Tuesday, 9. September 2008, 11:07:55
I already have a post
about software piracy. Today I would like to write a bit about situation around a very cool game -
Spore. Right now an anti-DRM Internet flash mob takes place at
amazon.com. People send negative reviews and explain why
DRM in Spore is bad. More detailed info on
zdnet, but here I will write a bit about my own experience with games. Since I'm living in Latvia and not a multimillionaire I do use pirated software including games. But I try to buy my favourite games to support developers. Well, I'm a software developer myself and if no one buys our software I will die starving. Since becoming a full-time employee I have a bit more cash, so buying software is not a real problem right now (the problem is that
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky Collection Edition is not in Latvia yet...), but when I was a kid I had only few legal games. Theese were only two, actually: Ukrainian
Cossacs and Russian/Polish
Gorky-18. Now I have much bigger legal game collection (:
The real problem with legal games is that they are "protected". Protection systems lock you to using game cd while playing. Cossacs game cd was blown away inside my cd rom. FCUK! My first legal game, a very good game...
This July I bought new
King's Bounty with
StarForce. Guess what? This DVD is totally unreadble in my dvd drive in PC (but it works just fine in laptop, but laptop can't give good performance) and StarForce support guys does not want to help me out. FCUK again!
I can give you more examples from my life, but you already should get the point. When legally buying games everyone has somekind of problems with protection systems (DRM). Just google for it! And then Spore was available in fully working condition, all included, without hassle a few days before official release. And yep, I'm playing pirated version of King's Bounty - legal one does not work on my PC. Ain't that funny?
Conclusion? Dear developers! Follow the path of our gamedev company - STOP USING FUCKING PROTECTION SYSTEMS!!!