OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Blitz:
The saddest thing is that I get 90% of my (purchaced) game patches from a site like ........... In fact, much of the crap I've bought requires a CD in the drive or some kind of asinine registration to get patches. Why game companies insist on making owning a legal copy of a piece of software more tedious than simply stealing it is beyond me.

Apparently you dont understand, that is the purpose of copy protection. Not worded quite that way but there are plenty of studies in the software publishing world that says copying/running legally owned software is the main problem. Piracy is a minor side-target.

Copy protection is to avoid "casual copying" of friends giving software to friends. Its an effort to keep up with software that is provided with CDs or available on shelves which "allow copying those problem CD's" without making it clear that the user might be violating an agreement.

Of course if it throws a stumble in the path of pirates for abit, thats good too but they know thats a shortlived win. Its usually worded as trying to turn a 1-day sales-to-crack time into a 3-6 week sales gap.

[ July 16, 2004, 17:26: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]