Quote:
Saxon said:In other words, you might want to stretch your ideas on the impulse buy idea. Computer games are entertainment, which is pretty much about satisfying impulses and emotions.
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Excatly! When you get hooked on game, you have to be able to buy, download, register and play the full version instantly. Nothing sexy about searching hours for a shop, paying overprice and then having to wait several weeks for it to arrive
Last game I bought on impulse was Mount & Blade, which is a small indie game developer in Turkey (IIRC). Game is digital distribution only (they use the esellerate.net webshop).
As for copy-protection, I understand Dom3 uses a similar scheme as Stars! did: The game might seem to accept homemade serials, but into the game strange random "accidents" start to happen (planets rebel, whole fleets disappear etc.) in the end ruining the game for the pirate
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So while someone could easily make a serial-generator which *seems* to work, the only way you will know for sure is to play 100+ games and see if anything unsual happens. NO hacker is willing to spend that much time checking! Top that off with regular gameupdates (where the protection scheme is secretly slighty altered), and noone will bother.
This strong protection system also makes the whole fear of making a PDF manual a moot point. What good is the manual if you can't play the game because you can't get a valid serial
Alas, at least as far as Dom3 goes, ShrapnelGames is in the perfect position to offer it as download+manual option. Actually it's something that Illwinter could do themselves if they hadn't signed up with ShrapnelGames to handle their distribution.
I sometimes get the feeling that distributors forget they work for and get paid by the developers and as such have a responsibility to promote and make available their product in the best way possible. It's the same bond which exists between music artist and the record labels, and many artists are currently realizing that they no longer live at the mercy of their labels - it's the other way around
