I recently wrote about this topic here. But I wanted to write a more succinct version of it since some people thought I was advocating something akin to Internet Product Activation to thwart piracy.

Let me first Bottom line this: CD based copy protection does more harm than good.

Let me then add: There is no magic bullet that will stop piracy. Game developers need to quit trying to solve piracy via some sort of mechanism and instead design a policy that discourages piracy. Game developers/publishers need to approach piracy in a more realistic way. As a result, there are two basic groups of pirates.

Group A: The kiddies who warez everything. CD Copy protection means nothing to them. They have the game before it even hits the stores.

Group B: Potential buyers who are really more interested in convenience. The price of the game isn't as big a deal to them as convenience.

It's group B that our industry needs to focus more on rather than alienating and inconveniencing our customers by trying to thwart group A. Sure, it ticks me off that people steal stuff I've worked for years making. But we have to be realistic about this, it doesn't do anyone any good to inconvenience customers. In fact, anedotal evidence seems to imply that the more we inconvenience customers, the more we turn them into group B.

Let me explain:
Joe Gamer buys a game that requires the CD to be in the drive. But his 3 year old takes the CD and loses it. Joe Gamer ends up going onto Google or whatever and pretty soon finds not just a way to play that game without a CD but now finds out how to get the "latest games" not just for free but more convenient than ever through the world of peer networks and warez. As a result, as future games come out, Joe Gamer must now balance "doing the right thing" (which typically means driving up to the store, paying money to be inconvenienced by copy protection) and loading up a program and just getting the game, for free, quickly and painlessly.

That's why I think CD based copy protections are a bad idea. I think they create pirates and aren't terribly effective anyway. They're supposed to keep the honest "honest" but I propose a better way.

NOT Internet activation. Instead, game developers adopt a policy that has been very successful in the non-game software market -- after release updates.

PC games often come out buggy, get one patch, and then are largely abandoned. It's really hard to feel sympathy for game developers who treat their customers that way. Instead of doing that, release frequent updates to the game for users. For free. Have them go through a secure network so that only registered purchasing users can get the update but make it as convenient as you can.

By doing this, you create a bigger incentive to be a customer than to be a pirate. It becomes increasingly inconvenient to have the latest/greatest version of the game via the warez route than the legitimate route.

This is what we've been doing with Galactic Civilizations since it's release. You can buy it at the store or directly at galciv.com and either way be able to download the full game electronically along with regular free updates. It has no copy protection on the CD at all. You can install it on your laptop and main PC. We "fight" piracy by releasing regular, meaningful updates that are much easier to get legitimately than through warez channels. We've found a lot of people who initially pirated GalCiv end up buying it as a result. And sales of the game have been quite good. Sell-in at retail world wide is in the six digit range so it's not a matter of "small scale" solutions here.

So how do game developers do this? Just set aside a relatively small amount of the development budget to implement user suggested features. One or two developers, part time, for 8 to 12 month after release can make a big difference. Is GalCiv pirated? Sure. But it's not nearly as easily available via warez channels (we do monitor this stuff) as other games of similar retail sales levels.

There's no magic bullet to stop piracy. Game companies need to realize that. Instead, the goal should be to reduce piracy as much as possible and rather than relying on some mechanism, they should focus on a *policy* that focuses on making it more tempting to be a customer than to be a pirate.