Anyone who’s pirated a video game knows that you need a crack to break through the game’s anti-piracy protection, and there’s a number of hacking groups out there that dedicate all of their time to developing these cracks. Unfortunately for them, the anti-piracy technology that some game developers are using nowadays is extremely difficult to break through, and the difficulty is only going to increase as the technology develops. It’s gotten so bad that some hacking groups expect pirating video games will be virtually impossible in a couple of years.
Piracy can never be stopped. Piracy will always be around. Where there’s a will to break copy protection, there’s a way. These are all comments regularly heard in piracy circles and to date, they’ve largely been proven accurate. But while trying to protect movies and music using technological measures is by now almost a lost cause, the same cannot be said about video games. While copying a title was a trivial process several years ago, in many cases more and more roadblocks are now being put in pirates’ way. In the past most games would be playable for free before their official debut but increasingly pirates are being made to wait for big titles to have their protection defeated, or ‘cracked’ as it’s more commonly known. In fact, aside from many dozens of dedicated piracy forums, there’s even an entire sub-Reddit community dedicated to providing the status of cracks. One of the hottest topics involves the Avalanche Studios/Square Enix title Just Cause 3. Released on December 1, 2015 and despite massive demand, the game has still not been cracked. The problem appears to lie with the robustness of the technology protecting the game.