Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob
Are you sure about that? My understanding is that Steam doesn't load the entirely of the content until release day, effectively stopping all pre-release piracy, but after that the content is completely loaded. If it's missing portions, even at random, offline mode wouldn't work and people would be wailing and gnashing their teeth.
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I think that's what he meant, that before release parts are missing, but after release, the content is completely loaded.
His description of random bits missing is of course not accurate, if that were the case it would be possible to pirate because everyone would have different parts missing, get enough together and you reconstruct the original. Plus keeping track of who has what random bits missing is just wasteful.. far easier to simply deploy the 99.5% of the game for preload, and then have the rest download on release day.
After release, it depends on what additional copy protection stuff is in there beyond the simple steam stuff.. if it's just steam it'll get released almost immediately.
Plus Steam isn't the only source for games so sometimes games are out being pirated a month before the game is released.