cracked single player will be available from day 1, or even earlier - nobody in his right mind would dispute that.
reportedly there will be an option to play single player without logging in, but your achievements and such worthless bullshit won't be saved (it's kept online). Installation process will require battle.net though, which is stupid beyond recognition. How hard is to scrap the offending code? 1hr of hacker's effort?
wasn't modern warfare 2 90% consoles, 10% pcs? Consoles never had dedicated servers and such, console players didn't miss something they never knew PC games _should_ be different, but i don't hold my breath given the cluelessness of an average pc gamer. LAN is oldschool for 99% and only old people in korea use it. They severely underestimate risks of being under the 'benevolent' company's absolute control and without deeper thought they give away fair use rights and ownership in a true meaning of the word in the name of convenience, social bullshit and such. They are more numerous than people who see risks of 'always connected experience' so companies can do whatever they want to grab more power, unwashed masses will pay 60 bucks for less either way (3 times).
ghost wasn't going to be bad imho my bet is they developed the game for the old xbox and when the next gen consoles were about to arrive they thought that SC:Ghost won't have much appeal given crappier gfx so they scrapped it.
"You're right, of course. We can just conveniently ignore all the moral implications of that. And comparing people's health to simply fueling their cars?"
Everything has a cost, human life too - somehow we don't treat every cancer in existence with the best newest miracle pills costing 50k each. That's why it's similar to fueling a car, someone has to pay for that or it won't happen. Sorry to say that, but i absolutely don't care about your health and i am sure you feel the same towards me. Why would you expect me to cover your health expenses especially in cases where you bring nothing to the table? By the way, why only health? Maybe food and shelter too? After all letting people starve and live under bridges is inhumane. Sex by any chance? That sexual tension causes so many unhappiness, tragedies and widespread masturbation.
People have right to live and do whatever they wish with their lives, but that's pretty much it. You can feed and cure other people out of your pocket, but don't ever require others to share your socialist agenda.
Any system where 3rd party pays is destined to fail. People go to the doctor every time they sneeze, because they don't see the costs covered by someone else. Such system can be even 99% efficient (almost no overhead for redistribution and administration) but it will be overused either way inflating total budget which ultimately is fueled by taxpayer's money. It's somewhat similar to the tragedy of the commons - it's 'free' and almost infinite so there is no ethical problem of taking too much out from it until the whole thing falls apart. Is it fair to tax people who don't want to be included in that system and wish to take care of their own health by themselves? Sign a paper that you'll never want anything from gevernment run healthcare - isn't that a fair deal? (it still isn't because government run healthcare will inflate deficit that will be covered by the increased taxes on everyone and printing money - loss of purchasing power for all, so opt-outers will be affected too)
there is no free market in existence for a century. What we have now globally is keynesianism which argues that government regulations and spending (central planning in disguise) is good for economy and politicians love that doctrine because they measure economic success with the GDP which can be inflated by government spending even with borrowed money ( gdp = consumption + invenstment + government + net exports).
Laissez faire economy is a natural state of things (think ecosystem unharmed by a man). There are natural tensions between the players of the ecosystem, supply and demand play decisive role in defining the equilibrium.
Now add government and central bank to the equation modifying natural balance. GDP growth too low and bars of citizen support on TV don't look good? Set low interest rate and observe the credit boom and consumption shooting through the roof. Ecosystem example? Think dropping tons of meat from helicopter into the ecosystem because you think that the predators need help.
This causes problem - natural interest rate is decided by the compromise between amount of loanable savings and demand for loans, but when government bodies set interest rate too low, saving doesn't pay back, borrowing money and gambling with it does. For a short period of time economy set to such overdrive produces nice GDP numbers and people feel warm and fuzzy inside but the disaster is around the corner. All that accumulated debt doesn't have backup in real savings which means that the whole economy is stimulated by lots of hot air and nothing more and becomes very fragile. Add government guarantees to the mix to make things worse (if government guarantees something, it's a safe bet, right? be it mortgages, bank deposits). In the ecosystem example dropping a lot of meat will make population of predators very healthy and big, so they'll kill most of the grass eaters, just like we have debtors more numerous than creditors. As you can see this is lose-lose situation, because there are only 2 ways to deal with it: feeding animals for eternity or letting predators to starve to reduce numbers to their natural levels.
