Why online activation sucks

[Joe Forster/STA]

Originally Posted by DABhand

For protected games yes media can get scratched or damaged, just like DVD's, Dinner Plates, Washing Machines, etc etc see where this is going. What people including yourself DO NOT seem to realise is you only have the right to install said software and to use it.

I have never needed to really back up any game in a sense. My older games like Pirates! and Birth of the Federation are over 15 yr old. I can still get the original media and still install them, the discs have little minute scratches from use but they are still usable.

In a few decades, there will be no (working) devices (at end users) that can read today's CD's (or DVD's), whether copy protected or not. (Read the emulator note in a previous post of mine.)

Originally Posted by DABhand

You just semi-quoted one of the biggest warez excuse in the world. "If I didnt buy it, then im not hurting sales if I was not going to in the first place, so the company didnt lose money". Yeah and here is my usual answer, how about I come around to your house and hmmm steal your car and maybe while im there take your PC and TV and oh the microwave.

You just full-quoted the most ridiculous anti-warez excuse. Physical objects can only be stolen - no copy remains at the previous owner -, while digital information can also be (legally or illegaly) duplicated - the original copy remains at the original owner. (Until Star Trek's replicators - duplicator machines for physical objects, using pure energy as source - are invented, that is.) Smearing the two together is questioning the very reason why digital information was invented and then became so popular so fast.

Originally Posted by DABhand

There was one great game, which yes I legally purchased, Psychonauts. Fantastic game, didnt sell well, but yet thousands and thousands of people were saying how great the game was but yet, if it did not sell well how did these people enjoy it. And ultimately some even complained about how boring the game was on the developers forums. So it begs the question. If sales were so bad why did many people have it?

Exactly how many thousand actual people have you seen praising or critisizing the game? Compare this with: Exactly how many thousand sales would this game have needed for the project to become profitable or, at least, null saldo? I feel this argumentation proved nothing at all. (No wonder, your not working at that company makes you an outsider, too, without much knowledge about what happens inside. See the last sentence in the previous post.)

[DABhand]

Originally Posted by Joe Forster/STA

In a few decades, there will be no (working) devices (at end users) that can read today's CD's (or DVD's), whether copy protected or not. (Read the emulator note in a previous post of mine.)

Perhaps and Perhaps not.

You just full-quoted the most ridiculous anti-warez excuse. Physical objects can only be stolen - no copy remains at the previous owner -, while digital information can also be (legally or illegaly) duplicated - the original copy remains at the original owner. (Until Star Trek's replicators - duplicator machines for physical objects, using pure energy as source - are invented, that is.) Smearing the two together is questioning the very reason why digital information was invented and then became so popular so fast.

I didn't quote the most used anti-warez excuse, but I quoted the most used warez excuse. You see it used all the time.

Not to mention the classic - "I am going to install it and play it to see if I like it, then remove from my PC" - yes of course they are...not, but thats what demo's are for, but then again not all games have demo's but a huge percentage do.

And the blatantly in your face one - "Why should I pay extortionate prices for a game, im not paying that much to play one game". Yeah and I wish I couldn't pay big prices on tobacco or petrol or food or clothes. But hey hum that is life, things cost money.

And it doesn't stop there as you know, they even complain when people make trainers and ask people to pay a small subscription to get the latest one before others. Where this "It should be free" malarky came from I have no idea, in the past you could get them for free as many groups enjoyed making them and giving them out. But things have changed, if someone wants to charge people for hours of debugging and disassembling and finding pointers etc etc, then they have every right to charge people also. Its nice if its free yes, but like all things even workmanship for example mechanics, electricians and engineers they all require money for their time and effort.

Exactly how many thousand actual people have you seen praising or critisizing the game? Compare this with: Exactly how many thousand sales would this game have needed for the project to become profitable or, at least, null saldo? I feel this argumentation proved nothing at all. (No wonder, your not working at that company makes you an outsider, too, without much knowledge about what happens inside. See the last sentence in the previous post.)

Was quite well known, they produced x amount of media and only a fraction sold world wide. They made a very very small profit from sales. And they told others about it, and the fact that it won awards for game design etc and even then the awards peeps recognised that it did not sell well when it should have. And I remember the official forum of countless daily complains and moans when patches arrived - "My game wont recognise my cd, it worked before" excuse, but yet the rest of the legally bought people had no problems what so ever.

Why do I know this? The protection used was the same as retail, no changes, just cosmetic changes to the patch, so only people who had problems was the warez users.