[Kalin]

That's a common misconception, if you look at any credible study on the subject of piracy, most will conclude that the pirates that never buys the game to support the companies would never have bought it in the first place even if there weren't a 'free' version out there. Unless, of course, it's a study done by some anti-piracy software company like... *cough* starforce *cough* who's obvious goal is to sell their software to developers. In other words, you don't actually gain any money by fighting with the pirates, it's simply a reactionry response when we think that people are trying to "steal" from us. In fact, since most of the pirates sees hard to crack software as challenges, all you end up doing is creating a ton of frustration for yourself. So aside from the desire to challenge the pirates at their own game, the only thing copy protection does is to prevent your regular joe from buying a copy and sharing it with all of his friends, while incidentally creating a ton of frustration for normal users as well.

There's no need for me to point any fingers, because I myself am notorious for buying games, and downloading no-CD cracks from pirates to remove the frustration of dealing with the copy protection, and I know plenty of others who does the same. This fact alone says, no matter how great the CD protection is, there will be a way around it.

As for this whole thing with the huge manual as copy protection, honestly, I think it's just plain silly. I mean, the manual is great and all, but you don't really expect me to read 300 page before I play a game do you? If I wanted to read, there are plenty of great novels sitting on my shelf collecting dust. Which, incidentally, is also where my manual is... on the shelf... after me glancing at it for 30 second and going, "Oh, screw that, I'll figure it out as I play." Sure, the first few games were a bit of a challenge as I learn, but that's part of the fun too. Most of the time, when you know everything about the game, it's time to put it away again, since there is really no challenge left. I guess that could just be me being one of those "enjoy the journey" type of person, but whatever. The point is, I didn't bother reading the manual and am doing just fine with the game... so is it really that great of a copy protection measure?

Sorry for the rant, but I've always been interested in the topic.