Recessions are simply corrections freeing the energy of unnatural tensions created by the artificial stimulation and they are in fact healthy. We lived on credit card money and now we pay the price. It was nice while it lasted but now it's time to pay the debts and underconsume.
Current recession? There was a dotcom bubble which burst. Politicians didn't like the negative gdp growth of the recession that started, so they reduced IR and started guaranteeing mortgages. This led to a decade long real estate boom based on a false premise that houses gaining 10-20% every year is somehow backed up by the real wealth and legitimate growth. When subprime mortgages started to default it started the chain reaction.
profit margins could be improved if only 2/3 of the game budget wasn't blown on marketing.
i am all for the big players moving to the consoles if the pc market is too hard for them. By their attempts to gain total control they will destroy all benefits of pc gaming - mods, user created content, ease of multiplaying on lan, dedicated servers and what not.
music industry behemots had to admit that unrestricted product sells better, it's time for the game industry to do the same. I see paying for digital stuff as an absolutely voluntary act of rewarding creators' efforts in case their product is excellent. Paying in advance is asking to be scammed with the worthless piece of shit. No amount of drm would force me to pay if i didn't like what i saw. Blizzard was an exception in my case, i bought almost every game up to 1st WoW. I knew they attract players with the quality alone because their copy protection was trivial to circumvent and yet millions were willing to pay - unfortunately they chose the same path of tightening the grip in case of upcoming Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3, removing offline lan, requiring internet during install even when there is no multiplayer available without their servers (single player will be hacked in 1 day either way).
you realize that their stellar financial performance in last few months was a direct result of Cash for Clunkers program which was a blatant handout of taxpayer's money to car manufacturers? We shall see what happens when there is no more stimulus. I suspect that the sales will grind to halt and they will be SOL again
Pretty much the same thing was with Goldman Sachs - they were about to collapse, government came to the rescue with tarp plus lent money practically for free (0,5%), so folks at GS could buy treasury bonds (maybe around 4% - difference is pure risk-free profit at the taxpayer's expense) and gambled in stock market. Thanks to their 'brilliant' strategy they could repay tarp to be free of constraits again... and pay record high bonuses to their managers.
Even 7 year old would make a profit with heavy subsidies from the buddies in government.
your info is rather outdated. There is no gold standard since 1971.
No government promises anything - now fiat currencies (not tied to any commodity, printed at a whim) reign supreme. Money has value only because the government says so, but there is no physical equivalent.
what Alan Greenspan forgot to mention is that the whole mess has its origin in the very regulation of INTEREST RATE which he was personally responsible for. Everything else is peanuts and this fact alone negates the idea that we had anything like free market. Setting IR at 1-2% for a decade is a foolproof and sure way to get obscene levels of debt (saving doesn't pay off), reckless spending, gambing on the markets for easy profit. When everyone is competing for the loan, IR should rise sharply because of free market forces but it wasn't the case. Politicians chose to cut IR and keep it low because it 'stimulates' the economy, generates nice GDP numbers (which don't say anything meaningful about the health of economy) and voters feel rich as their no-downpayment-mortgage homes are rising in value 10% each year.
It's like dropping tons of meat at savannah for many years and wondering how is it possible there are so many predators and so few grass eaters. Economy was so far from its natural equilibrium because it was stimulated for an extended period. It's so dependent on 'external' help, that it cannot work without help anymore.
Imbalance got so severe that the recession was inevitable, there is no other way to purge that huge pile of toxic assets polluting economy. Of course you can choose to drop more and more meat, till the end of time, but i don't see how it is a remotely viable option.
