[acal3000]

Sorry I know You gonna hate but I have to agree with Online Activation is bad

I hate Online Activation too . It's worst than cd cheks and don't stop piracy either

I just see it like spyware. The game connect to the net automatically without user notification. And have also been cases when legitime users gte blocked by it

Also I have always hated Be On Line to play Offline (was one of the things i hated about HL2 some years back) , then years can pass game get old the publisher shutdown the activation server and get game get useless even for sp (like buying junk to be useless years later)

An people that download the game from torrent for example could not get access to patches etc, but get all copyprotection removed and won't have to to pass for all hassle legitime users have to pass and why people prefer the illegal way of doing thing coz the legal one is more difficult and should be the contrary

That was one of the reason I abandonned Windows XP/Vista and all that world and moved to Linux coz I got tired the big corporates like Micro$oft want to have the control of everything limiting what we can do and selling us commercial software in stores like if were trial versions. If people pay money for them deserve some control of it not all to the big corporates. All the the whole copyright laws are made to protect them from us but we as users don't have enough rights to protect us from them. People is paying for bought software NOT paying a rent for use it and then be cancelled for paranoids piracy warnings (that of course errors like these can happens very common on automated systems ) of just coz the publisher wanted cancel it. Like paying for a DATA CD/DVD full of nothing for users

And returning with these automated protection system I have seen errors like these toons of times even on bank proection systems. My mom have like lots of people an account bank she put his account to seeit on line and the protection and all padlokcs are way horrible. You type wrong you pass like after 3 tries you account get blocked ( but you think the block pass after some hours (like pther protection hack systems are) but hell no the account continue bloked you to call the damned tech line of the bank try you lik they ask you bunch or rare questions like what you favorite color, what you age, you son name as security question some lady or other people can just forget or fail thequestion try like mr criminal again re call they force you to send information data like ( your salary identification address and and junk again to prove you are yourself but heck you have make it from with some mail send to an employee from the bank that is occupied or don't make it much case you can't use even e your isp mail and the internet is supposed to avoid those long wats in banks etc but this horrible systems only make things more difficult for normal people where the thng my mo had to send the damned mail and like 3 times the bank emplpyee failed the damned support company mandatory request I suggest send that bank to hell. and retire her money but well she stayed there and thing made thing thtamaybe those damned suppotr idiot in the future wil want the fingerprint of the foots I said as joke but maybe will happen in the future While a real hacker can take down all that anti hack system and retire the money even more easy than the real account owner= and and M$ trying to say automated systems made completely obsolete manual ones (but NO an all aspects)

But returning to the talk

Also game companies always blame piracy for losing sales but don't mention other facts eithe that make loose sales: some games are a very bad quality why could not sell for that don't appeal the audience and since some years the the harcore game industry is decliving lots of people don't play so often anymore as the old atari arcade days. Most now seems to be on youtube or make another things. Also this newer thing about the trend of casual gamming is making harcore gamming losing sales and the pc market is most declived from all since several years (games on pc don't sells like 80's 90s used to) compared to console ones (or the console ones vs the same pc ported ones). Just look at big stores like Walmart/Sams or others the have very big section for consoles and very small one for pc games

So restrictives protections like on line activation only make things worst. Not All people in the world have geek patience to fix the game and make it work like most of us on this forums.i know the sys reqs of the game always to be checked before buy but a lot of people still don't do it (or are not familiarized with reqs in pc games or specially if play most on consoles and only buy a few pc games in their life) so will continue happens. Alao some game specification don't state clear if the activation is mandatory for SP of just for MP of get lost in the local language translation on certaion countries .Also I have known people in real life that have lazyness to update of defrag their hd or update thir antivirus so If they buy a game with this kind of intrusive thing it could very probable will get angry and won't spend even 2 days trying to make it work. If it's a parent who bought the game for his/her son won't want spend $30 or $40 to pay a technician to fix a game + technician generally don fix games Will probaly want to return it to store (NOT all stores in the world have a return policy) ,so they will probably put in their room, try to on sell of ebay or dumping somewhere and play a console game without all that on line activation junk or tech probs instead