| WilliamWatts said: Only the biggest games warrant the level of investment of time/effort into developing effective cracking sollutions, games like WOW do, games like Settlers 7 don't. So what this means is that smaller releases may never be fully cracked open as they are simply not worth the time/effort to do so. In addition to this, it means that the PC releases for large games may get even a window as small as 2 weeks in which to sell without competing with pirated releases which is quite significant as interest from genuine purchases tends to outlast a fleeting interest from the piracy community. |
Smaller games will still be cracked exactly like they do now. Companies don't come up with unique solutions for every game they produce, and smaller companies can't afford to go to the effort of producing complex anti-piracy solutions so usually end up buying the larger generic solutions anyway (or go with whatever their publisher is pushing). Once these solutions are cracked, the effort required for applying it to newer games is minor. This removes the window you are talking about, which I personally think does little to promote sales, as many (most?) of those who pirate will never buy the game anyway.
While copy protection might have been used to try to fight piracy in the past, modern copy protection (or more specifically DRM) is about restricting used game sales and tracking user usage. This is why game companies want single player games to phone home every time they are played.
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