Also it is proven that the regulation of minimum wage increases unemployment and raises government expeditures. After all if there were no limits some people would get some lousy low level job which sucks for them, sure, but it's still better situation than paying them with taxpayer's money for doing nothing. Situation is especially bad when the social security help is substantial, this can discourage people to get a job - why bother with 40hrs/week and get minimum wage when i can get 70% and watch tv all day long. Socialist european countries know this phenomenon very well.
Re:that accounts for distance...
on
Ants That Can Count
·
· Score: 2, Informative
bees recognize directions by the light polarization - their eyes are able to differentiate polarization which is dependant on angle between the chosen direction and the sun position. Maybe these ants use similar technique.
i am an atheist but i'd vote for the pope himself if he truly believed that following words of constitution is not passe, advocated drastic cuts in federal spending, stopping war machine, restoring sound money policy and allowing people to be personally responsible for their life, without government interference.
You can say a lot about the man, but not that he is just like every other career politician without principles. 'Traditional' candidates are two sides of the same coin, merely disguised as rep/dem. In the end they all blow taxpayer's money left and right, they all increase public debt by 1 trillion every year and they all lick wall street balls whenever wall street feels like it.
true, LoK series is simply an example of wordsmithing mastery, narration and dialogues in games of the series are nothing short of pure genius. Another example of such a linguisitic brilliance would be Planescape: Torment and there is nothing that comes even close to these two.
person that fleshed out the LoK's world of Nosgoth would be Amy Hennig, though i am not sure if she was personally responsible for the spoken lines http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0377339/
for starters:
- no competition over state borders - why bother with price cuts when nobody can interfere with your lucrative business?
- barrier of entry - it's not that easy and cheap to start insurance business, thanks to heavy regulation among the others. More players = more competition
- 3rd party paying for the insurance - it's doomed to have huge overhead, always. Employers pay for bulk insurance, but they don't care about the menu. After all it's the employees who use that insurance. Employee doesn't see the costs because somebody else pays, so he doesn't care and doesn't shop around to find better deal (that would force prices down). Employer doesn't care (he gets his tax break) so insurance company can jack up the prices safely. In a system when nobody cares prices will be high no matter what. When you want competition at work, it's the final consumer who is supposed to see the costs.
People should be personally responsible for their health plans, they would evaluate their needs and look for some deal that fits their projected gain/money spent.
when FED buys treasury bills and bonds, it does exactly that. There was no dollar, puff, there is a dollar. They don't pay with existing money, they simply announce: ok, we take these papers and you add 100 billion to your account. Pool of money is increased (printing money) thus watering down value of money already in circulation (inflation)
apparently you don't understand that without government interference excessive leveraging that led to this whole mess would not be possible? It's the central banks which arbitrarily did set interest rates close to 0% (because it boosts the economy and everyone loves nice gdp growth numbers). It means that money was free to borrow, so everyone and his dog borrowed and played with it recklessly to get more. Free market would never allow 0% interest rate, making economy gambleproof in the first place and even if it happened by some miraculous accident, forming bubble would be deflated much earlier because rates would go up fast and discourage risky play. No bubble would ever shake the whole world's economy.
And the bailouts should never happen. 'Too big to fail' means that the taxpayers are now hostages of big business connected with government (it's called fascism, kids)
lol, i recently bought mine for ~$4 in a retail store (-50%, its standard price was about $8:))
In Poland we have a strong market of classic games (and if i am not mistaken gog.com is 'our invention'). Every remotely successful game returns in cheaper re-releases (full blown version at a release -> modest one 1-2 years later -> cheap-ass standalones or as a part of some classic collection). Also i possess a brand new 'RPG legends' pack consisting of Baldur's Gate 1/2+addons, Icewind Dale 1/2+addons, Planescape Torment and Lionheart for less than $25.
