Recently there's been a lot of conversation around piracy and how it has hurt PC gaming. Atari founder Nolan Bushnell has suggested that future motherboards be equipped with a new Anti-Piracy chip in order to end piracy.
Bushnell suggested that though movie and music piracy will likely continue unabated, game markets made previously inaccessible due to piracy issues will begin to flourish as the chip's install base grows.
"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."
"Games are a different thing, because games are so integrated with the code. The TPM will, in fact, absolutely stop piracy of gameplay," he noted. "As soon as the installed base of the TPM hardware chip gets large enough, we will start to see revenues coming from Asia and India at a time when before it didn't make sense."
Source:
GamesIndustry.biz
Translation: It might takes hackers 20 minutes instead of 10 to circumvent it.