Copy protection, a necessary evil?

Nowadays, almost every game comes out with copy protection, claiming its essential in order to secure sales, and avoid pirates. But, in all honesty, is it really that necessary? On February 21st, 2006 Stardock Entertainment released Galactic Civilizations II – the follow-up to their successful game of 2003. What’s more, its sales figures are up beyond all expectations. A new game selling well might not seem like news, until you realise that it ships with ZERO copy protection. You don’t even need to authenticate a serial to play it. At a time when everyone blames the potential of downloaders for a multitude of sins, sales flops and marketing disasters, Stardock has made a product that they’ve not protected, or even advertised, and its flying off the shelves. Yes, flying off the shelves. To quote Brad Wardell, one of the games developers n an announcement on the games frontpage says, “We just got our report on the first week of sales of Galactic Civilizations II. Despite some availability problems, we’re told that we’re presently the best selling software title at Walmart. Let me be clear: Not just #1 PC game, but overall software. Best Buy, EB, and Gamestop have put in additional orders that actually exceed their initial sell-in orders.” Story here