I now stockpile legendary games i used to play long time ago or skipped entirely for whatever reason. I am not sure if i have time to play them all, but i don't feel any need to try the shiniest stuff the game industry has to offer nowadays.
it's an entirely artificial distinction and it's bullshit. I know it is in the law but it should be straightened up. I guess we just love to have overly complex laws to screw us from behind
Music, movies, books and software share similar model - pay a lot in advance, product supply is unlimited and copyright is supporting the business model to recoup the initial investment. Hell, movie dvds shine exactly like game dvds. Why the games are allowed to play by the different set of rules?
If one day MPAA started to put some EULA like bullshit into the dvd movie releases Joe Average would just think they are fucking insane, ignore it entirely and continue to do his thing... yet game publishers have such privileges and nobody questions it.
well, i can't run them on linux either, system requirements are usually on the box and nobody expects it to work flawlessly with newer OS versions. It doesn't mean i can't have 1 partition with old xp or use VM/dosbox/emulators. CD protection problems can be easily solved with gamecopyworld.com.
What is 100% sure is that without unrestricted internet access i am unable to 1.install 2.play digitally distributed and authorized game - offline mode somewhat helps, but you have think of it and prepare in advance, you can't just find long forgotten title on your hdd and run it by doubleclicking.exe while on train.
gog.com is ok, they don't attach any DRM to their titles so you can backup/move their titles around freely. They offer convenience but don't restrict usage.
True, but most of us can't afford to pay $10k+ for the copyrights of each game we want to play, so we settle for a simple $20 license instead.
you pay 10k for the books, audio CDs or movie DVDs?!? really? They are copyright encumbered but you are the de facto owner of the copy you purchased, why on earth it should be different with games?
but steam games are not visibly cheaper than the box versions, that's the point - in fact in majority of Europe they are more expensive that in retail shops. If they were 50% cheaper across the board then we would be talking.
You actually get more when buying the game online.
Only if you consider convenience and social bullshit as the most important factors.
There are those oldschool values like true ownership not rental, freedom to use stuff you paid for as you please - and they are important to some people.
Slashdot Mirror
cracked single player will be available from day 1, or even earlier - nobody in his right mind would dispute that.
reportedly there will be an option to play single player without logging in, but your achievements and such worthless bullshit won't be saved (it's kept online). Installation process will require battle.net though, which is stupid beyond recognition. How hard is to scrap the offending code? 1hr of hacker's effort?
wasn't modern warfare 2 90% consoles, 10% pcs? Consoles never had dedicated servers and such, console players didn't miss something they never knew
PC games _should_ be different, but i don't hold my breath given the cluelessness of an average pc gamer. LAN is oldschool for 99% and only old people in korea use it. They severely underestimate risks of being under the 'benevolent' company's absolute control and without deeper thought they give away fair use rights and ownership in a true meaning of the word in the name of convenience, social bullshit and such. They are more numerous than people who see risks of 'always connected experience' so companies can do whatever they want to grab more power, unwashed masses will pay 60 bucks for less either way (3 times).
ghost wasn't going to be bad imho
my bet is they developed the game for the old xbox and when the next gen consoles were about to arrive they thought that SC:Ghost won't have much appeal given crappier gfx so they scrapped it.
"You're right, of course. We can just conveniently ignore all the moral implications of that. And comparing people's health to simply fueling their cars?"
Everything has a cost, human life too - somehow we don't treat every cancer in existence with the best newest miracle pills costing 50k each. That's why it's similar to fueling a car, someone has to pay for that or it won't happen.
Sorry to say that, but i absolutely don't care about your health and i am sure you feel the same towards me. Why would you expect me to cover your health expenses especially in cases where you bring nothing to the table? By the way, why only health? Maybe food and shelter too? After all letting people starve and live under bridges is inhumane. Sex by any chance? That sexual tension causes so many unhappiness, tragedies and widespread masturbation.
People have right to live and do whatever they wish with their lives, but that's pretty much it. You can feed and cure other people out of your pocket, but don't ever require others to share your socialist agenda.
