An idea to stop game/software piracy

So here is my proposal: stop software piracy. I’ve given this some thought, and from my past experiences I know that it is incredibly easy to pirate pretty much most any type of software that does not require an internet connection to work properly, and even in some of those cases it’s possible to fake an internet connection to register something.

Anyways, my point for this post is to describe a new type of distributing games (And other software.) I propose that industries move away from CD’s and other optical storage devices in favor of flash based sticks which contain the data instead. Furthermore, each ‘flash drive’ will have a unique EEPROM built into it in order to provide a truly unique code or identification number for each game released. This eliminates the need to have a serial code that the user must enter to activate the software, because essentially the serial number will be built into the EEPROM. The software developers can then write a custom code to check the EEPROM on the flash disk to make sure that the copy of the software is valid and matches the one that is assigned to your copy of the game, and thereby making it extremely difficult to pirate the software.

Flash drives have other advantages such as being small, and can be used in a standard USB slot, which I believe is faster than CD read speeds. Also, it could be possible to have writable sectors on the flash drives for save files and such. In my opinion the best part of this is that technically it would be possible to have the game fully installed on the flash disk, meaning that the user no longer needs to install the game onto their PC and use hard drive space. In addition it would be possible to take your game and bring it around to any of your friends houses or wherever else and simply ‘plug-and-play’. This is extremely close to how the old consol systems used to work with their ‘cartridge games’, but simply with an added layer of copy protection. What gave me the idea for the EEPROM is the original Xbox consoles. Each console contained a unique EEPROM that made it difficult to hack the system without bypassing the EEPROM all together with use of a Mod-chip or w/e, and if you screwed up the console was basically dead. And by having an EEPROM on a relatively cheap game it would not be cost effective for hackers to design a mod-chip for every game that came out (unlike a single one for all xboxs) and would end up making them want to buy the game instead.

I think it would be very cool to see games come out on flash drives, and with the price of them continually dropping (I saw a 16gb flash drive on Newegg a few days ago for 20$ after rebates) it would be economically feasible for the manufacturer, and faster for the user! It’s a rough idea right now and I’m sure it can be refined, but let me know what you guys think!? I’d love to hear ideas why it would work, or wouldn’t work, and what could be done to improve it!

Plus it's hardly a new idea and has recently resurfaced. He has just rewritten a "news" story from last week.

Maybe not stop it completely as I don't think that will ever happen. Some games in the past have been pirated very little, like those that started coming out with StarForce liek Cycling Manager and Beyond Divinity, granted, not blockbusters but for people that really enjoyed them, they would go to great lenghts to get around it, and they managed to pirate such games, like unplugging the CD drive, installing cracks and other fancy stuff.