Welcome to the world of pirated PC games

I do not have my thoughts about this is order at this time.I have been pondering this point for about a week or so and my first thought was like jocks :That games would be downloaded like steam and more tightly controlled.I encourage every lover of Pc gaming to also think of what controls they would be willing to tolerate to continue to play the games they love.Please post on this.I will post back when my thoughts are formulated and concise.

This was mentioned indirectly in the article I pointed to in the first post. Naturally, the GPU mfg's are going to be totally upbeat about things. If they don't, they could lose a major share of their business.



Here is the important paragraph:


1. Research on real numbers of PC games sold: That is, manipulate the stats
2. Set min specs: That is, maximize specs so that the consumer is enticed to buy higher-end GPU's than he needs
3. Spread the message on PC gaming: That is, start shoveling the cow paddies.
4. Stop piracy: That can only mean more layers of crap for the honest user to muddle through, making our buying and playing experience even more frustrating (retina scans and fingerprint matchers anyone?).

You can see this is one huge sales and marketing boondoggle. This organization is more about making headlines than solving problems.

What you don't hear from these dudes:

Talk of lowering prices.
Making a GPU as easy to replace as plugging in a cartridge in a console game?
Creating a computer that is designed around the GPU not the CPU for once (admittedly, this is underway).

If I said I've never pirated a game before, I'd be lying. I'm a MP fan and love playing online, the thing with pirated games is you can't play online because there are no valid cd keys, therefore you canot play online. I like to try a game out before buying it, I even downloaded CoD1 then bought the game a day later. I personally think piracy isn't affecting anything at all. Of course there are those that just want the SP, but why should they buy a SP and MP game if they only want the SP?.

Chris, as I mentioned in my post, what is happening nowadays (and for me is very different than the gaming scene ten years ago, say), is that there are a large number of "cracked" game servers out there catering to those who have pirated the game.

Therefore you CAN, relatively easily, play online.

There was a clan leader who I talked to, only months ago, who told me that the reason he ran "cracked" servers was to populate them.

In other words, if he ran a legit server, no one would come to it - it would be too far down the list of legit servers on people's game browsers and thus was "unknown".

So...to make a "name" for himself and his clan, he ran cracked servers. He was 30th or so on those. And his server was full from what he told me.

Here's a post from one of his member's:



and finally this from their server admin:



I can tell you that at least these guys look to have gone legit.

Cracked servers, I forgot about those tbh.

Maybe this is the point where the game devs could protect their ip and host sites with their free, dedicated server files with a unique guid system that relates to their master servers. If you haven't downloaded them via a system like this, then you're not being authenticated and therefore cannot run a 'dedicated' server online.

It's all well and good shouting from the rooftops that a certain platform is dying because of pirated copies, but all the time they are available people will download them. Who's at fault? A dev company that has pocketed in excess of $35,000,000, I believe, should be exploring avenues to protect their future products and have the funds at hand to create a system that is more protective of their property and brings them in more dollars.

Server files as we know are always a big issue on release of a game and I personally don't class a cracked server to be in the same league as a client using a pirated copy of the game. Why? Because the majority of games purchased don't need all the files installed to run a server and also do not need authenticating via a guid to run them, unlike playing the game client side.

Also not forgetting that pb can be configured so that certain checks are not performed, applicable not only to cracked servers - as pb can still be used, but every single server online if the admins choose this route.