Getting down with us cool slang hipsters, Roy Taylor of NVIDIA proclaims the rampant pirate culture of games for PC does indeed suck, and suck big time.
He believes better digital authentication could really help, offer patches and extra goodies only to those legitimate and registered owners.
Mass Effect for the PC has been reported to carry an authentication system which gamers will need to use if they plan to get their hands on the “Bring Down the Sky” DLC, and presumably any other add-on or technical support. Apparently you need an internet connection to re-authenticate your CD-key every ten days.
”I think that we’ve arrived at a point now where I don’t know how anyone could ever possibly justify pirating a game. I just don’t know how anyone could consider that a cool thing to do - it’s not. It sucks,” Roy Taylor told Eurogamer.
”One of the things that I find frustrating is that PC gamers tend to be very passionate, and they love the people that make great PC games. If you ask any PC gamer what they think of John Carmack, they’ll say he’s a hero. What do they think of Tim Sweeney? He’s a hero. Ken Levine is a hero. And yet many of them, sadly, will go and steal from them. I just don’t get that, I really don’t.”
One aggressive copy-protection system was and still is Starforce, it has been heavily criticised for causing numerous problems and in some cases accused of purposely sabotaging software. This new digital system authentication system would need to be robust but also fair to PC users, which is no easy task given the ever expanding knowledge and expertise of the ‘scene’, a term referring to the software pirate groups.
”I think that we’re going to see more digital authentication, and we’re going to see more of an approach that says that PC games aren’t products - they’re a service,” added Taylor.
”You’re going to start out with a basic service, which is the game, and then increase the value of that service through patches, mod packs, expansions, maps and so on. That’s the direction it’s going to go, because the pirates are just killing the developers - and I think it’s really unfair, what they’re doing.”