Any system where 3rd party pays is destined to fail. People go to the doctor every time they sneeze, because they don't see the costs covered by someone else. Such system can be even 99% efficient (almost no overhead for redistribution and administration) but it will be overused either way inflating total budget which ultimately is fueled by taxpayer's money. It's somewhat similar to the tragedy of the commons - it's 'free' and almost infinite so there is no ethical problem of taking too much out from it until the whole thing falls apart.
Is it fair to tax people who don't want to be included in that system and wish to take care of their own health by themselves? Sign a paper that you'll never want anything from gevernment run healthcare - isn't that a fair deal? (it still isn't because government run healthcare will inflate deficit that will be covered by the increased taxes on everyone and printing money - loss of purchasing power for all, so opt-outers will be affected too)
you need a fremen suit, duh...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk i highly recommend that video explaining in a fun way what free market is and what is not.
there is no free market in existence for a century. What we have now globally is keynesianism which argues that government regulations and spending (central planning in disguise) is good for economy and politicians love that doctrine because they measure economic success with the GDP which can be inflated by government spending even with borrowed money ( gdp = consumption + invenstment + government + net exports).
Laissez faire economy is a natural state of things (think ecosystem unharmed by a man). There are natural tensions between the players of the ecosystem, supply and demand play decisive role in defining the equilibrium.
Now add government and central bank to the equation modifying natural balance. GDP growth too low and bars of citizen support on TV don't look good? Set low interest rate and observe the credit boom and consumption shooting through the roof. Ecosystem example? Think dropping tons of meat from helicopter into the ecosystem because you think that the predators need help.
This causes problem - natural interest rate is decided by the compromise between amount of loanable savings and demand for loans, but when government bodies set interest rate too low, saving doesn't pay back, borrowing money and gambling with it does. For a short period of time economy set to such overdrive produces nice GDP numbers and people feel warm and fuzzy inside but the disaster is around the corner. All that accumulated debt doesn't have backup in real savings which means that the whole economy is stimulated by lots of hot air and nothing more and becomes very fragile. Add government guarantees to the mix to make things worse (if government guarantees something, it's a safe bet, right? be it mortgages, bank deposits). In the ecosystem example dropping a lot of meat will make population of predators very healthy and big, so they'll kill most of the grass eaters, just like we have debtors more numerous than creditors. As you can see this is lose-lose situation, because there are only 2 ways to deal with it: feeding animals for eternity or letting predators to starve to reduce numbers to their natural levels.
Recessions are simply corrections freeing the energy of unnatural tensions created by the artificial stimulation and they are in fact healthy. We lived on credit card money and now we pay the price. It was nice while it lasted but now it's time to pay the debts and underconsume.
Current recession? There was a dotcom bubble which burst. Politicians didn't like the negative gdp growth of the recession that started, so they reduced IR and started guaranteeing mortgages. This led to a decade long real estate boom based on a false premise that houses gaining 10-20% every year is somehow backed up by the real wealth and legitimate growth. When subprime mortgages started to default it started the chain reaction.
i am all for the big players moving to the consoles if the pc market is too hard for them. By their attempts to gain total control they will destroy all benefits of pc gaming - mods, user created content, ease of multiplaying on lan, dedicated servers and what not.
music industry behemots had to admit that unrestricted product sells better, it's time for the game industry to do the same. I see paying for digital stuff as an absolutely voluntary act of rewarding creators' efforts in case their product is excellent. Paying in advance is asking to be scammed with the worthless piece of shit. No amount of drm would force me to pay if i didn't like what i saw.
