You know, I'm not really bothered by the activation system proposed. I don't like it, I would prefer not to have it, but it's not going to get me to boycott Mass Effect or anything like that. Rating annoyances from 1 to 10, it's maybe a 4.
But it's stupid. It's not going to stop pirates. It's going to slow them down a bit - maybe there will be less pirated copies for a few weeks while people work to crack the system - but in the long run, it won't matter. And it won't increase sales. To increase sales, there would have to be a large contingent of people who A - were going to pirate the game, B - want it so much that they must have it *now*, rather than wait for a hacked version.
There is probably a handful of people who answer this criteria. I'm even willing to buy, as a theoretical possibility, that there are more people in this demographic than there are people who are turned off (because of their ideology or lack of broadband) from buying the game by this measure. I doubt it, but I'm willing to entertain that as a thought experiment. But I just can't believe that the amount of profit this method will add will be anywhere near the amount of money it costs to implement it, and keep activation servers running for years. The resources paid for developing, implementing, supporting, and marketing this "
protection"
are so much more than it will ever protect.
This is especially true since we know now from real data (see
www.galciv2.com and
www.sinsofasolarempire.com) that lack of copy protection on a PC game does in no way stop it from having phenomenal sales.
It's not really evil, it's not really terrible, and it's not really the end of the world. It's just plain out stupid, that's what this is.
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I got my avatar back! Yay!