money grabbing see you next Tuesdays!
Anyway, this method of copy protection is so dated now and so easily circumvented that it simply becomes a minor nuisance, in fact, it’s not even that, it’s just part of the installation process. Circumventing the copy protection actually protects your rights to copy the software (once according to british law) and your disc from unnecessary damage.
‘Online activation is required to play this game’
This was the all time classic of gamer rebellion. The first game I ever saw this in was Bioshock. I was pissed when it didn’t work (mean while my friends that had stolen it illegally had completed it) and was furious when they told me I can only install it twice. I’m a heavy PC gamer (and consoles too, master chief is my dad) and I upgrade at least once a year, sometimes windows shouts at me for this, but it’s always solved with a quick phone call. However, If I upgraded my rig twice (after ever upgrade you should always start with a fresh install of windows, nice and clean), I would be left with out my game, forced to buy it again, doesn’t seem fair right? Now, don’t get me wrong, I see where they’re coming from, but the game got cracked before it was released, so why did the publishers torture us fair paying customers? Granted, they apologised for the activation servers not working, but why on earth would they do that in the name of something that they knew would be hacked to pieces in a matter of hours? 2K eventually upped the activation limit to 5 and not so long ago removed it completely (you good little sausages, I’ll buy your games again now) but you still require online activation on install, it just doesn’t limit you anymore.
Spore, now this game is a classic, it’s a brilliant game, but EA made one mistake, they treated their customers like thieves. They used the online activation stuff that Bioshock did, only this time people were ready for it (2k hid the fact that Bioshock needed activation for ages, EA didn’t). Together, the gamers united, no more were they going to take this bull shit from dick head publishers who thought that every single person on the planet was a pirate, no more were they going to bend over and take it quietly in the rectum, the gamer fought back. On release day, Spore became the fastest downloaded gae in history. More people downloaded it than actually paid for it (my mum bought me the Galactic Edition as a gift, awe, aint she sweet), together they hit amazon and gave poor reviews with all their might, forcing spore down to a single star and being one of the poorest rated games on all of amazon. EA could do nothing but stand and watch as gamers rebelled against them, doing what they said they would. EA made a big mistake, they forgot the golden rule of the market place, th customer is always right, the customer, is God. So what happened? Well nothing, EA basically said “fuck off” but in slightly more words, just proving even more how little they respect the people that pay their wages. The big headed fascist twats just released a statement saying they are displeased with gamers reactions to them trying to protect their work, again they failed to realise what it was gamers were saying, they still didn’t listen. it wasn’t untill the Sims 2 was about to be released and gamers took to arms again that EA finally realise “oh, this is probably a bad idea” and backed off slightly, returning to the above copy protection.
So why do they use this system? Well they thought pirates wouldn’t be able to fool an online server that required a unique serial number to allow activation. Again they were wrong (maybe they were miss sold this software by the companies that make it, starforce anyone?) and hackers across the globe destroyed it. You see, if something can be made, it can be taken apart, it’s a fact of all life, both physical, and none. So why do it? I still haven’t quite got my head around this one just yet, but apparently by annoying us customers to the point where we kill puppies, they’ll sell more games. I’m not sure how it works, maybe we go back to the game shop with a puppy carcass and get 20% off our next EA/2K game? Haven’t tried, yet. So why does it annoy us? Well, the online activating doesn’t annoy us, it’s the limit that comes with it. It’s not just a limit on how many times you can install it, it practically limits how many times you can upgrade your rig and keep the game. Lets just say, I’ve had my Galactic Edition of Spore since it came out, to this day the serial hasn’t been used to activate it and it won’t be used untill they fully lift the limit. But what puzzles me most about the whole spore thing is that they had something allot more powerful than the copy protection system and it was already built into the game, the online feature. The online feature alone is enough reason to buy the game, it’s brilliant and making it so that only legitimate copies can use the online feature would have been enough to make people want to buy it. They never needed the copy protection.
