PC piracy giant calls it quits

One of the largest Chinese piracy groups has said that it has stopped cracking single-player PC games.

3DM was in the press last month having claimed that, thanks to improvements to PC game security, it feared PC piracy may be a thing of the past within two years.

Now Torrentfreak reports that 3DM leader ‘Bird Sister’ has said: We just had an internal meeting. Starting at the Chinese New Year, 3DM will not crack any single-player games.” Bird Sister even went as far as to suggest that any cracks by other groups shared on the 3DM forums will be actively removed.

Most surprising, however, is the claimed reasoning behind the move.

We’ll take a look at the situation in a year’s time to see if genuine sales have grown,” she added. In other words, 3DM wants to see whether a reduction in the availability of pirated PC games will be of any benefit to the PC games market.

At least, that’s the public line. How big a part the recent piracy struggles have played in the decision, however, is another question.

Just Cause 3 and the recently released Rise of the Tomb Raider, both of which use Denuvo copy protection, remain uncracked for the time being – and perhaps now for the foreseeable future, too.