Game cracking group takes a year off as a “genuine sales” experiment

(credit: Orin Zebest / Flickr)

A major game piracy group says it will cease releasing any its DRM- and copy protection-stripping cracks for the next year, ostensibly to examine whether or not its efforts have any material effect on game sales. But there's little reason to expect this "experiment" to yield any useful results.

Torrentfreak reports that Chinese piracy collective 3DM has decided in an "internal meeting" not to crack any more single-player games as of the Chinese New Year, which was on February 8. Then, after a year spent away from the cracking scene, the group says it will "take a look at the situation... to see if genuine sales have grown."

That's an interesting idea, but it's hard to imagine 3DM's unilateral action having that much effect on legitimate game sales. After all, there are plenty of other active groups in the cracking "scene" that will try to fight to increase their own exposure by filling the hole left by 3DM. And even if every major cracking group collectively decided to take a break, some bored kids with debuggers and too much free time would no doubt step up to fill in the overwhelming demand for cracked games.

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