Horror is growing on PC games!

Based on the Thief 3D engine, System Shock 2 is the follow up to one of the best 3D RPG games ever, despite its commercial failure.

Visit Looking Glass for info about it, and expect to see me reviewing it soon!

What's behind the patch, part 3 - polemic / the end

My previous opinions on the patches subject, made clear its very particular PC nature. The conclusion to this underground view on patches, that runs away from traditional views, will tell you something that many have noticed, but few have admitted: patches are also a possible weapon against piracy.

Take the Driver and the System Shock 2 examples - these games were patched on their first sales week! Quite strange, eh?- After all, a final product should not need any kind of tweaks / fixes, at least for some time, until the installed user community having the chance to notice such needs or request improvements. The real-life scenario shows something completely different: patches are released sooner and more often, than ever.

Speaking about the Driver [USA release] patch, download it [1.3 MB].

The System Shock 2 multi player patch is bigger, but you might want to download it [5.3 MB].

Piracy is decreasing, but there is an ever going fight against it. When a CDROM title "goes gold" it immediately becomes a potential piracy victim; for example, many Microsoft titles are illegally distributed, thanks to the master copy sent to the duplication factories! Incredible...

People may ask how come Microsoft, being the world's most lucrative enterprise, can't solve these amateur piracy leak, but there is a polemic justification: Microsoft doesn't really mind with piracy, until it really doesn't start eating its huge share of the cake. The truth is that piracy allows the growth of an indirect consumers population - these are the people who have never paid for Windows or for Office, but that do pay for books about such products, or, just by using Microsoft software, deny the opportunity for alternatives, as Linux. You see, there is an obscure side on every coin, and Microsoft is just an example.

The Microsoft example shows how piracy doesn't necessarily mean bad sales, but on the gaming scene, there are some remarkable differences, the most important being the shorter life of the software: you buy a game and play it until its end, or until you can't resist an alternative, so the software houses must grab your attention, the faster they can, risking losing you to the alternatives, hence the frequent and fast patches.

When a game leaks to the piracy scene, it usually does so on a "cracked" version, where the code has been altered to jump over original CDROM checks. Crackers have the knowledge to look after the usual protection op codes, but of course they can't re-program the whole thing, meaning that they are light-years away from the knowledge needed to fix a particular playtime problem - for example a cracker could never solve the sudden death bug of Hidden and Dangerous [H&D - check September 1999].

When releasing a patch, software developers usually release a stronger, harder to crack, version of their software. There are cases, when the patch does almost nothing more than precisely that! Ouch! And there are cases where a game is released with a relatively serious bug, on purpose!!, in order to invalidate the first generation of pirated versions, the ones who will sell more on the underground, ie, the ones who cost more to the original authors.

So, this concludes my "the truth beyond the patch" feature. This last episode told you stuff that you CAN NOT read elsewhere, including on the reference magazine EDGE, who published a great article on the subject.

"What's behind the patch" was published in 3 parts:

part one - day 27 September 1999 - introduction

part two - day 28 September 1999 - the dark side

part three - day 09 October 1999 - polemic / the end