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Ironhawk said:
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Richard said:
We do offer downloads for some products. It's just not feasbile for something the size of Dominions. Not without adding some serious server hardware (beyond the three we have) to account for the processing and such needed.
Also a download only game, which has to have a pdf manual, is extremely easy to pirate. This leads to less sales and less money for Illwinter to work on Dom 3.
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But you are already hosting the download of the Dom2 Demo, which is the about the same size as the Retail Version as far as I can see. How would it be more complicated to just host a retail copy of the exe and have Demo functionality in place until a user enters a purchased CDKey?
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There's also integration with the store software and other considerations. Also this is just going to complicate things at release. When we put the demo out, we have mirror sites to publish it. This helps the load out somewhat. Imagine having everyone who want's the game trying to download it from one server at the same time. With a demo people can deal with timeouts, with a paid copy of a game people are going to get pissed.
The other side of this is that it just frustrates most customers. As much as people like the idea, few have the network infrastructure to download a game without multiple interruptions. We get no complaints about folks downloading our demos, but we definetly get complaints from folks buying the game when they run into similiar problems. And finally there is the manual concern. Printed manuals prevent piracy more than a CD key, or other forms of copy protection, especially with a game like Dominions.
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On the topic of a download game being more or less easy than a CD based on in terms of piracy I have to disagree given the prevalence of pirated retail CD games. Particularly with the advent of p2p networks you dont even need a strong server in order for a malicious user to share out thier ripped executables.
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I agree, that's where a printed manual comes in. Other forms of copy protection are really useless in many cases.
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And on a side note: download only games do not implicity require an Online manual. Look at how Spider Web Software does thier indy games. You download the exe, buy the CDKey, and then eventually you are shipped a CD and a manual as well. But as with most games (dom2 included) people rarely learn the game from the manual but rather from trial/error, in-game tutorials, and user-authored walkthroughs/FAQs.
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Again that depends on the game. In the case of Dom 2 your probably right, but again that's something to consider for the future. And if we ship the CD and manual, then really we don't solve the original posters problem. He hates the complications of shipping a product to him.
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And now before everyone starts jumping down my throat for voicing a disagreeing opinion I want to state for the record that I am very much appreciative of Shrapnel and Illwinter for Dom2 and by no means wish to make them lose money. My comments are solely in response to the running dialog in this thread.
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No problem with a disagreement, but we've formed our opinions based on sales of downloadable products and CD products for 5 years. We were selling download products long before broadband was even a consideration.