19 Years Later, A ‘Diablo’ Pirate Shows Up At GDC To Finally Pay For The Game

Back in those fast and loose days called, “the late 90’s,” gamers used to buy their games on a medium called CD-ROM. Back when these CD-ROMs were all the rage, you could copy these games you bought, slowly, on something called a “CD burner.” This CD technology was so new that game developers took a few years to catch up to pirates and implement CD-keys to block access from the titles. Diablo was one of these games lacking security, and even though it sold millions of copies, Diablo had a nasty piracy problem. I remember this because I was alive back in those days, man.

I bought my copy of Blizzard’s genre-busting RPG, but I remember many a friend who met up with me in Tristram on the backs of their Maxell-brand burned copies of Diablo. It was hard to deny the temptation of hunting demons in hell with friends when all you needed was one copy and a burner.

One of these pirates has finally come to his senses. Wrought with guilt and a heavy heart, Shivam Bhatt attended Game Developer’s Conference 2016 with the intention of paying back Diablo creator David Brevik for the copy of Diablo he pirated nearly two decades ago.

It was touching.

Yes, the 20-year war between developers and pirates still exist today, but the game companies are finally winning. Now that devs have figured out how to restrict the cracking of PC games, and the current consoles have yet to be hacked, we’ll now be robbed of these heartwarming redemptions. So who’s the real winner?

(via Destructoid)