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THE PROBLEM
Software Piracy is a costly and large problem
Describing the PC game market as "the most intensely pirated market ever", Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli’s assessment is: "for one sale there are 15 to 20 pirates and pirate versions”. Formal studies have reached similar conclusions, estimating piracy rates of at least 1:10.
The most damaging piracy occurs immediately before and after release, with cracked versions of games made available on the internet for anyone to download. The resulting number of downloads can be very large:
These numbers are likely much too low, since once a game is available, with the DRM removed, it can very quickly and easily reach more users, in ways not tracked by the services generating the data, above.
Most protections are broken by crackers
Protections are typically broken by crackers within 2 hours to 2 weeks and often ahead of release. For more info, see Cracking.
Most DRM diminish the user experience in several ways
Existing DRM systems have contributed to destroying customer relationships and trust by impinging, inconveniencing and even impugning honest customers. For more info, see User Unfriendly.
In net, DRM products do not perform the required protection and makes gamers angry. As Bill Gates has said ‘No one has done it right yet’. Until now,
ByteShield™’s revolutionary design avoids the weak protections and vulnerabilities of existing solutions and their negative effects on user experience. ByteShield™’s system design enables product to be transparent to gamer and so time consuming to crack that the incentives for the crackers disappear. For more information see the Solution section of this website.
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