NEWS CATEGORIES:



NEWS ARCHIVE >>
SOFTPEDIA REVIEWS >>
MEET THE EDITORS >>
Home > News > Tags > piracy

Stories about: piracy


More: next 50 >>

Microsoft May Face a Lawsuit Regarding Its Recent Wave of Xbox 360 Bans

About two weeks ago, Microsoft decided to deal another blow to the underworld of piracy, as a considerable number of modified Xbox 360 consoles had been banned from the Xbox Live. A lot of people, mostly those that ended up getting banned, were seriously frustrated by this decision, as one can only imagine, and it di...

23 November 2009
03:09 GMT

Microsoft Banning Modded Xbox 360 Consoles

Microsoft has gone ahead with its plan to ban from the Xbox Live service those users that have modified their gaming consoles and are using it in order to run pirated videogames. The move comes as more and more developers, as revealed by a survey from TIGA, are saying that they are afraid of the impact piracy can hav...

13 November 2009
02:59 GMT

Piracy Worries Videogame Developers

It seems a majority of videogame developers in the United Kingdom are worried that piracy is one of the biggest threats to their business and also believe that in the future, the problem will only get worse. The results are part of a survey commissioned by TIGA, the trade association representing the United Kingdom g...

12 November 2009
04:10 GMT

18-Year-Old Modern Warfare 2 Pirate Was Arrested

There are a lot of games that end up on the market well before their official release dates and there's nothing the publishers and developers can do at this point but accept the fact and deal with the losses. Well, Activision will have none of that and has decided to take a hands-on approach on the smuggling bus...

9 November 2009
07:10 GMT

Modern Warfare 2 Leaked, Bans Forthcoming

Several forums, most of them on the shady side of the Internet where pirates congregate, are reporting that the PC and the Xbox 360 versions of Modern Warfare 2 have already been leaked or sold early by some retailers and that pirates have ripped the contents and are offering them online.The leaks are unusual, given ...

4 November 2009
05:30 GMT

Tap-Fu Developer on App Store Piracy

Neptune Interactive, the developer of Tap-Fu, has posted its own extensive analysis of the phenomenon known as “App Store piracy,” a subject that has been touched by many lately. Talking from a developer’s perspective, Neptune tries to paint a picture of just how incapable developers are of turning ...

26 October 2009
07:23 GMT

All-iPod-&-iPhone IPSW Download Source

As Apple fans should know, Apple delivers iPhone and iPod software updates under the form of an IPSW file. While iPhone software updates are always free, some iPod updates (such as those for the iPod touch) are paid. And while neither software update should be applied by customers without authenticating with Apple vi...

22 October 2009
08:59 GMT

PixelJunk Monsters Heavily Pirated on the PSP

The leader of Q-Games, Dylan Cuthbert, seems determined not to bring more of his companies videogames to the PlayStation Portable for fear that piracy will lead sales of the titles to be so low as not to justify the effort made.At the moment, PixelJunk Monsters has been released on the Sony handheld and appears to be...

21 October 2009
07:25 GMT

The Anti-Piracy Wars Continue

Piracy is one of the biggest, if not the very biggest concern of the gaming industry. It's the most physical form of expressing the anarchist inside gamers without constructing home-made bombs and trying to overthrow a government. Some hackers decide to cheat the protections on different software to “stick...

16 October 2009
03:27 GMT

Pinch Media Talks ‘Piracy in the App Store’

Pinch Media, which offers application analytics for iPhone developers, has released a report (from 360iDev) talking about piracy in the App Store. According to the study, piracy for iPhone and iPod touch users is not an alternative to the “try before you buy” (trial versions) that Apple doesn’t supp...

15 October 2009
06:00 GMT

Wal Mart Steps into the Used Games Market

It seems that the used videogames market is beginning to be more and more attractive to big retailer chains that are not necessarily specialized in titles for the current gaming consoles.After Amazon began accepting used games and re-selling them and after chains like Toys'R'Us and Best Buy entered the mark...

12 October 2009
04:43 GMT

Nintendo Releases Major Wii 4.2 System Update

Nintendo has released, without much fanfare, a new system update for the Wii home gaming console. It is labeled 4.2 and promises owners of the system improved performance and more ease of use. The company has not deemed fit to offer a detailed list of the changes it has introduced in the new system update, leaving us...

