The history of DRM

[Tinman]

Anti-piracy through the ages

We take a look at some of the anti-piracy measures employed throughout gaming history

[Wolfman]

Quite interesting. I remember playing Eagle eye mysteries 2 as a kid (original disc) but not being able to find the manual with train schedules and other info to finish it. I think the way forward is to provide a service that cannot be pirated e.g. WoW and Tf2, where the extra content for legitimate buyers and official servers make pirating those games just not the same as buying them. I just would to remind everyone (including myself) who has ever pirated something that game development and entertainment in general is a business and not a charity. If a developer does not make enough money they have to close down.

[Nictron]

And they all failed!

The honest customer is the only one that suffered!

[Wlad]

Very interesting article indeed. I remember getting lots of PC games from friends back in the day, only to find out I can't play them because I had no clue what the 5th word of the 7th paragraph on page 16 was.

[sycogrim]

Leisure Suit Larry had the whole DRM thing going where you had to give the word in line 3 row 56 and I think if I stand corrected Blake Stone, Full Throttle and the majority of Point and click games played had the DRM thing going around tbh it was annoying.

[Bigupme]

Afaik the only Lucasarts adventure that is copy protected is Monkey Island 1 with the "Dial a pirate", I've only played CD versions of the others though so maybe the earlier releases were also.

[Blackhand]

I remember Ultima VII also had two critical points in the storyline where you were asked questions and the answers were in the manual. I had the manual, however at the time I didn't realize that's where the answers were (guess they didn't want to "break character" ingame?), so I lost hours and hours trying to guess my way through the questions.

[virus786]

pirates will allways, well, pirate! so all these measures is doing is making it more complex for those who do buy games..lol..fail.

[Assassin]

It is very true what you guys say. Legal owners always suffer with online activation and all that shclep while the pirateers always find ways to crack the protection faster than you can say, argh.

[hideinlight]

Starforce is worst copy protection I've ever had the misfortune to deal with, it doesn't even work on Win7 have to crack my originals just to be able to play them...