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@vokainen099 @david @phnt @raccoon @japananon @mischievoustomato The other thing is; that's how cracked servers work from someone who hosted them on Halo PC (you had to or nobody could join your server, literally everyone was pirating).

At least on the GameSpy era and older Steam games (1.6 comes to mind); you host the server and then you have a serverside patch that removes the key check.

This is why publishers clamped down; because back in the day you could pirate a game and play online easily. But with the magic of SteamWorks, Demonware, and more you need to verify the player owns the game.

Do you ever see people playing pirated games online nowadays? Not with new ones, you don't. That was the goal, and it worked. It's an incentive to get you to pay up.

That's also why F2P games boomed so fucking hard, you can't pirate CoD anymore but you can play Warzone for free, Halo Infnite for free, etc. Halo Infinite is less dead than many paid $60 flops.