Game Security Technology

For years the gaming industry has tried to stay ahead of the crackers. Shortly after or sometimes even before a game is released there is a crack in which you can get the game for free or you can borrow your buddies game, download it and play it without the CD. They have changed from activation codes, to 4 disk installs, to inital online activation. While some of these things have helped none of them fixed the problem.

Last year it seems they may have found a fix that will keep people from stealing the game. I went and bought a $60 computer game about a year ago. I brought it home, downloaded it and then found out I needed to sign on to the Internet to play my game. So I load the game up and it goes through an error saying it can't initialize with the game server. So for two nights I wait and try each night getting the same error. On the third night it finally initialized and I was able to play my game. Well all of that doesn't sound so bad except that everytime you want to play the game you have to log onto Steam, they make sure your game is authentic and then you can play.

In short what it means is that companies are now requiring you to log onto the internet everytime you want to play the game and pass a check to see if your copy is legit. At first I was really mad and was thinking well they are gonna lose money but as I started thinking about it I wasn't so sure. Ten years ago this kind of security would of never of flown because not everyone had internet. It would be hard to go down a street where the majority of the people on the block didn't have internet these days. The only problem I see is that it only tells you it requires online activation it doesn't say that you have to have the net everytime you open the game. More and more games that come out utilize the same security.

I'm not sure where this security will go but I know for me it was a surprise and headache. Here is a link to the site they use for the games and servers. You can download games off here but even if you get a CD copy you have to use this server. The game was Empire Total War.
http://store.steampowered.com/