Atari Founder: PC Piracy About to be Eradicated

[AmazonianBeauty]

I can see the battle against software pirates being a bit like a Road Runner Cartoon, Try as he might, Coyote won't ever catch Roadrunner (Beep beep)

 

[Logie--bear]

Is steam still unhackable? Cause valve seemed pretty impressed with it. Although it makes it really hard for friends to lend each other games.

 

[Anniko]

Is steam still unhackable? Cause valve seemed pretty impressed with it. Although it makes it really hard for friends to lend each other games.

Doesn't matter whether Steam is unhackable (It's hackable), as the games can be cracked to run without checking up with Steam.

 

[Junaid Alam]

Instead of trying to figure out exactly whether it is theft or trespass or whatever, why don't we try and figure out what's the best thing for the consumer AND the industry, and work backwards from there?

Why don't we start with the idea that it's better to have a customer that buys two games and pirates one than it is to have a customer that pirates no games but only buys one? Can anyone object to that?

Agreed, on both things. Actually, there are companies out there that don't resort to drastic copy protections, but instead try to get people to buy a game by granting them benefits, online or otherwise.
One pretty simple way is for people that buy retail: Put something in the package worth having, besides the game. Gamers like the games they play, normally. Most of the gamers I know actually appreciate some small items, like a well-done tech-tree for an RTS, a beautiful map of the game world for an RPG, a small booklet containing artwork, a comic or printed text about the game, its setting and the likes. There are a plethora of small physical items that a pirate won't get without a considerable amount of work or in considerably poorer quality, yet are cheap to produce in high enough numbers.
Online distributors could introduce a bonus points program, giving you for example an old classic for free when you purchased enough games... another way is to make patches, free small addons and so on available only to registered customers or at least make it more troublesome for pirates to get a patch for the game.

Overall: Put some effort in the whole product that you're selling. The game inside is the item pirates will get, too. So try and make your customer feel appreciated instead of pissing him off. Simple thing really: Care less about the cheap guy that doesn't give you any money anyway and more about the guy paying for your product.

 

[Crusnik]

Is steam still unhackable? Cause valve seemed pretty impressed with it. Although it makes it really hard for friends to lend each other games.

Doesn't matter whether Steam is unhackable (It's hackable), as the games can be cracked to run without checking up with Steam.

Yes, single player games. Steam's strength is that multiplayer games are validated every time you go online, with the exception of LAN only servers, which are perfectly capable of accepting hacked games. Point is, you can't use a hacked/cracked copy of TF2 on an internet server, but you can on a LAN server (Actually, I think you have to use a cracked copy, because TF2 requires Steam to be online to play).