Video game piracy
[1] Right holders generally attempt to counter piracy of their products by enforcing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, though this has never been totally successful.
[1] Digital distribution of pirated games has historically occurred on bulletin board systems (BBS), and more recently via decentralized peer-to-peer torrenting.
Video game trading circles began to emerge in the years following, with networks of computers, connected via modem to long-distance telephone lines, transmitting the contents of floppy discs.
Beginning as simple text, the presentation of these crack intros gradually grew more complex, with windows featuring GIFs, music, and colorful designs.
By connecting personal computers to telephone modems, and dialing a number to a dedicated server, members of the Warez scene could share their copies of video games.
However, with the rise of peer-to-peer torrenting, and notably with the release of BitTorrent in 2001, this BBS format of video game piracy began to decline.
Efforts to thwart illegal torrenting have historically failed, because its decentralized nature makes it effectively impossible to totally dismantle.
Early copy protection measures for video games included Lenslok, code wheels, and special instructions that would require the player to own the manual.
Steam offers proprietary features such as accelerated downloads, cloud saves, automatic patching, and achievements that pirated copies do not have.
In GTA IV's case, it disables the brakes on cars and gives the camera an amplified drunk effect, making gameplay much harder, thus creating an incentive to legitimately purchase the game.
The Big House ran SSB games on the Dolphin emulator, and it was the addition of the mod Slippi, which enabled online play, that caught Nintendo's attention.
[21] Modded consoles have been cited as an avenue for video game piracy, both by allowing unauthorized copies to be played, and by circumventing DRM.
[24] Companies such as Nintendo have coordinated with law enforcement agencies to track down and seize modchips for their consoles, such as in the 2007 Operation Tangled Web.
The indictment detailed their creation of modded consoles, which were "designed to be circumvention devices that had the purpose of allowing users to play pirated ROMs.
