Why buy games any more?

[WhiteLightning]

Originally Posted by Icanium

Then when I reinstall Crysis/warhead I get the below message when I tried to play.

"The game can not start. For security reasons, only a limited number of machines can ever be livensed by a single purchase. This limit has been reached. Please purchase another registration code, and then try again."

I have had that a couple of times with warhead. when contacting EA support on the chat, they gave me extra activations. I agree its a pretty crap situation

[crushilista]

Originally Posted by Mikedogg

Yeah but China don't have the right too free speech and protest like a majority of the world.

True, I'm not saying that they have a good country (Besides export count and culture), I'm saying that their country won't give up their citizens to others.

[Darkest]

Originally Posted by WhiteLightning

I have had that a couple of times with warhead. when contacting EA support on the chat, they gave me extra activations. I agree its a pretty crap situation

Another reason to pirate. You get a better service.

I'll admit, I've pirated in the past. I will in the future, you take that as you will. But I've bought games I thought were good, and not too intrusive with their DRM. I use it as a demo-service.

I've, according to steam 188 games on my list. I've other games outside of that. Many more, in fact. I just want to not be ripped off. I've changed as time has went on, I pirate less than I did. I boycott more, EA as a whole is on my no-no list. Blizzard isn't far from getting put on it. There are other companies also.

Support, quality, care - things that seem to be not very important of late with big Publishers. As a consumer that has supported the industry (and yes, I know I sometimes Pirate) since the 90's - I believe I deserve more. I speak with my wallet. If a game is good, and not covered in DRM - I'll buy it. Otherwise? I wont even pirate it anymore.

[Pill Monster]

Originally Posted by Mikedogg

You'd think that, eh. That's what we thought too here in NZ when that "Megaupload" guy got arrested.

I didn't even know we had the FBI... Obviously we do.

Don't you watch the news..?

A NZ High Court judge ruled that the police search on his house was illegal, therefore none of the evidence obtained can be submitted in court, that's why he got some of his possessions back.
Also there has to be a trial to decide whether he will even be extradited, it's up to the NZ courts to decide that, not the FBI - who have absolutely no jurisdiction in NZ.

The trial is set for August.

[Mikedogg]

Nah don't watch the news, or read the paper. What you really should be asking yourself is, why didn't they clear a legal search in the first place.

I'll let these idiots say it best.

Somehow I doubt they would be going after the FBI if they weren't involved.


Don't always believe the official news story bro, it will often lead you blind. Hence the reason I don't watch it or read about it anymore. I get just-if not more worth while news from independent research.

[Icanium]

Originally Posted by Darkest

Another reason to pirate. You get a better service.

I'll admit, I've pirated in the past. ....take that as you will. But I've bought games I thought were good, and not too intrusive with their DRM. I use it as a demo-service.

I've, according to steam 188 games on my list. I've other games outside of that. Many more, in fact. I just want to not be ripped off. I've changed as time has went on, I pirate less than I did. I boycott more, EA as a whole is on my no-no list. Blizzard isn't far from getting put on it. There are other companies also.

Support, quality, care - things that seem to be not very important of late with big Publishers. As a consumer that has supported the industry (and yes, I know I sometimes Pirate) since the 90's - I believe I deserve more. I speak with my wallet. If a game is good, and not covered in DRM - I'll buy it. Otherwise? I wont even pirate it anymore.

Good to know. IMO one problem with pirating games is that it misleads the Publishers into believing that they are offering a valued product. Dont buy, dont pirate should send a strong message that they need to improve the product.

[Kaerar]

Amusing thing is that the publishers would actually get better and more accurate data regarding how good their games are by seeing how many pirated copies are in use after a month than checking up on their oh so important Metacritic bullcrap.

It was said a few pages ago and I want to re-iterate it here. Current game design is all about sequelisation and monetising user time as much as possible. It's nothing to do with advancing technology or genre's as publishers couldn't give two crap's about that (just look at the latest golfing game by EA which is still running an engine from about 2006).

Dev's push the tech which drives Performance PC sales, while publishers reap the benefits. Personally I know of about 3-4 dev companies that I'd support directly (Bohemia Interactive, Crytek, Slightly Mad Studios for sure!) but of the publishers, only Valve is dedicated to supporting the industry. EA, ActiBlizzard and Ubisoft are the perfect examples of how NOT to do things and just cream off the user for the short term with fire and forget releases. Admittedly Blizzard do support their products, but that doesn't excuse low standards (D3's gfx anyone?)...

I always test a game before I buy it, how I test it is decided by the dev/publisher. If there's a demo, problem solved, if not, then I get into the beta or test post release without purchase. If it's good I'll buy it, if not I won't, but even then I'll only pay what the game is worth so CD-Key sites and other locations other than the Australia tax bullcrap from most publishers are the likely source.

At the end of the day the industry (along with most others) needs to evolve and expand to a more user friendly domain where customer (NOT consumer) support is increased in importance and dev's listen too and fix what good QA teams find before that gold master is produced...

[crushilista]

I don't really see the point of this thread. DRM has existed since Floppies (And more annoying forms have existed than Rockstars club, such as having to look in your damn manual and answer riddles)

It takes about 5 minutes or you can strip it off. No use complaining really.

[Icanium]

Originally Posted by crushilista

I don't really see the point of this thread. DRM has existed since Floppies (And more annoying forms have existed than Rockstars club, such as having to look in your damn manual and answer riddles)

It takes about 5 minutes or you can strip it off. No use complaining really.

The complaint is that the DRM is broken (can not contact activation server after one spends a shed load of time jumping through the DMRs hoops doing everything the DRM asked you to do.)

[Veteran]

the fact of the matter is that 90% of games in general are so average that they are not even worth pirating and wasting time on,its a case of seen it all before many many times,been there done that (yawn) zzzzz