30 September 2009
05:26 GMT

Brand Loyalty Does Not Eliminate Piracy

Is loyalty to a developer possible when it comes to videogames? This is one of the questions which will be answered when Dragon Age: Origins, the BioWare developed middle fantasy RPG, arrives later in the year. A certain segment of players have always been attracted to games from the company because of the strong sto...

10 September 2009
03:30 GMT

China Prepares to Hunt Music Piracy Offenders

The Chinese Government is preparing a law to counter the latest rise in online music piracy from companies, websites and users located in China. This could have serious implications on China-based search engines Baidu and Sogou, recognized as the best way to find free (mostly illegal) download links for audio tracks....

5 September 2009
05:09 GMT

Non Removable PSP Go! Battery Will Eliminate Piracy

One of the reasons for the PlayStation Portable not doing as well as it could against the Nintendo DS was the fact that piracy drove away some of the developers from creating videogames for the platform.Sony seems to be catching up with the PSP Go! and one of the steps that it has taken to reduce piracy has been to m...

1 September 2009
02:31 GMT

Halo 3: ODST Leaked to the Public, No Bans Planned

It seems that players are so eager to get their hands on Halo 3: ODST that they have breached the highly secure distribution chain that Microsoft has set up in order to get access to copies of the game.Microsoft is investigating news that the upcoming Bungie-developed shooter has been leaked in France. The company is...

31 August 2009
16:21 GMT

Bayonetta Is Set to Be Region Locked

SEGA of Europe has told journalists at the Bayonetta Gamescom demo that it plans for the videogame to be region locked when it is released in Japan this October. The title has been given a January 2010 date for Europe and for the United States.Apparently, it will not be playable outside of Japan no matter whether gam...

27 August 2009
03:46 GMT

Over 10 Million “Custom” XP Downloads Get Chinese Pirates Jail Sentences

Chinese authorities cracked down on a group of four software pirates for offering a custom-built copy of Windows XP, which was downloaded in excess of 10 million times. The four people who were identified as part of the Windows XP piracy ring received jail sentences and financial penalties of more than $1.6 million. ...

24 August 2009
10:52 GMT

Ubisoft Blames Piracy for Falling Profits

Ubisoft has put out financial data showing that the French-based publisher has seen a fall of 51% in sales, missing its proposed targets by 12%. The company only managed to sell 113.71 million dollars worth of games in the first quarter of the fiscal year, which ended on June 30.The overall poor state of the videogam...

28 July 2009
04:33 GMT

Weekend Reading: Game Demos, Piracy and The Sims 3

Piracy is one of the big, ugly problems of the videogame industry and it mostly affects PC game releases. So, you would think that with the launch of one of the most anticipated PC-only games of the year, Electronic Arts would make sure to limit piracy. Still, The Sims 3, which we have reviewed, got pirated quite a l...

27 June 2009
06:01 GMT

Sims 3 Piracy Was Like a Large Scale Demo, Says EA Boss

Piracy is all around us these days, ranging from software to video games or movies. But one of the areas most affected by it is PC gaming, where a lot of users tend to pirate their favorite titles in order to escape the ordeal of DRM software, like the infamous SecuROM, or to try it out with full features before deci...

23 June 2009
15:01 GMT

United Kingdom Preparing to Get Tough on Piracy

These days have been extremely important for the videogame industry, especially in the United Kingdom, with the Government deciding that the PEGI ratings system would be used to label games but also with the release of a new report related to the way the digital society would be implemented in the country.The Digital...

18 June 2009
03:21 GMT

Sony: Trophies Not Coming to the PlayStation Portable

Trophies have been available on the PlayStation 3 for quite some time and gamers, always wanting more out of gaming companies, have been requesting that Sony also implemented them on the PlayStation Portable handheld. This would allow gamers to increase their ever important PlayStation Rank from both devices and woul...

9 June 2009
05:14 GMT

E3: ESA Head Likes Obama, Hates Piracy

One of the overlooked moments at this year's E3 conference has been the keynote given by Michael Gallagher, the president of the Entertainment Software Association, an organization that is supposed to look out for the interests of the videogaming industry. Amongst the topics that he touched on were piracy, the w...

5 June 2009
03:54 GMT

A Gamer's Week: 24 – 30 May

Hello and welcome to another edition of A Gamer's Week, the roundup of all the most important news from the gaming industry that unfolded in the last seven days. This week was a pretty interesting one, as it is leading up to the start of the E3 conference, so companies were working overtime to reveal some detail...

