Microsoft Is Offering 50% Off Its Office Apps If You Already Illegally Pirated Them

Microsoft Is Offering 50% Off Its Office Apps If You Already Illegally Pirated Them

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For raiders of the digital treasures, Microsoft is giving them a chance to get on the righteous path with a 50 percent discount on its Office suite.

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Microsoft Is Offering 50% Off Its Office Apps If You Already Illegally Pirated Them

Kindness can win over enemies, and Microsoft apparently has so much faith in the aforesaid belief that it is offering a 50% discount to folks clinging to a pirated version of its Office suite. Microsoft has always had a love-hate relationship with piracy. Until 1995, software like MS-DOS and Windows 2 had no copy protection, which means copying the OS files on floppy allowed installation on virtually a limitless number of machines. Serialization arrived with Windows 95, asking users to enter a serial number for installation. With Windows XP in 2001, Microsoft introduced the product key system, telling users to enter a unique 25-character alphanumeric password for a process called activation.

Then came the divisive Vista and with it, the Windows Software Protection Platform that killed core features if software validation failed. Plus, the company can sometimes get a little too desperate at making people use its products. Microsoft claims to have lost billions to piracy, but piracy has also helped the company gain a foothold in emerging markets and avoid threats from open-source alternatives like Libre Office. The network effect is very much real here. Even if people pirate Windows and Office, companies have to buy pricey genuine copies because everyone is on the same platform.

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Now, Microsoft is taking another stab at controlling piracy. And this time, it is weaponizing a sweet, sweet discount on its most valuable consumer product. First reported by GHacks, the company is giving a 50 percent discount on the Microsoft 365 subscription to folks who are using a pirated version of its suite of productivity software. For users running a pirated building, Microsoft is now flashing a banner at the top that tantalizingly says, “Get up to 50% off. For a limited time, save up to 50% on a genuine Microsoft 365 subscription.” For the unaware, the prices of Microsoft 365 and Office 365 went up earlier this year, further deterring users on a tight budget from getting a genuine copy.

Winning Loyalists, The Capitalist Way

Regarding Microsoft’s new strategy, tapping on the discount offer ribbon at the top takes users to its official website where they are warned about the risks of using pirated software. It’s the usual set of hazards that one might expect — vulnerability to malware attacks, loss of data, corrupted software and OS, no critically important updates, lack of core editing tools, etc. Leaks and data breaches are serious business, and the last major incident happened back in August last year when the source code of Microsoft XP was dumped online.

However, it must be noted here that the discounted service in question is the cloud-based suite of Office tools and not the desktop version geared at offline usage. As for the price cut for software pirates, Microsoft 365 Family subscription comes down to $49.99 for one year and sinks to $34.99 for Microsoft 365 Personal license. Microsoft 365 Family currently goes for $99.99/year (or $9.99 per month), while Microsoft 365 Personal sets buyers back by $69.99/year (or $6.99 per month). Microsoft has lately worked a lot on making its Office software look less ancient, and gave users the first glimpse of a major design overhaul last year that is now in full effect.

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Link Source : https://screenrant.com/microsoft-office-365-price-discount-piracy-pirated-software/

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