Blizzard was an exception in my case, i bought almost every game up to 1st WoW. I knew they attract players with the quality alone because their copy protection was trivial to circumvent and yet millions were willing to pay - unfortunately they chose the same path of tightening the grip in case of upcoming Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3, removing offline lan, requiring internet during install even when there is no multiplayer available without their servers (single player will be hacked in 1 day either way).
you realize that their stellar financial performance in last few months was a direct result of Cash for Clunkers program which was a blatant handout of taxpayer's money to car manufacturers? We shall see what happens when there is no more stimulus. I suspect that the sales will grind to halt and they will be SOL again
Pretty much the same thing was with Goldman Sachs - they were about to collapse, government came to the rescue with tarp plus lent money practically for free (0,5%), so folks at GS could buy treasury bonds (maybe around 4% - difference is pure risk-free profit at the taxpayer's expense) and gambled in stock market. Thanks to their 'brilliant' strategy they could repay tarp to be free of constraits again... and pay record high bonuses to their managers.
Even 7 year old would make a profit with heavy subsidies from the buddies in government.
your info is rather outdated. There is no gold standard since 1971.
No government promises anything - now fiat currencies (not tied to any commodity, printed at a whim) reign supreme. Money has value only because the government says so, but there is no physical equivalent.
Louis CK on the impatience and the sense of entitlement of today's generation :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOtEQB-9tvk
what Alan Greenspan forgot to mention is that the whole mess has its origin in the very regulation of INTEREST RATE which he was personally responsible for. Everything else is peanuts and this fact alone negates the idea that we had anything like free market. Setting IR at 1-2% for a decade is a foolproof and sure way to get obscene levels of debt (saving doesn't pay off), reckless spending, gambing on the markets for easy profit. When everyone is competing for the loan, IR should rise sharply because of free market forces but it wasn't the case. Politicians chose to cut IR and keep it low because it 'stimulates' the economy, generates nice GDP numbers (which don't say anything meaningful about the health of economy) and voters feel rich as their no-downpayment-mortgage homes are rising in value 10% each year.
It's like dropping tons of meat at savannah for many years and wondering how is it possible there are so many predators and so few grass eaters. Economy was so far from its natural equilibrium because it was stimulated for an extended period. It's so dependent on 'external' help, that it cannot work without help anymore. Imbalance got so severe that the recession was inevitable, there is no other way to purge that huge pile of toxic assets polluting economy. Of course you can choose to drop more and more meat, till the end of time, but i don't see how it is a remotely viable option.
Also it is proven that the regulation of minimum wage increases unemployment and raises government expeditures. After all if there were no limits some people would get some lousy low level job which sucks for them, sure, but it's still better situation than paying them with taxpayer's money for doing nothing. Situation is especially bad when the social security help is substantial, this can discourage people to get a job - why bother with 40hrs/week and get minimum wage when i can get 70% and watch tv all day long. Socialist european countries know this phenomenon very well.
bees recognize directions by the light polarization - their eyes are able to differentiate polarization which is dependant on angle between the chosen direction and the sun position. Maybe these ants use similar technique.
i am an atheist but i'd vote for the pope himself if he truly believed that following words of constitution is not passe, advocated drastic cuts in federal spending, stopping war machine, restoring sound money policy and allowing people to be personally responsible for their life, without government interference.
You can say a lot about the man, but not that he is just like every other career politician without principles. 'Traditional' candidates are two sides of the same coin, merely disguised as rep/dem. In the end they all blow taxpayer's money left and right, they all increase public debt by 1 trillion every year and they all lick wall street balls whenever wall street feels like it.
true, LoK series is simply an example of wordsmithing mastery, narration and dialogues in games of the series are nothing short of pure genius. Another example of such a linguisitic brilliance would be Planescape: Torment and there is nothing that comes even close to these two.
person that fleshed out the LoK's world of Nosgoth would be Amy Hennig, though i am not sure if she was personally responsible for the spoken lines
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0377339/
- no competition over state borders - why bother with price cuts when nobody can interfere with your lucrative business?
- barrier of entry - it's not that easy and cheap to start insurance business, thanks to heavy regulation among the others. More players = more competition
- 3rd party paying for the insurance - it's doomed to have huge overhead, always. Employers pay for bulk insurance, but they don't care about the menu. After all it's the employees who use that insurance. Employee doesn't see the costs because somebody else pays, so he doesn't care and doesn't shop around to find better deal (that would force prices down). Employer doesn't care (he gets his tax break) so insurance company can jack up the prices safely. In a system when nobody cares prices will be high no matter what. When you want competition at work, it's the final consumer who is supposed to see the costs.
