Earlier this year, one of China’s largest piracy/cracking groups 3DM offered a prediction that game piracy could come to an end in the next couple of years. Given that many developers have started to turn to always-on connections and introduced features to disable or troll gamers who pirated their games, we can’t say we’re surprised.
In fact just recently, it seems that 3DM is back in the headlines, but this time the group has announced that they will be hitting the the pause button on cracking single-player games. Their reason? Apparently they are trying to see if by not offering cracks for single-player games, will it affect sales of the game. After all one of the main arguments for developers, movie studios, publishers, and record labels is that piracy affects sales.
According to the group’s leader, Bird Sister, “We just had an internal meeting. Starting at the Chinese New Year, 3DM will not crack any single-player games. Cracks by overseas warez groups will still get posted on the [3DM] forum, and we will actively deal with these.” For those unaware, Chinese New Year was on the 8th of February, meaning that this new “ruling” has come into effect.
That being said, 3DM isn’t the only cracking group online, and there are plenty of others who will fill their shoes. However they are one of the larger groups right now and by them pulling out (temporarily), it will be interesting to see how this will affect video game piracy, but what say you? Do you think 3DM’s lack of participation will lead to an increase in video game sales?