Because they remove any reference to negative comments, ignore upset customers, and generally sweep it all under the rug.
Don't get me wrong, I like a good Mac, but their willingness to admit to being wrong or to having build buggy code is really non-existent.
Even more importantly, Firefox 2 has successfully implemented on Windows 9x (yes, Win95 with 64MB of RAM... required a few driver packs, and ran slow as crap, but it ran!).
IE7... I will never be able to install that on a Windows 95 box... and likely not on a 98 or 2000 machine either.
What about if you got the game for free, were encouraged to freely redistribute, and all you had to do was deal with in game product placement (which game designers would do tastefully because that would make their game travel farther) and a 5 second splash screen on load, on quit, and ads placed unobtrusively in the main menus? If minimal enough, no one will care enough to crack it.
Heck, add in a "bonus" feature (extra levels, adds a better starting weapon, increases starting gold for any new character creation, w/e) for those that "register" the copy, and now the company has numbers to show advertisers, allowing the company to collect revenue based on market penetration, while allowing you to either a) not give a crap and just not register it, or b) get the extra and not give a crap that you only had to connect once. Sure, there'd might be some skewing to the numbers, but they can adjust for that.
Win-Win, right? You get a $75 game and offline play for $0. Online play can be free (with 3 10 second ads to watch on load, a 5 second ad between cut scenes / levels / w/e, and top/bottom bar ads during play) or pay a $10 monthly subscription to eliminate the timewasters and get rid of banner ads.
I'd sign up quickly for that. Play WoW, Dungeon Seige, or Halo3 for free and play online for free if I put up with top/bottom bar ads and a slight wait time between levels? HECK YEAH. And when I have money, I'll kill the ads by subscribing. Win-win for the company's profits, win-win for me... and no real reason to worry about cracking it. Not enough of an annoyance (or they could charge for online play, and give away the game with minimal ads... then even less reason to crack it, and encouragement to "pirate" it).
Now if only ID Software, et al, would get on board, we'd finally be in the 21st century for game distribution.
Yeah, I agree. I've received regular mailings from them in spite of repeated phone calls and emails instructing them to cease and desist... why can't we have a CAN SPAM act for physical mail? (Or at least be able to put together "blacklists" that the Post office should just shred. They still get their money, and I don't see the mail.)
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Because they remove any reference to negative comments, ignore upset customers, and generally sweep it all under the rug. Don't get me wrong, I like a good Mac, but their willingness to admit to being wrong or to having build buggy code is really non-existent.
Did anyone else try to read that post as a poem?
Yep. It had a nice lyrical quality. Existential, really. I hope we'll see more from this new poetry prodigy.
WhatItUsedToBe.com is available :-)
Even more importantly, Firefox 2 has successfully implemented on Windows 9x (yes, Win95 with 64MB of RAM... required a few driver packs, and ran slow as crap, but it ran!). IE7... I will never be able to install that on a Windows 95 box... and likely not on a 98 or 2000 machine either.
What about if you got the game for free, were encouraged to freely redistribute, and all you had to do was deal with in game product placement (which game designers would do tastefully because that would make their game travel farther) and a 5 second splash screen on load, on quit, and ads placed unobtrusively in the main menus? If minimal enough, no one will care enough to crack it. Heck, add in a "bonus" feature (extra levels, adds a better starting weapon, increases starting gold for any new character creation, w/e) for those that "register" the copy, and now the company has numbers to show advertisers, allowing the company to collect revenue based on market penetration, while allowing you to either a) not give a crap and just not register it, or b) get the extra and not give a crap that you only had to connect once. Sure, there'd might be some skewing to the numbers, but they can adjust for that. Win-Win, right? You get a $75 game and offline play for $0. Online play can be free (with 3 10 second ads to watch on load, a 5 second ad between cut scenes / levels / w/e, and top/bottom bar ads during play) or pay a $10 monthly subscription to eliminate the timewasters and get rid of banner ads. I'd sign up quickly for that. Play WoW, Dungeon Seige, or Halo3 for free and play online for free if I put up with top/bottom bar ads and a slight wait time between levels? HECK YEAH. And when I have money, I'll kill the ads by subscribing. Win-win for the company's profits, win-win for me... and no real reason to worry about cracking it. Not enough of an annoyance (or they could charge for online play, and give away the game with minimal ads... then even less reason to crack it, and encouragement to "pirate" it). Now if only ID Software, et al, would get on board, we'd finally be in the 21st century for game distribution.
You can clean that up a bit... one site filter:
*.(hotmail|live).com*
Yeah, but if it actually was a game about going through other games they might have gotten away with it... might actually be a cool game concept :-P
Yeah, I agree. I've received regular mailings from them in spite of repeated phone calls and emails instructing them to cease and desist... why can't we have a CAN SPAM act for physical mail? (Or at least be able to put together "blacklists" that the Post office should just shred. They still get their money, and I don't see the mail.)