A few days ago I got my legal copy of Anno 1404, or also known in North America as Down of Discovery. And guess what I found? NO COPY PROTECTION WHATSOEVER! What can I say, it seem the game industry finally gave up to fight pirates!? So my Anno 1404 which I ordered at GameSeek.co.uk, didn't have a serial key. Runs without DVD and also lacks that DRM protection which it had first, I read once. This is my first bought game being that way. But it is OK. Cracks will come in one way or another. I mean a friend of mine even found a crack for Batman - Arkham Asylum. Which normally requires internet connection in order to be able to save the game. Or load the saved. It is really an unexpected move by Ubisoft or Related Design. I wonder whether more developers will follow. Since apparently not even Windows Live can stop pirates, as I thought first.
Nothing can stop pirates. Every means of copy protection that has ever existed is a mere deterrent that can be (and has been) circumvented, including sophisticated hardware measures informed by years of research like those used by the Xbox 360. This follows from the general principle of "if you own the physical machine, you ultimately control the software on it" - which is why both copy protection and effective DRM are fundamentally impossible. A purely rational software company would view copy protection economically: if we implement copy protection measure X, how many people will be sufficiently deterred that they will buy the software instead of pirating it? Now, how many people will return the software, or refuse to do business with us in the future, because the the copy protection scheme caused the software to malfunction or violate their expectations? If the first number is bigger, they do it. Therefore it's often rational to omit copy protection entirely and just hope people will buy it. There are some good motivations to buy software besides just being nice: you get a pretty box with extra stuff in it (a la SC2 Collectors Edition), you get a free backup on a professionally labelled disc (and printed discs retain data better than burned discs), and you avoid taking risks with running unauthorized programs that might contain viruses on your computer.
yup, even games like Team fortress 2 and Left4Dead, which require a steam account and connection to play, have been hacked for local LAN play. everything can, and will, be hacked. most people still play TF2 and L4D because the DRM provides benefits like dedicated servers, free updates with new maps and weapons and bonus content. so far, Steam is the only DRM i don't have a problem with. b.net too, if blizzard doesn't let activision have its way.
I was wondering about my bought copy of Anno 1404. Maybe it is a pirated software already? Well, anyways I once bought by accident at Amazon a pirated version of Windows XP Professional. I reported that to Microsoft but I never got an answer back. The funny things was that the CD was a Dell OEM, and the key had a NEC label.
