Writing for nothing, text for free

When I was a kid I was an avid PC-Gamer. I got my first computer in 92, me being about 6 years old. Over the years i played great classics like Commander Keen, Monkey island, Betrayal at Krondor, Quest for Glory, Duke Nukem, Robot, and so on. The first experience with copy protection at that time was probably in “The Settlers”. You needed to put in a list of symbols at the start of the game, and if you got it wrong the game simply quit. Other means of copy protection were typing in certain words in certain parts of the game-manual, answering questions whose answers you needed to extract from an extra sheet or the manual again. All fine and dandy. As time moved on, games required you to put in the original CD, which I always found a huge hassle, needed you to put in codes, needed you to register at some on-line service. I still don’t have any problem with that, after all, I understand the developers need to obtain lots of money to buy whores and expensive wines. I have slight problems with this on-line verification aspect (because it renders the product useless should the service be canceled, and limited activation tries are a big no-no), but I can manage. What really pisses me off is, when hackers and other freeloaders are actually getting a BETTER deal than an honest customer, going into a store and actually PAYING MONEY for their games. What am I talking about you say? Well read on:

I went into town today and bought some games and hardware. One of these games was Colin Mcrae Rally 2005, for about 10$ from the rummage bin. So of course I went home and installed the game. But to my amazement the game needed to install “Copy Protection Drivers”, namely Starforce. If you don’t know what this means, just google Starforce. Like any sane customer I felt raped and violated, why oh why I asked myself, must a developer force me to install Starforce drivers TO PROTECT A 10$ GAME FROM 2005 I OBTAINED FROM THE RUMMAGE BIN? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE? You might say I’m being overly melodramatic, after all they are just kernel drivers being able to wreck all sorts of havoc in my finely tuned system, right? Wrong, there’s a reason I mentioned these old copy protection methods, none of them were system intrusive. They didn’t force me to install any kernel drivers of questionable origin (except maybe DirectX, a graphics library worth trusting), which are capable of compromising my entire system. This is my computer, this is my platform I play your shitty game on! My platform, my rules, bitches! And the funny thing is, it just protects games being burnt to CD/DVD. Who the hell gets their illegal games from discs these days? There’s something called the “Internet” you dipshits! And the hacked versions of this game have this copy protection removed, which means that people who don’t spend money on product are actually better off. What kind of a logic is that? It’s no wonder the industry is complaining about bad sales of “top games” on the PC, if the customer has to put up with this shit. Yes, I’m sure all these hackers are the cause of your dwindling sales morons, how about giving people incentive to actually buy your games by providing a trustworthy copy void of viruses and other malware aka Starforce?

But the biggest complaint is still coming: I downloaded the Death Track Demo a while ago, and guess what? It had Starforce copy protection. WHAT THE HELL? Are you telling me I just wasted 2GB of bandwidth downloading a shitty demo needing me to install copy protection drivers? I looked around and it seems the demo needs copy protection to prevent hackers from reverse engineering the demo, and thus also cracking the “real” game. Anyone with a little bit of knowledge in this area knows: This is a steaming pile of shit, aka lies. They just want people to “accept” these drivers, because they are everywhere and you can’t get around them. But you can get around them, by playing hacked games, or in my case, by not playing them at all. Indeed, this copy protection is really worth its money.