PS I can’t actually bring myself to install steam & its associated marketing spyware, and damn I wanta play team fort 2. but oh well, they’ve screwed it for me. I’d have a hell of a lot less problem with it if I was given a choice about the information it submits back to the overlord, or they knocked the price down to a more reasnoble amount for digital distribution. They can use me as marketing, but don’t expect me to pay top dollar as well.

The more PC gamers are assumed to be criminals and treated as such, the more they will act like like criminals in retaliation. Trying to lock down a game with “advanced” protection schemes only hurts it… Unless you’re Blizzard and get extremely lucky that your game is popular enough for 10 million people to throw billions into it to keep their virginity.

Take a look into Bioshock’s post-launch fiasco. Whatever protection it used caused a lot of issues with people trying to install the game, and that really pissed a lot of people off. On the flip side, the pirated version didn’t contain this protection and was thus completely free of any installation issues. Which sounds like the better deal? Pay $50 and be forced to jump through hoops to prove that you did actually buy it only to have it not work in the end? Or get it for free and have it work flawlessly?

Nevermind the sheer annoyance of having to plan out, ahead of time, all the games you expect to be playing. When I’m getting ready to head out on a trip, I typically just throw a lot of things together. I don’t want to have to log in to my laptop and take some meaningless steps just so I’ll be able to play all of my games. Oh, and 12 hours won’t be enough. At my job, we frequently travel for four days at a time, and not all hotels have Internet access.

All of these protection schemes just add a lot more annoyance to the legitimate purchaser of the game (who wants to be locked out of a game because Comcast inadvertently messed up your net connection and you didn’t have the foresight to see the future?). Meanwhile, they aren’t really affecting the pirates at all, who have stripped out the protection mechanisms.

Either you you stick with the protection measures that we have now, which defend against all but the most inexperienced and/or moral of users, or you go to full-on secure computing a la Chris Taylor, where the game cannot function unless it is in constant communication with a server which verifies that the copy has been legitimately purchased by use of a serial number. There isn’t really a workable middle ground.

Now obviously some hacker would find a way to stop the protection being re-enabled, or extending the time period beyong what is specified. But even in Mr. Taylor’s system of constant connection a hacker would eventually figure out a way to let the game play and stop it from connecting to the server. So sure you wouldn’t be able to play multiplayer games but thats pretty much how it is now. For the most part servers catch people playing with fake copies because of incorrect CD keys. No system will be perfect, you can only attempt to slow the kipple (decay).

Of course, in a year’s time, the likelihood that a pirate group will have beaten the company to effectively the same patch will be high.

It comes right down a simple fact.
People who want to own the game will pay for it and people who don’t want to pay for the game will not.
This rule is not limited to PC gaming. It applies to all media. The PC world is just the “easliest”.

PC gaming will never disappear simply because some of us will never give up our classics (like TA) but developers may stop being able to sell games when they decide to treat us all like criminals.

And one last note. I HATE having to swap out a CD every time I want to play a different game. I’m glad SupCom doesn’t require it.
I think I had a point in here somewhere, but it’s almost 2am and I’m losing the ability to string thoughts together.