Civ V Cracked Already

[xarthaz]

a friend of mine tried the crack pretty good

Moderator Action: Advocating piracy violates site policy.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[ZimbuTheMonkey]

I love that you people seem to think you know the "pirate mind".

People just want crap for free, don't overthink it. They aren't offended or challenged by Steam and Steam isn't some kind of affront to pirate culture.

You guys will say ANYTHING to suit your argument regardless of how little sense it makes.

 

[devilhunterred]

I want to start this post by saying that I am not a pirate and I believe that it is important to buy the games you enjoy.

However, I think it is very interesting to note that Civ V has already been cracked by the pirates. This comes after a lot of work to make Civ V's copy-protection difficult to crack. I just think it is interesting that gaming companies will go to such extremes to protect their games (often hindering the legitimate gamer's experience) when they are still cracked in a little under a week.

So my question is, why even have protection? It is never going to stop the pirates, and it usually just leads to unnecessary hoops for the actual gamer to go through.

Discuss

99.9% of games can and had been cracked. But players are now facing a much harder time getting the full experience out of those cracked games because most games these days are very multi-player oriented, and cracked games can't play online multiplayer at all.

But unfortunately for CIV 5 it's 99% single player, meaning cracked games would work just as well as a legitimate copy.

If only I knew CIV 5's multiplayer is non-existent and it's such a letdown I would have gotten a pirated copy too.

 

[Maniacal]

Even VALVe admits and is well aware that Steam is not the final solution to piracy, plus by now the crackers have had a LOT of practice with cracking Steam. Firaxis didn't use steam just for DRM (Cov4 Complete didn't even have a disc check!) they used it for the mods and other steamwork features.

EDIT: And devilhinterred has a point albeit not entirely true. Multiplayer is the main stumbling block for most pirated games. My friend who used to pirate games ended up just buying Call of Duty 2 because several of the cracks wouldn't allow online play. Some pirated games have to also use special cracked servers in order to play.

 

[cr0ws]

I love that you people seem to think you know the "pirate mind".

People just want crap for free, don't overthink it. They aren't offended or challenged by Steam and Steam isn't some kind of affront to pirate culture.

You guys will say ANYTHING to suit your argument regardless of how little sense it makes.

There's a reason why it's called Warez...When the big man steps on the little man's toes, when rights are violated. If people wanted for free it would be called something like Free-ez.

 

[aryah]

I think a better impact on developer budgets would be made if for eg bandwith and/or persistent memory space was taxed, each person got at the end of the month the exact sum he/she was taxed for in vouchers, which may only be spent on things that consume memory space.

If you cannot use that money for anything else, why not spend it on things you honestly want/need/have liked?

As long as the only tools to get developers their deserved wages are mere moralizing, brute economic fact that one can either get something for free, or pay for much the same thing will always statistically win. Situation needs to be changed into a more win/win.

 

[ZimbuTheMonkey]

There's a reason why it's called Warez...When the big man steps on the little man's toes, when rights are violated. If people wanted for free it would be called something like Free-ez.

It WAS called "Warez" as a play off "Software". Your comment makes no sense.

Plus, no one uses that term anymore, get with the times.

Again, like I said before, people will say anything to enhance their arguments.

EDIT: Tell me, again, which rights are being violated?

 

[Zelig]

You know Pirates play DRM-free games right. Publishers enforce by DRM that punishes you, not a pirate... it rewards Pirates, there is a whole scene biult around cracking games... Who do you blame?

I'm not feeling punished.

 

[Selous]

will be interesting to see how the pirates go when mods start coming out, afaik they are being distributed via steam, so the pirates wont have access to them

stardock is a great company and their flagship game gal civ 2 shipped without any drm and sold large numbers. the thing that they do is sell a game that people that are prepared to pay for, offer meaningful updates and free content

 

[ZimbuTheMonkey]

will be interesting to see how the pirates go when mods start coming out, afaik they are being distributed via steam, so the pirates wont have access to themt

The mods aren't distributed by Steam and they won't have any DRM on them. The mods will be freely distributed so they don't need to be "pirated".

 

[Theodorick]

Here's why the big gaming companies keep putting so much effort into protecting games, even though the protection will always fail. Investors don't want to invest in a game that is released 'unprotected and vulnerable to theft', so companies need to make an effort. Investors are usually people that don't know better in some matters, especially in the gaming and technology world (Think of old gray baby boomers that are still trying to understand how to use a computer), but it still looks much better for the companies to make an effort than to not.

Money controls everything. Unless there is a mass boycott of a game that actually succeeds--I'd like to find one that has succeeded--DRM is just going to get worse and worse, since it's actually more profitable and safe right now to keep DRM than to get rid of it.

This will likely change someday, just not yet.

 

[ainwood]

Moderator Action:
Pre-Emptive warning:

If anyone is stupid enough to post a link to the cracked version here, or provide details on how to get it, they will be banned.

 

[cr0ws]

Edit: NM .... Piracy is a NO NO!

 

[Impala]

I can say I bought Civ 5. I believe in supporting people who make great products. Without support, those products won't exist anymore.

