Mac Version Of Halo Exemplifies Piracy Problem?

An anonymous reader writes "MacSoft takes popular games and ports them to the Macintosh for all the Mac users to enjoy, but according to a TwinCities.com article, apparently there are far more users pirating Mac Halo than actually buying it A MacSoft spokesman 'didn't release sales figures [for Halo] but said illegal downloads number at least in the hundreds of thousands.'" The article uses this specific game to discuss how PC and Mac publishers are "...making gamers enter special codes, authenticate themselves online and jump through more hoops." It ends by describing the pain of the developer in seeing their title pirated: "It was a dagger in the hearts of guys who worked 12 to 14 hours a day [on Halo]... We're on an emotional high, and it all comes crashing down."

Comments

If I use asterisks, it appears less offensive

[Andy Smith]

I'd just like to say a hearty F**K YOU to the pirates who are causing more and more of the software I buy to require increasingly awkward and intrusive copy-protection systems.

I have absolutely no ill-feeling towards the developers and publishers who seek to protect their livelihood, but I would very much like to be driving the car that leaves tyre marks on the pirate's flattened corpse.

That is all.

Hell, I pirated it, and I'm glad I did

[legLess]

A friend of mine gave me a Halo CD with a CD key good enough to play locally but not online. I said "thanks" and got down to playing. I finished the game in about 5 days of long sessions, and here's my review:

Halo on the Mac sucks slimy donkey balls.

I kept hoping that it would get better, but it got worse and worse until finally it was torture. I finished because I'm anal-retentive that way: I hate to leave things unfinished.

Please note that I'm not trying to defend or condone software copyright violations. I understand that people sweat blood to get games out the door. But I'll save my conclusions for the end.

Also, before you write me off as same effete Mac poser, note that this is my first Mac; I got it three months ago. I've used Debian for years, and still run it as a workstation and server. I got the Mac so I could run all the Unix tools and servers I need, run Vim from Bash, and use Photoshop -- all in the same OS (as long as that OS isn't Windows, which I despise, and not for political or ideological reasons).

Here's what sucked the most:

Gameplay sucked. Much of this game was like punishment from God. I've played FPS games since Wolfenstein, and I've never played anything that sucked like this (although I never played Daikatana ;). There were several times during Halo that I thought I had fucked up somehow and gone back on my old steps. I kept running into the same environments, over and over and over again. One particular room I ran through about 40 times: literally the identical map, just new monsters. I swear, they mapped about 1/8 of the game, then just pasted the same damn rooms in for the rest of it when they ran out of time. Monsters sucked. I'm sorry, did I just write "new monsters?" There aren't any. There are big, fast bad-ass brute-type creatures, exactly like the ones in Unreal (don't remember what they were called). There are little things that run after you and jump and explode, shockingly similar to the annoying little fuckers in Half-Life. There are zombie humans you've had their heads eaten by head-crab-like monsters, and they shamble after you and try to hit you (again just like HL). Monster variety was lower than Doom. Performance sucked. I have a brand new 15" G4 Aluminum Power Book, and I had to run at 800x600 with all the graphics options turned off just to get a playable frame rate. This is the higher-end PB: 1.25GHz; 512Mb RAM and a Radeon 9600. The graphics were really pretty, just ass-slow. I got killed a few times watching a pretty slideshow, then turned all the options off.

After I finished it, my friend called and asked me what I thought. He said he wasn't very far into it, but had heard good things about the multiplayer. He said we should perhaps buy copies of the game so we could play it online. I told him not to bother.

Moral of the story: if it hadn't sucked, I would have bought two copies. I didn't go searching for a warez version and am frankly sorry that I wasted my time on it.

The big problems with halo are

[jonwil]

1.Microsoft deliberatly dragging its heels on updates and the editor (probobly either to get more sales of Halo XBOX or mabie so that halo 2 comes out first)

2.Microsoft preventing Bungie from doing the ports to PC and MAC inhouse (probobly because MS wanted them to get working on the next XBOX thingo MS had lined up)

3.Rediculous hardware requirements for both ports (brought on because microsoft insisted that the ports contain all the graphics effect fluff and crap that the XBOX version has and then some)

4.Sucky multiplayer (because the netcode isnt optomized for transfer over a low-bandwidth link like dialup or low-bandwitdh broadband)

and 5.Lack of content because MS is deliberatly holding back the halo editor

I have learnt one thing about MS
If there is a game that is ultimatly "owned" by Microsoft and it has both a version on XBOX and a version or versions on other platforms, avoid the other platform versions since MS will deliberatly make them sucky compared to the XBOX version so they can sell more XBOXes