[DABhand]

Originally Posted by AstralWanderer

This very point is covered in extensive detail in the Authorization Servers article - if a company goes bust, users have no guarantee of anything. And for a utility like Daemon Tools (which can affect a user's ability to run dozens of other games), being confident that it will continue to work 2, 5 or 10 years into the future is more important than with a single game.

Shamus Young whoever he is, is talking about what Tippex said "what if's", what if the publisher goes bust? what if the developer goes bust? what if what if what if.

And then this massive where is the coding, poor shamus does not know the difference between developer and publisher. Either way they will keep all data always and of course backups.

And where is StarForce now? Largely dead and buried, due in no small part to the consumer boycott. Online activation may avoid the need for a media check (with some exceptions as you note) but you are then continually dependent on the developer/publisher continuing to support (ho ho) the game and not change their activation policy to disadvantage users further.

Here is what I know about SF, when it first arrived it was good nobody had problems, until some weird people possibly warez users who could not steal the game complained it ruined hardware, it did this it did that. Then the massives started to do the same complaining. Did it ever destroy hardware, did anyone win the challenge they set to show it does? nope. And im sure others have had no problems with it either. Only a select few which is understandable due to hardware combinations, the same can be said for software and games also.

Its about as old as the excuses used by warez users, the masses adopted them also to excuse their thefts.

They changed their conditions of use when they implemented that charge. Their online activation system means this change is enforced. It restricts your ability to sell (or buy) Stardock's products second-hand (which in some countries is considered a consumer right) and it raises the possibility of users being unfairly charged if Stardock make a mistake and think their software has been resold.

When you link url's do read them, as said Software is licensed you did not buy the rights to the software, only the rights to use it. And the softman case is a one off.

It was a volunteer moderator of long standing in their forums. Do you consider it plausible (or even possible) that he would have made such a policy statement without clearing it with EA first? Someone senior at EA would have had to OK it and their ability (and willingness) to disable products that people had paid for is what should be of concern.

Ahh you see it was a VOLUNTEER moderator, not an EA employee, I could be a moderator here and laugh my head off and say "YES WAREZ IS ALLOWED" and without admin say so, does that mean its the admins fault? no, I would get a royal kick in the nuts but that shows you how easy it is. Because that person said something doesnt mean he got the nod of approval from EA at all.

Because their policies show contempt for their paying customers - leaving them with crippled products that are inferior to warez.

Nonsense, they are protecting their investments by making sure nobody can freely give copies of the game around for free to their friends or of course sell it.

The only crippling is the fact people are stealing games and it will force publishers and developers to look at the console market. All in all its not their faults but the warez users, and it always has.

This isn't about stopping piracy - it's about extracting more money from legitimate purchasers (killing the second-hand market, forcing a move to digital distribution and controlled pricing, etc). The more people that accept such measures, the more effective this strategy will be (and the greater the likely costs long-term).

Of course it is about stopping piracy, once upon a time there was games that had very little or no protections and they were pirated/copied freely. Then came protections and costs due to publishers having to pay the authors of the protections to protect their stock, also costs cover potential loses due to piracy. Again blame the warez users not the companies.

Except that there are several conditions that prevent people from being able to "reclaim" unused installations (hard disk failure, any snafu requiring a Windows re-install, network problems during the uninstall, etc).

The key thing for any "anti-piracy" measure is that paying customers should not have to worry about it. The problems with online activation, while different from media checks, have the same long-term impact of reducing the lifespan of software that should otherwise be usable for decades to come.

The only problem for people regaining their limited activations is the possibility that they did something bad, installed on various computers at one time, shared the game with others.

Just because they had to reinstall windows etc, people who followed the TOS do NOT get reprimanded, and myself have been able to get activations again for a couple of games since I like to reinstall windows every now and again to keep a fresh system.

And as said, no game is guarenteed to work for ever due to hardware in the future. And to further emphasise you do not own the data on the media only the right to use it.