[bri3d]

Kind of? The 1ST_READ.BIN had to be re-scrambled to run off of CD-ROM, but this was trivial after the Utopia leak.

However, if this were the reason for the demise of the console, we could expect large volume sales of the (loss-leader? or close to it?) console, and limited game sales.

Instead, unfortunately for Sega and ultimately, everyone, we saw limited sales of both the Dreamcast console and its games - a sign that the console itself was simply defeated by the PS2, rather than piracy.

Another argument here is that the PS2 suffered from a similarly trivial "swap magic" exploit just after release, where as long as the disc drive never registered a disc ejection, running code could simply be switched out for another piece of running code.

By the time Dreamcast piracy was common place, the console was already cancelled.