A while back I ripped a bunch of the games I own to ISO images so that I could play them without having to swap actual physical CDs around, but there were a couple (Beyond Divinity, Thief 3) that didn’t want to work that way. It turns out that the copy protection on some newer games specifically checks for the presence of certain CD emulation drivers and, if it finds them, refuses to let you run the game.
The purpose of this copy protection is of course to make life difficult for pirates, but the great irony is that it actually has the opposite effect. This form of copy protection has absolutely no effect on the pirates because they circulate hacked versions or patches that remove the copy protection entirely. Who then, actually runs into these conflicts between the protection and other programs? Someone who still has the copy protection on the disc: the person who bought it legitimately.
So, copy protection doesn’t stop the pirates. It frustrates the legitimate users who actually dare to use their systems in unconventional ways (and many who simply have hardware conflicts with the unusual tricks copy protection schemes use). And the game developers, being technically-minded people, certainly know that this is the case. Why does it even continue to exist, then?
It’s actually rather simple: it’s a management issue.
Imagine that you’re a middle manager at a game publishing house. You know that piracy is eating away at your sales, and by jove, somebody ought to Do Something About It. Along come other companies who have developed their own advanced copy protection techniques and they say hey, we *can* Do Something About It, you just have to buy our XYZProtect scheme. Now, the next time one of the development houses you control finishes a game, you can tell them that they have to put this XYZProtect scheme on the disc and now you can sit back and feel accomplished, having Done Something About It.
After all, who’s going to oppose you? The development house? Though they know the futility of it, they’re not going to oppose you since they’re counting on you to promote and distribute the game. Your bosses? Solving problems like this is the only reason they even let you have this job. The game players? They’re certainly mad enough, but you’re not even in direct contact with them. Even if you were talking to them, they’d come across as lunatics. They could argue until they’re blue in the face about technical problems and uselessness and inconvenience and all that, but to your ears all it sounds like is that they want you to Not Even Try To Do Something About It. Sheer madness! Your entire job is to Do Something About Stuff, after all.
Unfortunately, that entrenchment means that we’re just going to have to live with it for the forseeable future…
