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.
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
Spiders: "We're going to cut straight to the chase so you're not left wondering: After a long period without clear answers, we have received confirmation that Spiders is being liquidated.
What does it mean? This means the company as a whole no longer exists. We'll cease our functions immediately. The planned DLC will release via Nacon, and then-- well, that's it.
We're sorry that it's come to this and would like to thank each and every one of you for your support over the years.
If you have any questions or run into issues with your games, please contact Nacon directly as we'll no longer be able to reply."
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.
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.
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.
Game Quality and movie quality is to big reason for piracy. PC Games are Cracked the day they come out now a days, Maybe these Companies should stop worrying about there Piracy Protection and more about Quality... Let's Take GTA 4, I still made it's money back Plus, even with about 500,000 downloads.... It's cost me a family of 4, 50-60 bucks to see a movie, not saying if the movies any good or even worth the money, The Prices of Games and movies are way to high for piracy to go way.... From what I've heard Nintendo is about to get in the piracy business making a Card for it's NDS. to play back up games.. it would be very Smart.. can't beat them join them.. they know there system better then anyone... Piracy won't be stoped but if the games are cheaper, people would buy again
So I could care less