 

[salaminizer]

Steam is less about "protecting" from piracy and more about adding value (friends list, achievements, easier patching, cloud, etc), while minimizing (not removing, I surely recognize that) annoyance. Ubisoft, for example, took a route that was a bit more effective but much more annoying to the customer than any other solution (and I don't recall any benefits in it)

while I know many people are bothered about Steam, I believe that now it's the most willfully accepted DRM due to the benefits.

 

[RRtexasranger]

He coult be using Mac you know.Lesser of the two evils

Even if he was using a Mac, he would still have to use Steam to get to the game.

<i>going with the Steam path is a sign for future anti-mod games and overpriced DLCs</i>

This statement is just ignorant. Anti-Mod? You do know that Half Life 2 and the entire Source engine has a HUGE modding community and it is only available through Steam. Whether or not a game is on Steam has nothing to do with how it mods. In fact, having the game only on Steam will make things easier than what they did with Civ IV and support Steam and non steam installations.

Also, DLC is not Steam exclusive nor do you have to buy any of the DLC. At least in the future they are going to offer DLC even if for a price. How much extra content did Fraxis give us for free in Civilization IV?

 

[ywhtptgtfo]

I want to start this post by saying that I am not a pirate and I believe that it is important to buy the games you enjoy.

However, I think it is very interesting to note that Civ V has already been cracked by the pirates. This comes after a lot of work to make Civ V's copy-protection difficult to crack. I just think it is interesting that gaming companies will go to such extremes to protect their games (often hindering the legitimate gamer's experience) when they are still cracked in a little under a week.

So my question is, why even have protection? It is never going to stop the pirates, and it usually just leads to unnecessary hoops for the actual gamer to go through.

Discuss

Personally, I don't think it is possible to prevent a client-based game from being cracked unless the game is an MMO or require constant updates from a server. However, even that can be wrong sometimes (i.e. WoW and illegal servers).

To fight piracy, my opinion is that companies should instead increase the incentive of gamers to get the real copies. Back in the older days, computer games (i.e. Baldur's Gate) come with gift bags, fancy manuals, and baubles without requiring people to get the horrendously expensive collector's edition boxes. Nowadays, games that are sold out there have just a box and a disc.

At the same time, Taiwan and HK fought piracy partly by toning down the costs of movies and games. If a game costs < $30 USD/CAN and a movie costs ~ $5, then there's usually less incentive for one to try to get a free copy of the product. I mean, most people out there still prefer authentic versions of media over torrented copies.

 

[guczy]

First of all, let me go ahead and confess: i used to be a pirate (yarr) for a very long time, actually the first game i bought was Civ 4. I don't wanna make my crime seem smaller, but for most of the time neither me, nor my friends knew, that this was wrong, illegal (actually in my country just downloading a game still isn't illegal, only uploading is, but that does not make it more viable morally) And this is no excuse, as i continued to pirate games even after i knew that its wrong, i wanted to play games, i didnt have a job and my mother would have never given me money for a game. Of course this is still no excuse, if i cant buy a car i wont steal it. But these long years of pirating taught me a lot of things about piracy, also i have a lot of friends, who - sadly - still pirate all their games and dont see anything wrong with it, i still visit torrent sites, but now only for series and nfl-games.

Every game will be cracked, even My Little Pony Friends. AAA-games even quicker, a good example is Mafia 2 which was cracked before release. Some people say that DLC-s and multiplayer content will make rats buy games. Wrong and wrong. DLC-s are also cracked and the big titles all have cracked servers or a multiplayer crack. This usually takes a few months, but sometimes less. For CIV there is already a MP-crack, which -supposedly- even lets you play on gamespy servers. Someone mentioned patches as a deterrant for rats. Wrong again, those are easy to get, since the dawn of Steam there are cracked Steam clients which lets you download patches FROM THE OFFICIAL SERVERS. It's a little bit like viruses. There are awesome virus-buster programs avaible, but the virus-makers are always one step ahead. Avast doesnt update 2-3 times a day for nothing you know. So DRM-s really dont seem to make sense, at all.

The only kinda-working DRM is the kind Paradox (my 2nd favourite game designing company BTW, i love HoI) uses: no DRM at all, but you need a serial number to go to the mod discussion and technical help sections of their forums. I wish more publishers would use this method. Non-intrusive and it "locks" important stuff away from pirates.

 

[Maniacal]

Steam is less about "protecting" from piracy and more about adding value (friends list, achievements, easier patching, cloud, etc), while minimizing (not removing, I surely recognize that) annoyance. Ubisoft, for example, took a route that was a bit more effective but much more annoying to the customer than any other solution (and I don't recall any benefits in it)

while I know many people are bothered about Steam, I believe that now it's the most willfully accepted DRM due to the benefits.

Yet Ubi's DRM still got cracked. I watched my friend play Assassin's Creed II offline with a crack

Though apparently AVAST! decided three days later the crack was a virus so he removed it.

 

[ZimbuTheMonkey]

Steam is, first and foremost, a digital distribution platform. It's a business strategy for Valve. All other functions are secondary.

That being said, I think it is a great service and has improved my gaming experience tremendously (because of the aforementioned community and convenience features).