For players, the CPY crack was a lifeline. It allowed sim racers to enjoy the 2015 season’s car models and tracks without suffering career-ending bugs. Even today, some modders use the cracked executable as a base for total conversions because the official EXE has online checks that break mods.
When CPY bypassed the protection, it theoretically removed this layer of encryption. This allowed digital preservationists and gamers to compare the "cracked" version against the "legitimate" version. While benchmarks for F1 2015 were inconclusive and varied heavily depending on the user's CPU, the availability of the CPY version provided the raw data needed for these arguments. It placed pressure on publishers to optimize their DRM implementation or remove it entirely once the initial sales window had passed—a practice that has since become more common. F1 2015-CPY