nope, it wont work. what will happen is the crackers will create an authentication tool and your copy will authenticate with that instead. DRM never harms the pirates, it always harms the legitimate consumer. once it is cracked, it stays cracked so the piracy prevention becomes useless but the people who paid for the game still have to authenticate every time.

try lowering prices. steam did the trick over christmas and sold bucketloads of games, because at $5 a pop (rather than $30) people are much more likely to give something a try

You know, I can pick up any one of my many music CD's, pop it into my PC and it won't need to connect to anything to verify itself. I can pick up any of my DVD's and do the same.

I can run any of several apps on my PC (some costing 100 x the cost of a game) and none of them want to connect to the net to verify themself. Hell, even my Windows 7 or XP doesn't want to verify itself unless I want to download something new from Microsoft.

If none of those things demand online connectivity, what gives games the right to demand it? It's time games (and some developers) got over themselves. They're an entertainment medium, nothing more.

I have just bought 2 copies of Flight Sim X (Standard and Gold), they wanted a single activation, that also DID NOT DEMAND the internet to do it. That should be sufficient, one time, no internet necessary.

If that is not enough for some devs, then maybe they should think about a different product strategy... i.e. make a game people WANT to buy, and is worth the money they spend.

If they don't, then people will simply adopt a new buying strategy... i.e. they will buy a game that doesn't make unreasonable demands. I won't buy a game that demands MY internet connection, because no game is that important.

This is the sort of thing that causes me to go out to "crack" sites to "fix" my legit copy of my game so that I don't have to put up with the publisher's insecurity.

Publisher insecurity!?!? get over themselves 1?!?... this is the kind of thinking that backs up the 'free for all' idea that some narrow-minded customers have (we mighty even call them, 'non-creators') and that is the kind of thinking that will make unsuccessful any attempt to fight piracy.
Although many justification always appear in these kind of discutions - like pricing, quality, demos, etc - it seems pretty clear to me that this arguing will only stop when the iphone pricing model is applied to the whole industry, with developers clashing with prices at the very bottom...maybe they should just start giving things for free...developing only to fulfill the pation we have for games...

The "we are going to validate online" is absolutely the wrong approach and yes crackers will get round it. Instead it's simple. Add value. Whatever game it is there will always be a number of ways to add value by being online. Not just multiplayer, but create more of a community, like taking high scores much further i.e. rankings, challenge friends, form teams, posting messages, news feeds.

If done properly players will WANT the game to be always online and properly authorised. Even single player games need to make online an invaluable part of the experience. This way players won't want the cracked version that cannot get online (there is no way around remote server authentication when requesting services). It does mean a major change to the gaming landscape, all designs would shift to have online features at their heart, but if done correctly hackers would suddenly find little demand for their services.

Every piece of evidence I've seen suggests that pirates aren't all that price sensitive, the 'just lower prices' argument doesn't really hold. One problem is that for the technically literate, downloading a bootleg copy is actually significantly less hassle than buying a legitimate one, there are less barriers to acquisition. Anecdotally, my own musical piracy pretty much ended the day iTunes saved my payment details and made purchases one-click affairs. Steam grants value through allowing me to download my games onto any machine with a steam client.

That said, invasive DRM is no doubt frustrating to consumers. I honestly think the only thing to do is to try to add value to legitimate copies through additional online services and downloadable content.

Completely agree that having any form of online activation (especially for offline single-player games) is an unneccessary hassle for consumers. I also don't agree that bundling in and forcing the use of Steam or the like is a suitable solution either (damn you, MW2). As has already been said by everyone, is promotes piracy rather than controls it - or at best (for the dev/pub) increases purchases of the console versions of the game instead. Either way, your expensive PC DRM didn't help you.

A repeated phone-home in any game that is not using a dedicated remote server (i.e., an MMO) is not acceptable to me and I would not install that game if I could not turn off the "feature".

Online activation isn't the solution as it will eventually get hacked. It may take longer than the old on disk copy protection but eventually the hackers will work out how to convince the game that it has been "activated". More importantly it removes your right to decide if you play the game or not. Publishers like EA have a habit of turning off servers for online play of their sports titles after only a short time (thus forcing fans to buy the newest versions). What happens if they decide to stop supporting a game (or the publisher just goes bust) and the activation servers cease to exist. Suddenly people can no longer play the games they bought. Plus, as others mentioned, the various systems end up causing problems for a percentage of honest paying customers.

Unfortunately I can see why publishers want to go this route because the other solutions suggested by pirates simply don't work. The iPhone makes this abundantly clear....

1. Games are not worth the money.
The majority of iPhone games are 99 cents. It doesn't matter how crap the game is you will still get more value than from any McDonalds $1 menu item - and it will be less fattening.

99 cents won't buy you a beer, a cup of coffee or a seat at the cinema, yet even at 99 cents iPhone games are pirated en mass.

2. But I want to play the game before I buy it.
There are literally thousands of games for the iphone and many, many have demos. There are more games out there than anyone could ever manage to play in a life-time so no one can say that they can't find games that are of interest and have a demo. - yet still iPhone games are pirated.

3. But I am too poor to buy all the games I want Setting aside the fact that no country has "the right to play any game I want" enshrined in their constitution, these people managed to buy the SINGLE MOST EXPENSIVE PHONE ON THE PLANET - and an they pay a big monthly fee as well. If they are really that poor buy a cheaper phone.

Hello all

When it comes to piracy I think Gabe Newell got it bang on with this interview.

http://tinyurl.com/yfb52ey (3.40 into)

He talks about how "Piracy is a result of bad service" he mentions how money in not an issue for pirates. People will pirate your software when it is easier to do that than to actually buy it and have to put up with DRM and other prevention methods which only affect the LEGIT customers!