Why Not Digitial Distribution?

[Innocence]

MaxWilson said:What makes you think the built-in copy protection is a better deterrent than the lack of a manual?

First of all, the lack of a manual can be overcome by dedication. The tutorial is in the demo, lots of info on forums and wikis, and the in-game info is very good. I was up playing the demo in a few days/tried, and while there are some limitations, I doubt the full game is very different. The only way to *really* learn a game is, after all, by playing it. Once that's done, you don't really need the manual.

The brilliance of the Dom3 copy-protection is that it gives false positives - everything seems ok but really isn't. You might be in the middel of an exciting game, one you have invested countless of hours into, and suddently things start to go wrong. Small at first, then more and more severe, until your game is ruined and all your time is in effect wasted. It's like watching an exciting movie and then discover the last 10 minutes are missing (no actually it's much worse than that ).

In essense, *time* is the issue. Time wasted for the player, and time wasted for the hacker programming serial-generatores, which are close to impossible to get right, since the checks are many, spread out through the game, and don't reveal themselves until it's too late.

While a hacker might want to spend a few hours writing a serial-generator, there's no way in Ermor neither he nor anyone else will be willing to spend 100+ hours testing if every serial provided will pass every check, fully knowing that even if they by chance find a working one they'll be in trouble come the next patch

And if you simply don't patch you can wave goodbye to multiplayer - which after all is where these games really shine

So the equation is like this: Would you rather spend $50 one time to get a fully working, guaranteed problem-free gaming experience (not to mention a clean conscience), or would you rather try the freeride, filled with frustrating experinces like abandoned games and wasted precious sparetime (and knowing you haven't contributed a dime to make this rare genre live on)? I believe the answer is obvious

Like I said all this isn't new - it's the way they did it with Stars! (shareware) and it was very successfull in that department too