ELSPA Needs to Fight Crime Like It’s 1989

by Kev Lochun on February 12, 2008 at 2:38 pm

ELSPA anti piracy ad 3

Who can forget that classic title, “Pow”?

The claim that 90% of DS software in America is pirated may well have been a load of bunk, but there’s no doubt that piracy is a major problem for publishers and developers. So what to do? Well, it seems like they had the answer pretty much sorted out in 1989.

I’ve just spied some curious ELSPA (Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association) ads for combating software piracy from the 80s and 90s, and they are amazing. The ridiculous hair, the precocious ‘stars’, everything– but what really jumped out at me was the £1,000 reward.

Accounting for inflation, £1,000 then was the equivalent of £1840 in 2007. Giving a gamer that sort of money to stop a pirate – effectively giving them money to buy all the games they were going to pilfer anyway – would be rather effective, I should think. And good business, if the reports surfacing earlier of hackers making leaps and bounds in cracking the PS3 turn out to be true.

Check out all the ads here.

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