LostStraw

Thanks for the heads up

The blog post linked to by Deadly Nightshade has more information and is quite a good read. Some interesting tidbits, the piracy rates quoted to do not include things like Bittorrent/Usenet and the minimum price for the bundle seems to be $0.01.

So all in all what everyone says is, they're spending money to lose customers, and with them, money. Ok, I'm no finance expert but it sounds just plain stupid. Is that true though? I've heard many people preach about it and there have been some articles here and there conjecturing that the DRM costs more than it saves but there are obviously enough bean counters at game companies doing cost benefit analysis that come to the opposite conclusion. So is there any good evidence that DRM loses the companies more money than it saves or is it mostly assumptions by internet folks who want it to be true?

In response to the talk about the Assassins Creed 2 "crack" here's an insightful post I lifted from an AC on Slashdot The talk about "the real issue" being about a cracking group stealing is humorous but the information that there hasn't been a real crack for the game this late after the release bodes well for Ubisoft's DRM scheme. Also note that The Settlers 7 still hasn't received any sort of "fix" for bypassing the DRM and that Ubisoft will only make it harder to crack from here on out requiring more emulation than simply returning static values.

Except they did.. well, I think part of that was the joke. They've ALWAYS had the image blocked totally by a censor bar, the only difference now is that they censored the words, which the creators poked fun at in the end of the episode (bleeping out the "lesson learned" in the episode) http://www.southparkstudios.com/news/3878

Outcast only used voxels for the terrain just like Delta Force and Comanche. John Carmack was pushing for a technology called sparse voxel octrees some time back (~2008 and maybe earlier) in order to try getting hardware vendor support for it -- which it would need in order to be competitive with polygon rasterization. Unfortunately nothing has seemed to come of it as yet and I kind of doubt AMD and Nvidia are looking to risk developing specific hardware for content that doesn't exist. @Mamoulian War Comanche 4 was the first in the series to not use voxels.

I haven't tried either of these so try them at your own risk: Getting rid of the libraries: http://www.askvg.com/how-to-disable-librar...e-in-windows-7/ Getting the classic start menu back: http://www.csmenu.com/

It's called "SuperFetch" and you are getting something for it: http://www.osnews.com/story/21471/SuperFet..._it_Works_Myths Windows 7 actually handles low amounts of ram fairly well, much much better than Vista, and there are plenty of YouTube videos that show this. @Pidesco The best advice I can give is to make sure all your drivers and such are up to date -- something you've probably already done What features are you trying to disable?

Card ....... length GTX 470 ...9.5" GTX 480 ...10.5" 4870x2 .... 10.5" 5870 ........11" The sizes are based on the reference boards I don't know if any of the manufacturer's boards differ in length. Here's the article where I got some of the information on the sizes. It also has a good set of benchmarks comparing the current top end cards along with the top end cards of the last generation. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforc...x-480,2585.html

And they can stick it deeply in their ass, unless they drop the ridiculously retarded DRM... Um.. it's a MMORPG which by necessity requires a constant internet connection to play.

It seems as if Infinity Ward is self destructing... http://kotaku.com/5517346/todays-update-on...veloper-bailout

I believe this would happen in the first Diablo game if the character's strength dropped below what was required for the equipped armor. Be careful when removing items with bonuses

It seems to me it's still applicable if the character appears to be under 18 even if they they are stated as being older (emphasis mine):

I'm not really interested in taking a stance one way or another on this issue -- but if this game does in fact feature an underage girl then it's now illegal in England and Whales with a maximum of 3 years in prison and a spot on the Sex Offenders Register: http://www.backlash-uk.org.uk/wp/?page_id=547 I made sure to check and the definition of image in the act does seem to include video games:

Ok, I give up It was an April's fools joke. Google changing its name to Topeka was an April fools joke but Topeka really did change its name (kind of) to Google for one month to try getting selected for Google's high speed internet access experiment.

Aika isn't quest grinding -- It's still monster grinding when all the quests are kill X of this and collect Y of that. DnD Online is quest grinding .. killing normal monsters doesn't even give XP in that game.

Yes, that's the biggest catch. It's the same problem with sparse voxel octrees which is a similar technology that ID Software was pushing for not too long ago. Without the hardware to support it there's no chance of it being used in AAA games. There are also steady advances happening on the polygon side as well where limited geometry is becoming less and less of an issue especially with DX11 and tessellation. Something that's already available on today's hardware: http://www.gametrailers.com/video/gdc-10-u.../63145?type=flv

Switzerland and video games don't mix: http://www.mcvuk.com/news/38103/Switzerlan...olent-games-ban

Checked out the Just Cause 2 demo. The mouse movement was rather jumpy and it was hard to aim precisely which ended up more than a little frustrating. The game itself had a lot of interesting ways of moving around and blowing things up but that's all it really seemed to offer. At the end of the 30 minutes I was already starting to feel a little bored with the game. Just got the RUSE open beta off Steam so I'll be looking at that next.

I remember being excited for the game way back when it was announced and disappointed when I heard it was canceled. It's cool to actually see it in action. Thanks for the link

I find it surprising how casually piracy is regarded by some people. During the few months I was working at Circuit City I had a customer come up and ask if we sold blank DS cartridges because they had heard that they could get free games if they had one. With the advent of broadband and peer to peer networking clients, piracy has exploded among the general populace where once it was regulated to a much more niche group of individuals. Piracy although a problem on closed systems is generally less of an issue because of the difficulties of getting/installing a mod chip and other issues such as risks of having the console banned from online play. There are still people who will go through the trouble and take the risks but it's not the general populace that's doing it (I know this may be different depending on where one lives). Piracy with PCs (and on some closed devices) on the other hand is incredibly easy, appealing to a wider audience, and requires almost no thought -- pretty much any Joe-schmoe is capable.

I'm in the same boat with FFXII. Anyway.. I've been playing the free version of D&D Online and it has been fairly enjoyable so far. The interface is rather horrible though and grouping is a little difficult with people having different access to the premium content but overall it has been keeping me entertained.

Yes. Well.. I tried using the Cain but completely missed the shot. I was playing as a soldier with inferno ammo maxed and it didn't seem too hard of a fight with only the normal weapons but it did take a little while.

The financial downturn makes the effects of piracy worse. Not only by possibly increasing the rate of piracy but by also by lowering the already small overall profit of PC game sales which makes porting to the PC a less and less attractive option, even for big titles.

Edit: MacMichael beat me to it