Peter Tamte of MacSoft agreed to be interviewed by Tuncer Deniz of Inside Mac Games to talk about the issues some users have been having with the 1.03 patch, many of which center on the anti-piracy features; namely, the requirement that the CD be inserted in the drive in order to play, as with the PC version. The earlier version of Halo for the Mac did not have this requirement.

The real news is the shocking-sounding revelation of the number of pirated copies of Halo Tamte says are out there:

We can only physically track less than 10% of the piracy, and we have physically tracked more units of Halo being stolen on the Internet than have been sold through stores so far.

How it is known that the tracked copies are 10% of the total if only 10% of the total is monitored is a bit beyond me. It sounds a bit like the old wives' tale about cockroaches, that for every one that you see there are ten you don't see. There's something about this statistic that rings true-- even if we have no idea where it came from. However, it is worth noting that the actual sales figure for Mac Halo isn't mentioned. No doubt Tamte simply wants us to imagine a large number, multiply it by 10, conclude that this number represents the amount of Halo piracy, and to recoil in horror.

How is this being tracked? Tamte doesn't say. He does, however, predict that more game companies will use the Internet to track piracy directly:

Yes, it is very likely you will see these -- and other -- forms of copy-protection in the future. It is terribly unfortunate that the honest people will have to waste their time with copy-protection. But, there are just too many dishonest people willing to steal games on the Internet now.

With the amount of estimated piracy compared to the size of the market, there's no wonder companies balk at making Mac ports of games.