Rampancy

[image:6662 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]Everybody's new best friend, Frankie, has put up the first Halo 2 Weekly Update, and the first fansite to get the nod is (not surprisingly) HBO.

[image:6655 left hspace=5 vspace=5 border=0]The 'net has been all abuzz of late about the so-called "release" of Half-Life 2 in parts of the former Soviet Union; it has been spotted for sale in Ukraine and Siberia. Most of these reports have drawn attention because Half-Life 2 is hotly anticipated, and because this game is not yet near an official release, and the source of these copies for sale is a leaked beta.

However, the average gamer may or may not be aware that piracy of computer software, music and movies isn't limited to Internet-based peer-to-peer schemes and shady chat rooms in CIS countries; it's right out there on apparently legitimate store shelves for everyone to see.

Case in point: Halo for the PC. Shortly after the release of PC Halo in the US (and long before we got our copies here at Rampancy, which arrived in a package with Mac Halo and First Strike) there were CDs on store shelves in former Soviet countries that purported to be Halo for the PC-- version 1.5, no less. (Perhaps that's where the rumors came from.) This applies not just to games, but operating systems, application suites like Microsoft Office, even enterprise level software like Oracle 8i.

The jewel case art itself is an interesting study; while the cover art appears to be based on screenshots from the shipping game, the back of the box features screens as old as E3 2000 and older.

Of course, trends are in place to reverse this state of affairs. Microsoft has opened representative offices in some (not all) former Soviet countries, and has been lobbying their governments to enact (and enforce) protection for intellectual property rights, as well as urging local computer resellers to cease practices like selling cracked copies of Microsoft operating systems and applications with new computers, or selling OEM copies over the counter that are clearly marked "for sale only with a new PC".

However, the real "gotcha" for anyone who plonked down hard currency (or its nearest equivalent) for "Halo 1.5" in any of the CIS countries-- and the going price is about two U.S. dollars-- is the system requirements. The only words in English on the back of the CD case are for the system requirements, and they read:

Pentium-2 233 Mhz, 64 MB RAM, 4 MB 3D Card

If anyone actually tried to play Halo on that system, that's almost punishment enough for warezing the game... almost.

In summary, piracy is something that affects not only Half-Life 2, or even just Halo-- but just about every piece of software you can imagine. And before anybody asks, no, I am not going to tell you exactly where you can get this. Buy Halo.

CNN Money has a post-resignation interview with Ed Fries that looks a bit more deeply than most about why Fries is leaving Microsoft just as details for the Xbox 2 and (hopefully) the release of Halo 2 are right around the corner:

The first thing that modern man achieved after customizable game engines, of course, was figuring out how to make playing one game look more like playing another game, an activity which is as inscrutable as its appeal is universal.