So where will gaming go in the future with all this? Well, I’m hoping it’ll go more like steam. i’ve been on steam now for ages, my username is my email address, that’s how old it is (new accounts have a user name, not an email addy). I’ve downloaded my original Half-Life (that I bought on release day in the gigantic boxes they used to be in) onto god knows how many computers and right now I have my steam games on about 3 different computers so I can play them when ever (at my mums, my girl friends, freinds). It’s great, sure, steam was unstable and quite honestly it was shite, but it’s changed allot this past few years and now, I can’t complain about it too much. Some times it still has stupid issues that screw things up, but most of the time, it’s okay. Systems like this is where the future is. EA’s attempt at a Steam system required you to pay every time you wanted to download your game again. Err, yeah right, I buy the game, uninstall the game, then I have to buy the game again? I don’t see their logic, oh wait, yes I do, money.
So, is piracy harming developers? In all honesty I say no, it isn’t. Sure, there may be more people downloading illegally, but these people would probably never bought the game anyway. Plus, if they made something good that made you want to buy the game, you would.
A Shining Beacon of Light
Many people are about to call me sad, and so they bloody well should. I play X3. I’d never played a space sim before, but about 2 years ago I saw X3: Reunion and it caught my eye, I got interested, looked it up on the net, watched some vids and thought, sod it, I’ll give it a go. It was great, but it wasn’t only the game that I found fantastic, it was the community. Inside the X3 website is a huge, fantastic group of people from all walks of life that join together to share stories, mods, videos and pictures of their X3 experience (no pun intended). It’s fantastic, one of the biggest gaming communities I’ve ever seen (minus World of Wankcraft©®™) and it’s constantly alive with people. Now, you might think this is unusual, but go have a look at the official forums for other games, 6 months down the line, they’re dead and you can guarantee the developers don’t come along and talk to you or comment on how awesome they think your mod is. just look at the Sims 3, it’s full of these idiots called gurus who have no technical knowledge paid to lock and delete threads that EA don’t like the looks of. That isn’t a community, that’s a fascist concentration camp, but online.
Egosoft has done something amazing, something no other developer I can think of has done, they’ve joined with the community and made an online home for their wonderful game. Not only that but they’re constantly adding to their game to make it better, similar to what they do for MMORPG’s, but they do it for free and for the love they have for their customers, not to get fatter wallets. They know that we’ve paid for their dinner today, and as such, they respect us and show their appreciation with gifts of extra game content (if Microsoft cared about you, they’d do the same, but they always want your money, and far to much of it, £3 for an ingame T-Shirt?! I just hope they aren’t made in sweat shops).
But what the hell does that have to do with Copy Protection? Well, X3: Reunion has no copy protection. You stick the disk in, install it, then nothing. In fact, I left my disk in thinking it was needed, untill one day I didn’t, went to take the disc out and discovered it was never in there in the first place. But you see, their lack of copy protection hasn’t harmed their sales, their game or their community simply because they have something that’s worth paying for. They realise that people who are going to steal, will steal, there’s no point pissing off genuine customers, just like in physical life, the shop alarms catch the odd shop lifter that isn’t smart, but most of the time it just annoy legitimate customers who get caught by mistake. X3: The Terran Conflict is the latest addition, it had CD Protection on release, but Egosoft always promised that later on they would remove it with a patch and they have. The latest patch (coming out soon) adds extra content to the game and removes the copy protection. It’s a sign of trust between themselves and us, the people who buy the games. It’s respect and acknowledgement that not all of us are thieving swines. Go have a look at the X community (http://www.egosoft.com/), there’s 332,888 registered members and a grand total of 2,860,194 articles and ther’s always around 200 people online, all the time. That’s pretty impressive, and what’s more impressive is the devs, their love and passion for the game, but also the community.
Copy Protection isn’t going away, sure it’s useless, but publishers seem to think it makes a difference. Devs like Egosoft have no need for copy protection, they’re giving us something worth paying hard earned money for. Just think how much more other games would sell if they gave the same service and above all, respect.
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