2K Games Defends Anti-Piracy Measures

Bioshock publisher 2K Games defended its anti-piracy measures as necessary to protect sales but said it will adjust its methods in the future.

"We just got slammed. Everybody hated us for it. It was unbelievable," said Martin Slater, a senior programmer for 2K Australia, of the public reaction to Bioshock'sintegrated anti-piracy authentication measure.

Nonetheless he said the program achieved its goal. "We were uncracked for 13 whole days," he said. "We were happy with it."

The main concern, Slater continued, was the specter of losing sales on the console because of illegal PC downloads.

"When you're releasing simultaneously on the 360 and the PC, one of the things in the back of the publishers' minds and the people who want to make all the money is that we don't want to lose console sales to people ripping off the PC," he said.

While Slater added that the company will not employ identical methods in the future, he noted that it will "do something close," asserting that sales drop "astronomically" if a game is cracked between the gold master and release.

Source: Gamesindustry.biz