View Single Post
Old 11-05-2005, 05:43 PM   #8
dr_st
Abandonia nerd

 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: ,
Posts: 98
Default

Without going into the entire "warez/abandonwarez - good or bad?" convo here, I'd just like to say that the connection between piracy/warez and NO-CD cracks isn't quite as strong as might seem, and providing a NO-CD crack, in most cases, has nothing to do with promoting piracy.

Explanation:

In the age of CD burning, broadband internet and P2P file-sharing most warez are no longer shared as rips, but as fully-functional disc images. Most of which, when you burn them, provide you a pirated copy that will work without any no-CD cracks or patches (ven though there are exceptions, these are mostly for the new games, while games that are several years old will not distinguish an original CD from a pirated copy.

Hence, most of the time when a person wants a NO-CD crack, it's just to aviod the hassle of having to put the CD in. This has other advantages besides the issue of pure convenience - the less you fiddle around with the CD, the longer its lifespan is likely to be. Whether the CD is original or pirated has almost nothing to do with it, and you cannot assume apriori one or the other.

Heck, I own a very much legitimate copy of Descent II (as part of the "Definitive Collection". And yet I went through hell to find a NO-CD crack for it. In the end, after I couldn't find a crack for the DOS version, I found one for the Windows version, learned of the bytes it changes in the file and then reproduced the same changes for the DOS version. It was very fun actually when it worked.
dr_st is offline                         Send a private message to dr_st