People should be personally responsible for their health plans, they would evaluate their needs and look for some deal that fits their projected gain/money spent.
when FED buys treasury bills and bonds, it does exactly that. There was no dollar, puff, there is a dollar. They don't pay with existing money, they simply announce: ok, we take these papers and you add 100 billion to your account. Pool of money is increased (printing money) thus watering down value of money already in circulation (inflation)
apparently you don't understand that without government interference excessive leveraging that led to this whole mess would not be possible? It's the central banks which arbitrarily did set interest rates close to 0% (because it boosts the economy and everyone loves nice gdp growth numbers). It means that money was free to borrow, so everyone and his dog borrowed and played with it recklessly to get more. Free market would never allow 0% interest rate, making economy gambleproof in the first place and even if it happened by some miraculous accident, forming bubble would be deflated much earlier because rates would go up fast and discourage risky play. No bubble would ever shake the whole world's economy.
And the bailouts should never happen. 'Too big to fail' means that the taxpayers are now hostages of big business connected with government (it's called fascism, kids)
question is: do you have that money? or are you going to borrow it from chinese, as usual?
lol, i recently bought mine for ~$4 in a retail store (-50%, its standard price was about $8 :))
In Poland we have a strong market of classic games (and if i am not mistaken gog.com is 'our invention'). Every remotely successful game returns in cheaper re-releases (full blown version at a release -> modest one 1-2 years later -> cheap-ass standalones or as a part of some classic collection). Also i possess a brand new 'RPG legends' pack consisting of Baldur's Gate 1/2+addons, Icewind Dale 1/2+addons, Planescape Torment and Lionheart for less than $25.
I now stockpile legendary games i used to play long time ago or skipped entirely for whatever reason. I am not sure if i have time to play them all, but i don't feel any need to try the shiniest stuff the game industry has to offer nowadays.
fascist of course, that's what marriage of the state and big business is.
it's an entirely artificial distinction and it's bullshit. I know it is in the law but it should be straightened up. I guess we just love to have overly complex laws to screw us from behind
Music, movies, books and software share similar model - pay a lot in advance, product supply is unlimited and copyright is supporting the business model to recoup the initial investment. Hell, movie dvds shine exactly like game dvds. Why the games are allowed to play by the different set of rules?
If one day MPAA started to put some EULA like bullshit into the dvd movie releases Joe Average would just think they are fucking insane, ignore it entirely and continue to do his thing... yet game publishers have such privileges and nobody questions it.
well, i can't run them on linux either, system requirements are usually on the box and nobody expects it to work flawlessly with newer OS versions. It doesn't mean i can't have 1 partition with old xp or use VM/dosbox/emulators. CD protection problems can be easily solved with gamecopyworld.com. .exe while on train.
What is 100% sure is that without unrestricted internet access i am unable to 1.install 2.play digitally distributed and authorized game - offline mode somewhat helps, but you have think of it and prepare in advance, you can't just find long forgotten title on your hdd and run it by doubleclicking
gog.com is ok, they don't attach any DRM to their titles so you can backup/move their titles around freely. They offer convenience but don't restrict usage.
True, but most of us can't afford to pay $10k+ for the copyrights of each game we want to play, so we settle for a simple $20 license instead.
you pay 10k for the books, audio CDs or movie DVDs?!? really? They are copyright encumbered but you are the de facto owner of the copy you purchased, why on earth it should be different with games?
but steam games are not visibly cheaper than the box versions, that's the point - in fact in majority of Europe they are more expensive that in retail shops. If they were 50% cheaper across the board then we would be talking.
You actually get more when buying the game online.
Only if you consider convenience and social bullshit as the most important factors. There are those oldschool values like true ownership not rental, freedom to use stuff you paid for as you please - and they are important to some people.