Let’s say you download a game and can play it offline. In theory, everything you need is on your computer, right ? So how come people don’t just find everything, copy it and massively share (or sell for a lower price) folders with everything in ?
In: Technology
A lot of games are distributed with no protection and people can indeed do this. Here’s when basic decency comes into play: if the game is good, piracy only improves sales because people would still buy it to support developers, some people would use the free version as a “demo” to get acquainted with the game and then buy it, and almost everyone of those who would use only the pirated version would be people who weren’t going to buy it anyway.
For the games with copy protection, basically, with every copy of the game you get a license key which is unique for you. The game then checks if the copy you are trying to launch corresponds to that unique key and refuses to run if they don’t match or if somebody has already registered the same key. Usually, it checks it online. In severe cases, some parts of the game may be encrypted on your computer and only get decrypted with the external command while you play.
The hackers who make “cracks” or repacks find these checking mechanics in the game code and try to delete them. It’s an arms race between hackers and publishers to make a defense that cannot be cracked easily. It will be hacked eventually but most AAA games make a huge chunk of sales within, like, 2 weeks from release, so even if it takes a month to crack, the protaction has done its job.
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