If only more companies worked this way.

Not to mention the fact that I am a big fan of Stardock Central. I am not the most organized with my cd keys and disks so its nice to have a program that allows me to download and install any program I have ever bought that SD published

Plus - they're only about 15min away from where I live. Supporting the local economy!

That was the best line, just barely above "Q: What motivated you? A: We were bored."

Loved that one too!

That need's to be your tagline, that or: "Fighting boredom with kickass games since XXXX"

Well, i can say that any game you can think of i can find on the internet to download, no matter what copy protection it came with. And also say that if it was not for being able to try this game first i would have never bought it.

Its hard to 'return' a pc game, more or less impossible in most all cases. Expecting people to buy something just because a review website said it was good is silly.

The only form of 'copy protection' that has EVER worked is CD keys for online services such as multiplayer things. That works, thats a good idea, it doesn't screw anything up.

But there are several games i own that have various copy protection on them that screw with my PC (starforce anyone?), so what do i play on? A cracked version=p

I get the feeling sometimes that the only reason we see copy protection is because developers know their games are trash and want to try and sell boxes on hype before the crack comes out and people realize how bad the games are.

I also have to say that you need to sell more than just the game in order to sell things well. I remember years ago i was walking down the isle at target, and i saw a box for a computer game. It had a big nifty emblem on the front and said "STARSIEGE". I picked it up and boy was it heavy! I shook it around some and it sounded like there was a lot to it, more than just the game itself on a disk. I looked at the pictures and figured that was pretty awesome looking. With out knowing anything else about it i bought it. It just felt like it had 'quality' seeping out of the box.

So far, with this game and also galciv2, stardock has managed to project a 'completeness', like im getting something more than just a bunch of code and a piece of plastic.

I will say its kind of disappointing that the collectors box lists a hotkey card and a tech tree as part of the 'bonus'=P Those things should come standard, shouldnt they? Then again the retail box is cheaper than most games, so i suppose its forgiven=p

I think your benefactor had dibs on that with his little anti-anti-piracy rant about GC2 a year or two ago

Guys I'm not saying Brad didn't say it, I'm saying that whenever Craig and I speak, one of us has to say it and this time it was Craig's turn.

I subscribe via iTunes, personally, but I know a lot of folks here probably don't

Stardock is a company first and foremost, and I have reason to believe that in their experience, copy protection secures absolutely no fiscal advantage that overcomes the outrageous costs of licensing said copy protection in the first place. As Brad has said before about GC2, copy protection is always broken in less than a week anyway (there's a few rare cases, but they're generally more the 'Starforce' kind that refuse to let you run anything until you uninstall any program that may remotely be tied to piracy - Alcohol 120%, Daemon Tools, uTorrent, Firefox, or whatever because the software is buried in Root Level Fuck).

And, remember that SecuROM is there to make money too. And it's not cheap. SecuROM promises that publishers will save X-billion dollars, and I'm sure regardless of whether or not they actually save that (as it's pretty much imaginary numbers they're working with), they demand such a large chunk BECAUSE of this make-believe money they might pull in, that any real money they DO save is lost to these companies anyway. I'm sure to some pencil-pushing suit whose experience with video games is whatever his kids want for Christmas, the thought that 'saved capital' and 'capital lost to piracy' are utterly impossible, fictional stats, is lost on him.



You mean like they used to, before PC gaming was about raping consumers from their money?

Remember Starcraft? Didn't Blizzard release a new map like once a week or something?

Sometimes I feel like a prison shower room victim ( but thats mostly EETs fault.