30 May 2009
06:21 GMT

The Sims 3 Already Pirated More than 180,000 Times

With the release date more than a week away, The Sims 3, the biggest game that Electronic Arts will release this summer, has been pirated by more than 100,000 people. The most recent estimates show that close to 200,000 have used or are using file sharing sites to get the pirated version of the videogame before it ar...

29 May 2009
05:05 GMT

Nintendo DS Piracy Equals Terrorism

When people think of terrorism, they think of the 9/11 attacks, of wars in the Middle East or of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. But now, Yutaka Kubota, who is the head of the Association of Copyright for Computer Software in Japan, wants you to associate terrorism with videogame piracy in general and...

28 May 2009
16:31 GMT

The DSi Has Been Cracked and Now Supports Piracy and Homebrew

Piracy is a huge concern for the gaming industry these days as it isn't limited to the PC platform, where it reached the highest levels, but to almost all platforms, including the Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii or the PlayStation Portable. Nintendo's small handheld, the DS, made no exception as pirates easily foun...

20 May 2009
15:01 GMT

Microsoft Attempts to Establish Anti-Piracy Heaven

Microsoft is testing a new approach for fighting piracy. The Redmond company is looking to establish an anti-piracy heaven in Hangzhou, a city on the east coast of China. Essentially, the plan for Hangzhou is that it will evolve into a model information technology city, set to stand apart from the rest of China and i...

18 May 2009
11:48 GMT

New Windows 7 Anti-Piracy Features

Windows 7 will not reinvent the anti-piracy wheel for Microsoft. Instead, the next iteration of the Windows client will be based on Windows Vista's Software Protection Platform, especially in regard to the activation and validation experience. Microsoft is apparently going with an “if it ain't broken ...

7 May 2009
10:44 GMT

Canada Goes on the Priority Watch List for Piracy

A representative of the United States administration announced that Canada was being placed on the Priority Watch List, which is focused on those countries not doing enough to stop copyright infringements. It's the first time Canada has gone on the list, joining states like China, Russia, India, Thailand and Ven...

6 May 2009
02:37 GMT

Zeno Clash Developer Asks Pirates to Buy the Full Game

Piracy is a big concern for the video game industry as it is present on almost any platform, not only on the PC as some developers and publishers want the media to believe. Almost every new release is cracked and put up for download on various websites even before it is officially launched. Now, Ace Team, the develo...

4 May 2009
13:11 GMT

Windows 7 Pirates Will Be Kept Safe and Cozy by Microsoft

Pirated copies of Windows 7 will be kept just as safe as non-genuine variants of previous Windows releases, by Microsoft via security updates. Responding to questions related to how Microsoft keeps Windows users protected on an ongoing basis, Paul Cooke, Microsoft director, Windows Client Enterprise Security, emphasi...

28 April 2009
13:51 GMT

X-Men Origins: Wolverine Leaked and Available for Download for the Xbox 360 and PS2

Comic books have been the source of inspiration for a lot of the entertainment industry's creations, ranging from movies to TV series or animated cartoons. Not even the gaming segment left the genre unexploited and a variety of titles based on comic books have appeared over the years. One of the most recent one...

28 April 2009
13:01 GMT

Piracy Laws Could Become Tougher in Canada

The Entertainment Software Association of Canada, also known as ESAC, is announcing that it has begun a new campaign calling for legislators to take into account the need to beef up the anti piracy laws in the country, one of the most important markets for videogames in the world.The ESAC is saying that the legislati...

27 April 2009
03:35 GMT

Demigod Issues Mostly Resolved

The launch of Demigod, created by Gas Powered Games and published by Stardock, was plagued by issues. First, GameStop broke the street date of the title, releasing it earlier and leading to a torrent of piracy. Then, the publisher failed to take into account the impact of pirated copies on a mainly multiplayer title ...

22 April 2009
18:51 GMT

Piracy on the PSP Is 'Sickening,' Says Sony

Piracy is one of the biggest issues for almost all branches of the industry, be it software, entertainment, or video games. But while it does have a lot of faces and a lot of camps that sustain different sides of it, it is still fundamentally something that affects quite a lot of people and companies. Sony's Pl...

22 April 2009
03:16 GMT

The ESA Applauds Court's Decision on The Pirate Bay Trial

Piracy is one of the biggest problems that has been plaguing both the gaming and software industry for quite some time. As such, a lot of organizations like the Entertainment Software Association have been created in order to militate against pirates and show people just what toll downloading a pirated copy of a vide...

