CD-Key Registration

[alanschu]

You could probably find a lot of debate as to whether or not "most of the experience is online."

 

Bioware made Hordes of the Underdark a single-player only campaign for a reason. I think it's easy to overlook the people that only play the single player because I would suspect that many of them don't care for posting their thoughts on the internet forums (if they have internet at all). I would wager most NWN owners only played the single player game.

[NoMercy]

Need to be able to check if cd keys are authorised anyway, hopfully not going to cheat and buy a gamespy solution off the shelf now are we

 

As far as CD copy protection I think that's normally the publishers call, so unless atari are going to switch to a better system people will still be stuck with SecureROM (which I alwasys found starange when it's such a well known system that people can have cracks out for it before the game hits the shop shelves).

 

But then I'd rather have a broken CD protection thing than a microsoft style product activation.

[xanas3712]

But then I'd rather have a broken CD protection thing than a microsoft style product activation.

Heh, this is why people who buy windows may still get the corporate copy just so they don't have to activate it. There are also activation cracks to get rid of this annoying crap. It's exactly the same deal, any protection is removable if people really want to remove it.

[alanschu]

Where exactly do these people buy the corporate edition of Windows?

 

And more importantly, where do these people buy single copies of it? The only way I've seen Corporate Edition packages go out is often with limited time frame licensing (i.e. they have to renew their license after x years...kinda like a lease), and it was only available if you bought a large number of copies.

[xanas3712]

I'm not going to give a real reply to that. You can guess where people get things, and you can assume what people means as you will.

[alanschu]

Convenient. Although my inquiry was a genuine one.

 

I can indeed make assumptions and guesses as to where people get things....but none of the ones I could think of were really legitimate. In which case, acquiring a Corporate Edition would only be to make the illegitimate acquisition simpler. However, you did mention people who "buy" windows, so I assumed acquiring it was through legitimate means.

 

Were you implying that people were buying it from corporations that they work for or something, as I suppose that makes sense. But the reason I asked was because I cannot "guess" where people buy Windows XP Corporate Edition since I myself was looking for it (although I doubt I could justify the extra cost IMO).

[Craftsman]

The problem with single player games is that they are so easy to rip. And like with muliplayer games you dont need a unique cd key run it.

[alanschu]

Agreed. I would wager a lot of the success of games like Diablo 2, Starcraft, Half-Life, and whatnot are largely because CD-Keys require you to purchase the game in order to play it online.

[xanas3712]

You are right to be confused, but I didn't really want to elaborate on that. It isn't legitimate to obtain corporate and the license for standard professional most likely does not apply, though I'd be interested in seeing if they could sue on that basis or not.

 

However, no, to be clear I'm not referring to anything technically legitimate, but that might be a loophole if anything.

 

Though, I'm not absolutely certain that the Professional Keys work on corporate. I know that the Home Edition Keys do not.

 

Anyway, I didn't want to answer that question because I don't really think that kind of discussion is something that needs to be on this forum. So I'll end there.

[alanschu]

Thanks for the clarification.