[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Blitz:
Casual copying may have been the primary issue back in the 1990's, but today every game is available on P2P systems the same day it is released into stores. You speak of a 3-6 week jump on the pirates, this is nonsense. What is more common is a leaked gold master resulting in a 3-6 week jump for the pirates. No protection known, even the very newest Versions will give you anywhere close to a 3-week head start. If you are lucky you might get 3 days with a brand new top-end scheme from Securom that hasn't been used on any other games. The only games which are truly free from piracy are the Online games, such as Warcraft 3, or Everquest. Coincidentaly these are also the best selling games, a factor not of their popularity, but of the simple fact that each has virtually unbreakable copy protection due to the need to connect to a central server to play. The decline of the single player game is as due to piracy than any choice made by the buying public. Many Users simply steal what they can, and buy only those games which they are forced to.

I said it was an effort to change one day to a greater gap. But the battle isnt quite as lost as you predict. There is really not as much piracy as you think. Just because its every game doesnt make it every user. Piracy isnt doing enough damage to make game developers pay enough attention to it. P2P isnt much of a factor as long as efforts are succesfull in making it clear that its piracy.

As long as it cant be casually copied, it will cover the losses or costs of implementing the protection. As long as their are clear lines between legal and illegal then it will be controllable. The dangers they are watching now are misuse of words like "backups" or "abandoneware" or "shared copies". If a friend is not able to copy a game for a friend with plausable deniability that its anything illegal then the business world is safe.