A History of Copy Protection

GamerGirll1138 writes to tell us Next-gen has an amusing walk down memory lane with their history of copy protection. There have been some crazy schemes over the years to ensure that you paid for your software, everything from super-secret decoder rings to ridiculous document checks. "With bandwidth expanding and more and more games publishers exploring digital distribution, there's little doubt that we're entering a new phase in the history of copy protection and those who would defeat it. What's more, the demand for games as a chosen form of entertainment has never been higher. All this considered, it's impossible to believe that the cat-and-mouse game of piracy and copy protection will not reach new levels of intensity, with new technologies deployed on each side, and that some of them will surely create new hurdles for even those who simply wish to purchase and play the newest games. Ah, for the heady days of the code wheel."

Comments

Re:I have no issues with copy protection if...

[PsychoSlashDot]

It doesn't matter that it takes 1 cent to press a disk. How much did it cost to make the software, and how many disks did you sell? If your development cost was 10 million dollars, and you sold 10 million copies, you would have to charge at least $10 per disk to break even -- simple math. Not to derail your point, but I'm sort of confused by your "simple math".

If it costs me $x and I sell x copies and I charge $10 per copy, then I ultimately charge $10x for my product, netting a "profit" of $9x. That'd be 900% return on investment. Not my definition of "break even".

Or are you missing a 0 somewhere?

Re:What's amusing

[BadAnalogyGuy]

I know it's hard to believe, but there was a time when we actually used floppy diskettes to copy files from one computer to another. It's difficult to imagine what life must have been like before Google and Twitter, but we managed in our own small way.