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XBOX modders caught. Might be facing Prison time if convicted.

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jamesjones626:
Oh lawdy what i mess this thread has turned into...................  One thing is for sure, you will never ever stop pirating of any kind, you can only slow it down. 

DaveMMR:

--- Quote from: ChadTower on December 15, 2010, 09:21:39 am ---
--- Quote from: DaveMMR on December 14, 2010, 07:04:15 pm ---Fully aware I'm only speaking of my immediate surroundings.... I knew plenty of people who owned Dreamcast's; no one had pirated software.
--- End quote ---

Anyone in middle school, high school, or college at the time had easy access to someone selling them.  There was always one person that was doing it.  Same with PS1 games although that required hardware mods in many cases.  They were easily available on Ebay.  Piracy controls on Ebay didn't come along until much later.  I knew more people with Dreamcasts that had pirated games than did not have any.




--- Quote ---Second, YOU CAN NOT DIRECTLY COPY THE GAMES FROM THE ORIGINAL DISC. It's not the same as PSX - you can't rent a DC game and do a CD to CD copy. It simply doesn't work. You HAVE to download the images. Regular CD-ROM drives are incapable of reading the high-density sections of GD-ROM discs, and rumors of 'hacked cd-rom firmware' to read GD-ROMs are just that: rumors.
--- End quote ---

All you had to know is that someone local knew someone with a pirated game.  Sure, it took effort to get it from GDROM to CDROM, but once that was done, a person could turn out as many copies as they had blank discs.  One kid in a class buys a batch of copies off Ebay and sells copies to his friends to pay for the CD writer.  Happened all over the place.

What really slowed piracy on the DC was Gamestop prices.  When Gamestop started treating the DC like a worthless clearance item, probably because so many were buying pirated games rather than used games, you could get used games cheaper than copies.  

BTW, you don't need everyone to have a burner, you only need one.  And it was very possible to download large items over dialup.  There were several free download resumers that would manage lost connections or disconnects to use the phone.  Many free FTP clients did it too.  You have to realize that it only took one person in a group to be able to do these things and pass on the games to everybody else.  Maybe you folks weren't exposed but it really was widespread in a lot of places.

--- End quote ---

For each DC owner in 1999 who knew about any of this, you need to remember the hundreds who didn't know anything about computers, downloading, burner, etc. and bought the games because they knew of no other option.    These are people who weren't using download tools for large files over dialup.   Maybe they bought a couple of bootlegged games at a flea market, but it's no where near "rampant" piracy.    Besides, they were too busy downloading MP3's at that time anyway.

Going further: I believe those who pirate console games are the vast minority.   Consoles are tailored towards the less technically-inclined (though techies can enjoy them too).  You don't have to do anything: just plug it in and play.    Think about all the people who couldn't even program a VCR back in the 80's/90's.  It was always the joke, but it's all right there in the manual, the one people like to ignore.  These are the same people who not only aren't modding their consoles, they wouldn't even know what the heck we're talking about.  Just said the words "void warranty" and they wouldn't hear another word.    Even with the DS: easy to pirate with flash cards, but a large portion of its audience are younger gamers (read: under 10) who don't seem like they would be schooled on Piracy 101.

This is the reason, more or less, game publishers are flocking to consoles and leaving PC gaming to die.   Why support a platform where it's almost impossible to prevent piracy and the gamers themselves are even openly announcing that they plan to pirate said game because they feel "it's their right to do so" for whatever reason? 

SavannahLion:

--- Quote from: ChadTower on December 15, 2010, 10:55:13 am ---
--- Quote from: Bootay on December 15, 2010, 10:40:40 am ---Just thought I would share that info for the ones that were confused on how they got the PC to read the GD-ROM. Sega screwed themselves more or less with this device, but like people have already stated, the Dreamcast was already on a decline anyway.

--- End quote ---

That device was part of the standard software development kit provided by Sega to third party developers.  It was very expensive and came with a very heavy license agreement.  Of course, someone abused it, as always happens.  Devices like that exist for every closed software platform.  They have to or else the software development process would be severely slowed down by the nature of writing out masters for rapid testing.

--- End quote ---

Thought I should chime in.

To clarify what ChadTower wrote. Dreamcast used a full blown development PC with a GD-ROM burner as part of it's specifications. Essentially, it was a hybrid system with Dreamcast and PC hardware connected together via SCSI. Google Katana if you want more info. I remember this beast because I tried to get a hold of one (a Katana marked one no less) when it appeared on eBay (and before any morons chime in about piracy, I wanted this as a collector and the Dreamcast was already so far gone the Living Will already kicked in). Katana was not the basis for all the piracy that went on with the Dreamcast. Maybe some, if any, but most certainly not all.

Bootay is probably confusing Katana with what was actually used to copy the games. Do I dare mention what it was and have a moron accuse me of piracy?

jennifer:

      Yes, you do dare mention what it was, there are no pirates here [really], and I"m not a moron [sometimes].

Bootay:

--- Quote from: SavannahLion on December 16, 2010, 12:31:09 am ---
--- Quote from: ChadTower on December 15, 2010, 10:55:13 am ---
--- Quote from: Bootay on December 15, 2010, 10:40:40 am ---Just thought I would share that info for the ones that were confused on how they got the PC to read the GD-ROM. Sega screwed themselves more or less with this device, but like people have already stated, the Dreamcast was already on a decline anyway.

--- End quote ---

That device was part of the standard software development kit provided by Sega to third party developers.  It was very expensive and came with a very heavy license agreement.  Of course, someone abused it, as always happens.  Devices like that exist for every closed software platform.  They have to or else the software development process would be severely slowed down by the nature of writing out masters for rapid testing.

--- End quote ---

Thought I should chime in.

To clarify what ChadTower wrote. Dreamcast used a full blown development PC with a GD-ROM burner as part of it's specifications. Essentially, it was a hybrid system with Dreamcast and PC hardware connected together via SCSI. Google Katana if you want more info. I remember this beast because I tried to get a hold of one (a Katana marked one no less) when it appeared on eBay (and before any morons chime in about piracy, I wanted this as a collector and the Dreamcast was already so far gone the Living Will already kicked in). Katana was not the basis for all the piracy that went on with the Dreamcast. Maybe some, if any, but most certainly not all.

Bootay is probably confusing Katana with what was actually used to copy the games. Do I dare mention what it was and have a moron accuse me of piracy?

--- End quote ---

Savannah: Nah, I wasn't confusing anything with the Katana. I wasn't even referring to the Katana at all actually. There was a device you could buy that allowed you to link your Dreamcast to your PC to copy the contents of the GD-ROM to your PC in a folder, then you could shrink some of the files by re-encoding, then burn the files to a CD-ROM and they would play on the Dreamcast. No one used the Katana to pirate back then (That I know of). I cannot remember the device's name though, I might have to research it. Also, some people used the broadband adapter to FTP the contents to their PC and do the same. Like mentioned before, most games were no bigger than a cd-rom, and the ones that were just needed a little downsampling. A lot of the games had large dummy files on them that could be removed too. There were a few games that were too big to fit on CD no matter what, D2 for example. And I hear the original is expensive on Ebay. The pirate scene eventually split it onto multiple cds. I believe the original was 2 full GD-ROMS, and the scene split the game onto 8 CDs. And you needed a guide to know when to switch cds.

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