One of my friends know his burner inside out and can copy any game (well, any that he has tried so far)... but he gave up pirating a while ago, I did a looooooong time ago . But it is definitely possible to do it, and usually it is a single checkbox solution
The idea of adding areas of rubbish to CD''s works quite well and generally puts people off tryingto copy. But there is an easy way to get round it. Instead of copying the track onm the cd. You copy the CD bit for bit. So you then have an exact copy of the cd and not just the data on it. There are only a few programs that can do this and then your CD-RW has to support it. Currently I believe there are only a few CD-RW''s available that do. I agree with the lowering of prices to stop piracy. As I''m sure that the percentage of pirated copies to sold copies has decreased since they dropped the price of games. Remeber when a new game used to be £50. Now its generally £30 - 35. Then only problem with the lowering of prices is that less games will be made. It will be even harder for developers to convince publishers to publish original games so we''ll end up with Tomb Raider 9 and Quake 7 and no other competition. Hmm what a predicament. I''ve come full circle.
whoa, from what I''ve been hearing from you guys, I''m under the impression that piracy in Europe is done by individuals? Correct me if this assumption is wrong, kay?
In the Asia Pacific, piracy is very much more ''complex''.We have a very good distribution system here. All they need is just one ''cracked'' copy of a game/software and voila, the whole region is flooded with pirated copies of that game/software.
When I was younger, I used to be close to the people working at one of the distribution centres for pirated software. It sounds like some sort of pyramid game. The people selling pirated software usually don''t even know where the software comes from, much less who makes it. However, those in the know seem to say that the ''master'' copies come from Singapore or Hong Kong.
The point I''m trying to make is that cracked one, cracked all in this region (stupid place, really).
Just my $0.02. Hope I didn''t offend anyone
==========================================In a team, you either lead, follow or GET OUT OF THE WAY.
Correct me If I''m wrong but Q3A had a nice scheme. Since the game is suposed to be run on the internet, a Serial number is checked on the central servers from ID, so there can be only one instance of the number in play in the world at each time.
If this is correct, then what happens if you''ve bought the game and some other guy is using your key through a hack??? Don''t you get to play - even though you were the one who bought the game????
I know that the starcraft key didn''t work between cd''s... My friend lost his CD cover (someone probably stole it when he was drunk) and when he went to reinstall it, he didn''t have the key. I provided him with mine, but that didn''t help... CD Keys do provide at least a bit of a protection
This isn''t exactly the cheapest way to do things, but it will work(guranteed).
Make them register online. The registration will involve a valid credit card number. They enter the number, and based on that a piece of software is generated on the server, and the user downloads it, and runs it(it should be really small, like 20k). Without this software the game won''t run. In order to run the game, you''re also going to have to enter the key, which will ironically be a credit card number.
This is guranteed, because no one will give their credit card number to their friend.
When programming some kind of protection system into the main exe, couldn''t you write it in some kind of spaghetti code, making it at least very difficult for hackers to figure it out. You could spread out the protection system throughout the code, attaching parts of it to other areas of the program, making it difficult to remove without destroying other parts of the program.
It''d make your code horrible to read and maintain though.
. But it is definitely possible to do it, and usually it is a single checkbox solution 
