Uhm, what do you mean with CD crack? NoCD cracks? Those are pretty "basic" and up to today I don't know a single game that has not been cracked. Of course, more sophisticated protection like GTA IV had it makes the crackers to require more time, but IIRC after about 8 days the first fully working crack was released...
There's a reason why some publishers decide to give a rat's ass about technical copy protection. In the case of GTA IV it kept millions of "pirates" from playing GTA IV for 8 days. On the other hand, it made life hell for the other dozen of millions of legit buyers, as these had to go through all that copy protection crap everytime time they wanted to start the game they paid much money for.
That's the paradox about copy protections. In the end, legit buyers get punished with longer loading times, incompatibility issues and other crap while a pirated version starts quick, without asking questions and it just runs smoothly. Kinda missed the target.
So some companies just forgo copy protection altogether (e.g. Ubisoft with Prince of Persia) or enhance the use of CD key authentication, which is in one the best protections considering effort-effect-ratio. Instead of only limiting the onlineplay, they also limit access to support forums and patches (e.g. Paradox Interactive and Stardock Games does that). This surprisingly lead to the fact that some patches just don't exist for pirates, as the scene groups usually don't care to pirate patches. They develop cracked .exe files, but they don't pirate the patch files themselves.
CD Authentication Is pretty simple: If you don't have a legit key, you can't play on any uncracked servers, as legit servers crosscheck your key with their keylist. You might have a key that fits to the keycheck algorithm (->keygen), but that doesn't mean it actually has been used for a sold box and thus it it isn't accepted when you connect.
Of course there is a chance that you by sheer luck generate a keygen key that is valid online, but that means you have the very same key as somebody else on the planet. And if he and you want to play simultaneously with the same key, you both get kicked, and depending on the company policy your key might be banned. The other ones' too, of course, but he has a chance to receive a new one via support...of course you also can have the ultimate luck (probability is something like winning the lottery) and have a legit key generated which is in one of the unsold boxes of some store...
|
