Stoertebeker
08-22-2007, 07:05 PM
Dear Publisher
so you have decided to put out Bioshock with the most outrageous limitation that has ever been put on a videogame.
If this method of "granting" players access to their legitimately purchased games becomes practice, we can no longer speak of "owning" a video game.
Since the introduction of product activation has been introduced to video games with the oh-so-fantastic Half Life 2, luckily, few publishers have adopted product activation in their offline games. Instead, more and more invasive methods of copy protection have been developed, sometimes causing technical difficulties to the point of an unusable system.
I have been playing video games for twenty years now and many companies who published the games back in the day, do not exist any more. That, however, doesn't stop me from playing those games. I hope that twenty years from now, publishers like you do not exist anymore. What makes your people think, that your games are such treasures, that they need to be protected in a much harsher way than everybody else's?
The idea of uninstalling a game to regain "activation credit" is not only retarded because it is impossible in some situations to do, it is hardly mentioned in the game and not mentioned at all on the game box, thus preventing the player from acting accordingly. If the operating system became unusable, if the hard drive crashed or simply if the user just unknowingly deleted the game folder (which many people do) they would have to mess with your tech service. Tech service that you pay which might only last a few years from now.
Like publishers have done before, you spit in the face of your legitimate customers. Your game will be cracked like any game has been cracked to this day, albeit not on the release day. I hope your game gets cracked soon, and well, so that your legitimate customers also have an alternative to your tedious activation process. I hope your game gets spread well all over the internet, and gets downloaded a lot from people that originally intended to purchase it. I hope the word is spread in bulletin boards, blogs and gamer webpages to warn people about your "copy protection" methods. Then again, I hope you just drop that stupid installation limit, which you could do at any time.
good luck with sales,
Stoertebeker
so you have decided to put out Bioshock with the most outrageous limitation that has ever been put on a videogame.
If this method of "granting" players access to their legitimately purchased games becomes practice, we can no longer speak of "owning" a video game.
Since the introduction of product activation has been introduced to video games with the oh-so-fantastic Half Life 2, luckily, few publishers have adopted product activation in their offline games. Instead, more and more invasive methods of copy protection have been developed, sometimes causing technical difficulties to the point of an unusable system.
I have been playing video games for twenty years now and many companies who published the games back in the day, do not exist any more. That, however, doesn't stop me from playing those games. I hope that twenty years from now, publishers like you do not exist anymore. What makes your people think, that your games are such treasures, that they need to be protected in a much harsher way than everybody else's?
The idea of uninstalling a game to regain "activation credit" is not only retarded because it is impossible in some situations to do, it is hardly mentioned in the game and not mentioned at all on the game box, thus preventing the player from acting accordingly. If the operating system became unusable, if the hard drive crashed or simply if the user just unknowingly deleted the game folder (which many people do) they would have to mess with your tech service. Tech service that you pay which might only last a few years from now.
Like publishers have done before, you spit in the face of your legitimate customers. Your game will be cracked like any game has been cracked to this day, albeit not on the release day. I hope your game gets cracked soon, and well, so that your legitimate customers also have an alternative to your tedious activation process. I hope your game gets spread well all over the internet, and gets downloaded a lot from people that originally intended to purchase it. I hope the word is spread in bulletin boards, blogs and gamer webpages to warn people about your "copy protection" methods. Then again, I hope you just drop that stupid installation limit, which you could do at any time.
good luck with sales,
Stoertebeker