As the video game industry finally begins a minor crackdown against game pirates, id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead said the PC hardware industry sees game piracy as a "hidden benefit" towards increased hardware sales.
"I think that there's been this dirty little secret among hardware manufacturers, which is that the perception of free content - even if you're supposed to pay for it on PCs - is some sort hidden benefit that you get when you buy a PC, like a right to download music for free or a right to download pirated movies and games," Hollenshead said in an interview with Gamesindustry.biz.
The PC hardware manufacturers publicly speak out against software piracy, but they benefit as the people pirating games also need to purchase new hardware.
There is a growing standoff among some game studios on how to compete against software piracy that has led to possible loss of revenue. TopWare Interactive, Atari, Reality Pump, Techland and Codemasters have started a campaign to get alleged British file sharers to settle out of court for £300, or face the possibility of being taken to court and facing higher fines.
As one of the most popular game studios in the world, Hollenshead and other id Software executives have discussed piracy for the past few years. During the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in 2007, Hollenshead discussed the wasted resources game studios must dedicate towards stopping PC piracy.
He also discussed the difficulty in stopping piracy while at the same time not disrupting the way gamers interact with the software they've purchased. Most game studios are now using either physical protection on the disc to stop it from being copied, or are using some type of online activation so only one CD key can be registered at any given time.
