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
That’s how pirated copies work, essentially. Not quite as simple as a copy&paste, of course.
Games, like every other program, need to have what you could call an “entry point”. It’s a program or a function that needs to be executed to start the game proper. The entry points of games have protections installed in them that run certain checks to make sure the copy is legitimate before starting the game. They can look into windows registry, they can contact a central server, whatever. If they don’t like what they find, they won’t load the files and they won’t start the game. That’s the DRM. That needs to be bypassed for an illegitimate copy of a game to be able to start. Not all games have DRM, and those can very easily be copied and shared.
edit: engrish
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