21 April 2009
03:03 GMT

Weekend Reading: Retail Versus Digital Distribution

This week was set to witness the release of Demigod, quite an interesting title created by Gas Powered Games and published by Stardock. The game has both a retail version and a digital distribution version. It focuses on multiplayer, with the network infrastructure and the match making services crucial for a good exp...

18 April 2009
07:21 GMT

Microsoft Software - 1 Billion Users per Day, 500 Million Pirates

Out of 1 million people who use Microsoft software on a daily basis only half have paid for the licenses and the associated rights to do so, according to the Redmond company. In his keynote at the Public Safety Symposium in Redmond, Washington on April 15, 2009, Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s chief operating officer...

17 April 2009
10:54 GMT

GameStop Breaks Street Day for Demigod

GameStop has broken the street date for Demigod, a game published by Stardock and created by Gas Powered Games. This means that the title was set to be simultaneously released via Impulse and in stores, but players were able to get it earlier in brick-and-mortar stores. It's a highly unusual move from GameStop a...

15 April 2009
17:21 GMT

Leaked Windows 7 Build 7068 Sold on eBay

The wide availability of Windows 7, be it from official Microsoft channels (the Beta Build 7000), or through various illegal third-parties (the pre-Release Candidate builds), has managed to encourage schemes to turn over a profit from the bits offered for free by the Redmond company. The latest strategy to turn over ...

9 April 2009
13:08 GMT

Google to Allow Free Music Downloads in China

On Monday, Google Inc. has announced that it has begun offering free and legal downloads of licensed music on its Chinese servers, after the American company reached an agreement with the four largest music producers and distributors in the world – Sony Music, Warner Music, EMI and Universal Music. Google will ...

30 March 2009
09:34 GMT

Microsoft: Protect Yourselves Against Pirated Software

A recent Microsoft study indicates that even for professionals it is very hard to distinguish between high-quality counterfeit software and the real thing. This is why Microsoft emphasizes the importance of the free tools it is providing as a way for its business users to verify whether or not the Microsoft soft...

23 March 2009
13:00 GMT

37% of Business Users Unknowingly Purchased Pirated Windows and Office

No less than 37% of business users unknowingly acquired pirated copies of Microsoft software, including Windows and Office, according to statistics made available by the Redmond company. The software giant reviewed no less than 30 companies and suggested that business users with counterfeit software in their IT infra...

23 March 2009
10:42 GMT

Piracy Has Helped the PC, Says PC Gaming Alliance Boss

We've heard a lot about piracy in the last few months. From Nintendo highlighting the most pirate-friendly countries to the ELSPA scoring a big victory with a UK tribunal, convicting a video game pirate to one year in prison. But although you would expect the PC Gaming Alliance, a non-profit organization create...

19 March 2009
03:37 GMT

UK Man Sentenced to a Year in Jail for Video Game Piracy

Piracy is a very important issue nowadays due to the relative easiness with which illegal copies of games or software can be distributed over the Internet and various other Peer2Peer networks like Bittorrent. But even though such actions do only harm for games or software developers and publishers, there are some wh...

18 March 2009
14:01 GMT

Combating Piracy Is Pointless, Says Stormrise Developer

Piracy has and will be a very hot topic for the gaming industry. Despite the big number of measures that developers and publishers resort to in order to keep their titles away from the hands of pirates, sooner or later things go out of their reach and into the large file sharing networks across the world, where every...

2 March 2009
02:48 GMT

Nintendo Highlights Most Pirate-Friendly Countries

Piracy is becoming a bigger and bigger problem for the whole gaming industry. But despite the continuous efforts of organizations such as the Entertainment Software Association, the PC Gaming Alliance or other such anti-piracy groups, the phenomenon is still going strong. However, while a lot of publishers and devel...

26 February 2009
02:53 GMT

The Most Video Game Pirates Are in Western Europe

Piracy has always been a very prominent problem for quite a lot of countries. Video game pirates believe that because of the restrictive DRM (Digital Rights Management) software with which a lot of games come bundled is something illegal and, by pirating the title, can keep their own computer safe and teach the compa...

18 February 2009
08:41 GMT


More: next 50 >>

Windows tabGames tabDrivers tabMac tabLinux tabScripts tabMobile tabHandheld tabGadgets tabNews tab

SUBMIT PROGRAM   |   ADVERTISE   |   GET HELP   |   SEND US FEEDBACK   |   RSS FEEDS   |   ENTER NEWS SITE   |   ENGLISH BOARD   |   ROMANIAN FORUM