Jay Miller

I agree with Guru Nathan 100%, and I understand NicolaiB's distinction between cracking and pirating software. It is totally unfair that game companies nowadays are using more and more intrusive measures to "protect" their intellectual property. Remember what happened when EA released Spore? People were outraged with the intrusive SecuROM measures implemented, as well as the limited installs of 3 times, with each additional one needing authorization from EA Support. Why would you think that people started to crack the game then? Not to save themselves a few bucks--that's what uninformed consumers would think. The real reason is to protest EA for basically punishing its paying customers. It's people with this kind of thinking that are helping the big businesses' cause in invading the consumer's privacy. EA's Origin is known to go through documents on your computer, as a German computer user proved with a task tracking tool that showed Origin looking through his financial records among other things. SecuROM is known to cause problems to Windows and damage hardware. Think about it, people who crack the game to get around these BS measures are, as Guru Nathan said, the "smart shoppers." They are not falling for the companies' traps and are protesting them for their rights. If GTA V still contains SecuROM or other stupid draconian DRM system, then I'm simply not paying R* a cent of my money. But I'm sure there are other consumers out there that don't care and just want to get their hands on it no matter what. These are the ones who R* are manipulating, making it think it's OK to implement such intrusive software onto their customers. Just stating my opinions so that others can stop and think for a moment and become smart shoppers as well. I remember the days when installing games used to be as easy as simple disk and CD-key checks. What ever happened to those days? Surely the cracking and pirating of games has seen an increase due to these intrusive measures. You would think that they'll go down, but like I said, the wise consumer won't take this kind of abuse from the big businesses.