[Joe Forster/STA]

No news yet.

Online activation is unlike physical media that can get damaged or lost or something. The aim of GCW (and similar sites) is to allow people to put their precious originals back to the box and play without them but nothing more. Online activation is completely different: it is supposed to work all the time and not get broken ever (except for short server down times) so there's no need to crack it. (Which is, of course, not true. I also vote for GCW to host cracks circumventing online activation... but, with the current rules, only when the activation servers officially go offline because the company goes bankrupt, the support period of the game is over etc. That is, when the game cannot be played without a crack anymore. User-friendly companies usually release a non-protected update in such cases but not always, e.g. when there is some dispute about who actually owns the copyright.)

I don't think that gaming companies could shut down GCW, especially if it is hosted in several countries - it would be too much of a hassle to track down all mirrors. Also, GCW is not a profit-oriented "service" - the only source for income is the advertisements and I don't think that that pays much. However, it's better to be on the safe side and minimize the damage caused by publishing cracks, as considered by gaming companies. (Whether that damage is real or not could be discussed but that's another story.)

Please, note that this above is my opinion. The only person with the right to change the most important rules is the person who runs this site: Empire. However, he can't be bothered with this so I'm trying to be his, khm, "spokesman".