Microsoft explains new gaming piracy technology
Microsoft had a meeting with Ars at GDC 2009 to announce its upcoming additions to the Games for Windows 
platform including stronger protection against piracy.
Drew Johnston, the Product Unit Manager for the Windows Gaming Platform said that they have zero-day piracy protection, this helps reduce the leakage of IP before release. These bits are encrypted and there is a one-time activation that checks to see if the game has been released or not, they will then send out a decrypt code so the game can be played. In other words, if you download a leaked version of a game, or even have a boxed copy that was sold prematurely, you won’t be able to play until the game is unlocked online.
The second part of this protection is making sure there is a license attached to each account, via server-side authentication. You can sign in and play your game on as many systems as possible, but you have to have a license attached to your account. This only works for online games and is relatively useless for offline titles.
Johnston said that DRM is really about copy protection, what they are trying to do is license protection.
Game saves will also soon be saved in the cloud, so you can play, save your game at one location, and pick it up at another. There will be the ability to sell in-game items directly through the games.
Have you heard of any other PC gaming platform like this?
