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Doom is Coming, Doom is Coming, Doom is Coming | 13 comments (13 topical) | Post A Comment
Copy Protection Mayhem[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#7)
by Anonymous User on Tue Aug 17, 2004 at 02:08:30 PM PDT

I want to gripe about some experiences I've had with various game software that I've purchased over the last few months. I have two pieces of software that I use for backing up cd's and mounting ISO's on a virtual dvd/cd-rom (Clone CD and Daemon Tools) so I don't have swap cd's all the time. I'm an admitted gaming addict so I purchase 30+ games a year. A few months back I purchased the action game FarCry and installed it but whenever I tried to play my computer froze before the game would start (seemingly during the copy protection cd check). There was no error message or warning as to what the problem was..just a cold hard freeze and the accompanying 5 minute wait through Scandisk each time it froze. After some research I found that some gaming software now comes with copy protection that wont let it run if it detects certain software on the users computer. On a hunch I thought that maybe the copy protection was taking more extreme liberties in my case and causing my computer to crash/freeze. So I downloaded a no-cd patch just to see if the software I paid good money for was refusing to run out of principle. The game ran fine with the no-cd patch. Imagine my displeasure with having to crack a game that I bought and paid for. My adventures continued when I purchased the games Painkiller, and Doom3 and had to go through the same exact procedure to get them to run. However, I am unable to play any of these games online because they are now cracked (or whatever you call it). Doom3 mutiplayer was something I was really looking forward to playing online so I relented and uninstalled the Clone CD and Daemon Tools software in an attempt to get Doom3 to work with the store bought executable. To add insult to injury, Windows XP decided that I had made a hardware change when I uninstalled the virtual dvd/cd-rom software and told me I had to re-activate. When I tried to re-activate it told me I had re-activated too many times. I upgrade my computer every couple of months with one piece of hardware or another so I'm also an example of how flawed their activation system being tied to hardware (or in this case virtual hardware) is. So then I had to call Microsoft and convince them I wasn't trying to install Windows XP on more than one computer so that I could use the operating system I bought and paid for over two years ago. As a Software Engineer myself, I understand the need to protect your code but to make copy protection so stringent that legitimate users can't use the software they paid for encourages piracy or at the very least discourages future purchases. Furious....$*#&@($%

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Doom is Coming, Doom is Coming, Doom is Coming | 13 comments (13 topical) | Post A Comment
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