When people ask what is causing the slowdown in PC gaming, piracy immediately enters the conversation.  No matter the game specs, poor porting, etc, it always seems to come down to pirates cutting into the sales of games on the PC.  Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, feels that the days of PC game piracy are at an end.

Speaking at the annual Wedbush Morgan Securities hosted Management Access Conference, Mr. Bushnell stated that, “There is a stealth encryption chip called a TPM that is going on the motherboards of most of the computers that are coming out now.”

“What that says is that in the games business we will be able to encrypt with an absolutely verifiable private key in the encryption world – which is uncrackable by people on the internet and by giving away passwords – which will allow for a huge market to develop in some of the areas where piracy has been a real problem.”

via GamesIndustry.biz

What does all this mean?  Well, Mr. Bushnell seems to think that a hidden encryption chip, which I have to admit, I have never heard of, is going to store key information about the game that locks it to a specific machine.  On the surface, this sounds similar to the Sony patent that went around the web a few years ago, where they patented a system that could lock a game disc to a specific console, thereby killing the used games trade on the PS3.

This seems a little more aggressive, because it would hard lock the game to the computer motherboard you currently own.  Not that big a deal until you understand how often gamers like to upgrade, including a montherboard.  What happens to your games at that point.  Do you lose them?  Can these keys be migrated to a new motherboard?  The premise sounds good at face level to the masses, but to a hardcore gaming enthusiast, this sounds like a very bad idea.

Mr. Bushnell also seems to think that this new encryption will invigorate gaming revenue in areas of the world where piracy rates are high, but to be honest, I think those people will more likely just avoid buying the game, due to the cost of software in these countries. 

While I want to see PC gaming continue on, this “encryption” solution is not the way.  And to be honest, I have never heard of this TPM chip, unless he is talking about that Trusted Computing initiative that Intel was behind several years ago.  I know that the chips were installed in a few lines, but not on any AMD boards, and I do not think that Intel uses them any more as there was a lot of outcry over their possible misuse.  At some point, I think that hardware will be used to protect PC games, but more likely, in the form of a dongle, or USB key.

One more note, the encryption method mentioned, would most likely have been cracked, by the time you got to this point in the article.