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Thoughts?

Do you think this is the beginning of a trend?

Well - with the extreem hype surronding HL2 it seems like a good place to try and crack down on pirated products.
After what I know - I've not bought HL2 yet (think I need new gfx-card first) you need to activate it by decrypting it via Steam which has caused many bottlenecks on releasedates.

However, it also ensured that HL2 wasn't "cracked" untill some days after the release, and that was still not a full crack, because it was just the decrypted current version.

That is good in my view.

However - this procedure has caused several problems as well with buyers that couldn't access Steam to decrypt their product, and although Internet is a common thing these days - it also means that a market segement can't purchase HL2.
This is a bad thing in my view.

Most pirateprotection seems to make it harder for the legal owners as well, and not often for the people producing and using pirated products, which is the wrong way to go and the wrong people to bother.
I don't - however - have any golden way to do things (if I had, I'd be selling it for sure ), so I'll just conclude that anything to hamper pirated products is good in my view. And I'm sure the future will bring more similar things - I just hope something can be invented to give the maximum security with the minimal bother for the legal users (so I don't have to have CDs in my drive to play for instance

it also means that a market segement can't purchase HL2.

I disagree. The kind of market with a system that'll run HL2, and with the will top purchase and play HL2 will 99% of the time have the internet. And im sure you can get a key over the phone as well.

[QUOTE=Xandax]
Most pirateprotection seems to make it harder for the legal owners as well, and not often for the people producing and using pirated products, which is the wrong way to go and the wrong people to bother.
I don't - however - have any golden way to do things (if I had, I'd be selling it for sure ), so I'll just conclude that anything to hamper pirated products is good in my view. And I'm sure the future will bring more similar things - I just hope something can be invented to give the maximum security with the minimal bother for the legal users (so I don't have to have CDs in my drive to play for instance [/QUOTE]



Agreed completly, almost all pirating protections are pointless as the game can be cracked by many many simple to do ways and it gives a huge bother to legal owners, my biggest pet peeve beeing the whole Cd in drive to play the game, its pointless offers no security and it if your constantly loading info off the CDs they will become degradated from constant use and eventualy stop working.

CD keys are becoming worthless as well seeing as how easy it is to make a java based randomiser and cd key extractor.

[QUOTE=giles337]I disagree. The kind of market with a system that'll run HL2, and with the will top purchase and play HL2 will 99% of the time have the internet. And im sure you can get a key over the phone as well.[/QUOTE]

As I understood it from people at work, the game needs to be decrypted after installation. Now how much traffic that requiered I don't know (haven't bought it yet).
It also states on the box (I read it from various webshops) - that online registration is needed and that Internet is requiered even if no on-line play is intended.

Sure most have Internet these days - but certainly not all and however if a significant amount of traffic is needed more then once, then dial-up might not be enough.


Again - how much Internet it needs, I don't fully know - but I can certainly see potential problems for some.

[QUOTE=Volk]CD keys are becoming worthless as well seeing as how easy it is to make a java based randomiser and cd key extractor.[/QUOTE]
CD keys prevent you from playing online unless you have purchased the game

[QUOTE=Vicsun]CD keys prevent you from playing online unless you have purchased the game [/QUOTE]

This is in my opinion one of the best strategies currently available, and used to perfection by Blizzard.

As for mandatory online activation, I can see a DivX (not the encoding, the US rental system) disaster in the making. DivX was a system where you could buy DVD's dirt cheap, but had to connect to DivX through their proprietary dvd-player to authenticate the movie (and pay a fee, of course). DivX went broke, so now you cant watch the movies at all. Now, some of you may have some nice DivX beer coasters at home, perhaps in a not too distant future you can have a HL2 coaster too.