07.01.07
Anti-piracy measures just hurt legitimate users
I doubt i’m alone in being frustrated with the ridiculous anti-piracy measures these days…
The requirement to have the original CD/DVD in the drive to play a game for instance. I have several games installed on my HD, and the idea of installing games in the first place, was to improve load times and AVOID THE HASSLE OF HAVING TO LOAD ORIGINAL MEDIA AND/OR DAMAGE IT.
I work away a lot, and carry a laptop with me at all times. I don’t want to carry a stack of CDs on the off chance i might want to play them. I dont want to keep transferring the media between my stack at home, and my laptop bag.
People with pirate copies are much better off, they dont have to worry about losing media, they dont have to worry about bringing it along with them. It is actually advantageous to the game player to download a pirate copy. This is in stark contrast to the old anti-piracy advertising associated with analogue video/audio, where pirated copies were noticeably inferior to the originals. The advent of digital media levelled the ground, but rather than do something to compensate for that, companies have gone the other way and taken steps to make the originals actually inferior to the pirate copies.
Having to enter license codes or serial numbers is equally irritating, most people simply aren’t organised enough to keep track of all these small scraps of paper with serial numbers on them, and most people don’t want that much paper laying about. And losing that small piece of paper results in them being completely unable to use software they may have paid a large amount of money for.
Also the old code wheels, and requirements to enter a word/letter from the manual. This was common years ago, on the amiga for instance, and was incredibly irritating. Some even required you to re-enter codes at random points throughout the game, and would punish you if you entered them wrong.
So, i won’t buy games where i have to keep the DVD in the drive to play, and i won’t buy software where i need to enter a code to use it. Why should legitimate customers be at a disadvantage relative to pirates? If this is the thanks we get for buying software, then i think i’l side with the pirates as they don’t shaft their own customers.