this post was submitted on 02 May 2026
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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How common was video game piracy in the 90s? (piefed.social)
submitted 2 weeks ago by SilentStriker@piefed.social to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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This is during the era when the N64, PS1, SNES, Dreamcast or Sega Genesis were popular. Games back then were released physically via disc or cartridge, meaning distributors or publishers would've implemented anti-piracy (like Lenslok) measures onto physical copies but some knew how to tamper with anti-piracy if they have a computer using other sources of capturing data (floppy disks).

Also, games at the time were 'simple' to torrent but with a catch (dial up was still a thing at the time meaning downloads could take a while if you have a PC). Discs were more straight forward than "torrenting" cartridges (unless you have connections with the manufacturer on smuggling circuit boards). Like with movies, games that came on discs were "torrented" through CDs by using a PC.

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[–] p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 weeks ago

There was a pirate scene even in the 80s, during the 8-bit computer era. Transferring games to floppy from a 300 baud modem.

Parents had a good friend of theirs that gave us a ton of games every time he visited. Most of them were game selection startup menus, because the uploaders wanted to use up all of the space on the floppy, so they crammed it up with 6-8 games each. You can still find these disk copies on certain C64/ATARI XL game torrents.

All the while SPA was still pushing anti-piracy commercials on PBS channels. "Don't copy that floppy" was always their silly tagline.

And yea, once Napster turned into a household name, piracy was mainstream.