i noticed in games forums that nowadays the gaming industry changed its approach to copyprotection in some way.
brief outline of the situation:
so they can sell many many games, gaming companies give almost all games copy protection mechanisms. those SHALL prevent people from copying the games. alas that idea has a problem:those mechanisms for protecting are fascinating themselves. this means that there are people interested in those mechanisms: they want to understand them and then test their skills to see if they can outsmart them. in my opinion this is completely understandable.i admire the brains those people have. and i am most certain that they do not care for the games at all. (plus thats what they say).if you are capable of cracking those protections, you are not the kind of guy to waste time with playing computer games.
fighting against game cracks seems to me like a battle the gaming industry will always loose in the long term.and the irony is: the people cracking it are not interested in the games. they dont play. but the gaming industry authorities did not realize that fact.
plus those copy protections are stupid:there ARE people out there that own the games and who cannot play, or have long loading/startup times because the protection mechanism do not work properly. in my opinion this is inacceptable, companies should not be allowed to do this. but thats another story.
whats new
so what the gaming industry now does:copy protections nowadays seem to come in 2 levels. first level, is this classic protection i just talked about. the game will not start if the original cd/dvd is in the drive.this is were those classic "nerds" have their play. they crack the game for the sake of cracking. now the game can be started and played.the second level of protection (and thats something new) is now implemented in the game world itself.
though the game starts, there is still some protection active: the game checks itself and tries to see if it is cracked. if so, it will just continue to work BUT will alter the game a bit. example: in the new game "drakensang" this will mean that one just cannot complete a mission.some key persons will just not appear. in "Silent Hunter 4", a submarine sim, this will mean that after some time the own crew are only 2d sprites instead of 3d models.
this is highly intelligent by the gaming industry: to discover that the crack did not completely work one would have to play the game for some time. and even then one cannot be sure if strange behavior by the game is either just a normal bug or a copy protection. plus this makes the game even more attractive for the gamers to buy: to get the full experience (as they already got hooked on the game by playing so far to notice the protection). by this cracked games even more get to be what they are: better demos of a game so that you then can decide if you wanna buy them.
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