How hard can it be to protect AAA games when can't be bought or played without an internet connection? (Can't be bought because you don't buy stuff on physical media any more, and can't be played because there is a huge patch every 3 days that you'll need if you expect to be able to finish it).
Just make the damn thing require an internet connection all the time. I don't care. If you are a good publisher then you promise to remove this restriction after 1 or 2 years and enable offline play.
Maybe that person went to a place where they could get Internet, downloaded the game to a suitable storage medium and dragged it over from there into their steam folder at home.
I knew someone that worked on AAA games (for console). Even with day-1 updates they made single-player a priority during the final push because certain groups (they specifically called out those deployed overseas) can't get updates. Obviously, multi-player must update before playing.
once the game is cracked, the scene tends to be pretty efficient at posting patches. unless something nontrivial is happening over the connection, they can just emulate it locally.
Just make the damn thing require an internet connection all the time. I don't care. If you are a good publisher then you promise to remove this restriction after 1 or 2 years and enable offline play.