While at GDC last week we spent some time talking to Robert Bowling - Community Relations Manager at Infinity Ward - about Call of Duty 4, PC game piracy and CoD4's domination of online multiplayer.
I wanted to comment on the pirating issue in CoD4. I purchased my retail box game at the beginning of January. despite having a legitimate copy purchased from Target, when I tried to run the game the copy protection prevented it from starting. Going to the game website and searching for potential fixes did not resolve the problem. I tried calling the company, but it was a weekend and no one was there to help me out. I finally ended up going on the Internet and downloading a "No CD" crack for the game so that I could play it. This was not my preference, but was the only reasonable solution available at the time (the other suggestion on the website was to flash my BIOS - that seemed a bit extreme just to be able to play the game).
Anyway, I hope that the game maker takes this type of scenario into account when tallying the number of games that look like they have been pirated.
