Early Criticism of Computer Strat-O-Matic

The copy protection system has always been an issue

Early Criticism of Computer Strat-O-Matic

Every now and then the topic of piracy comes up on the various Delphi sport simulation forums. There are people out there who are convinced that most draft league players are secretly sharing their data disks, taking hard earned money out of the mouths of those who create the games that we know and love.

Personally, I think the claims of widespread piracy of these games are unfounded. The community is quite small, and the demand for these games is simply not high enough to attract the large piracy groups that target most PC games.

One company, however, has been notorious over the years for its aggressive copy protection system: Strat-O-Matic.

I ran across this interesting review of version 4.0 of Strat-O-Matic Baseball from Computer Gaming World’s September 1993 issue:

I think this review speaks for itself.

I’ve never actually purchased the Strat computer game (though I will eventually) and only know about the aggressive copy protection policy through stories from other gamers. However, it really isn’t a good thing to anger reviewers like this.