WoW, Actualy as I stated B4 only the youngins try and pirate for stupid reasons, they would try and do something as stupid as "try and get support" for a product they didn't pay for, I pirate Games As i mention b4, and i know lots of other people who do, They don't try and get support because "we" know we arn't "eligible" for it. if you do yoru as I stated b4 you don't know why us people pirate, to make a statement. We don't wnat your idiot business plans ruining our gaming fun.

example, all the tards who pirate M$ products then try and d/l win updates it's like wah????? you must be new to pirating and your also expecting "services" for free. and if any "child had mastery of" why is it that your either part of group A, or group B???

And your thinking of ooooo Nero catchs all of them.  wrong, I Use both legal copies of nero and pirated and have never lost access to my pirated copies.  You can get pirated copies of pretty much anything However when something has value to people they will pay for it, Just as people who have pirated your game have bought it, just as i have done with other games. It's a way to find out 1st hand how good or shitty a game is, No one wants to buy something that ends up being CRAP. It's a waste of money. and makes you less likely to buy something in the future, companies do this to themselves and hurt their own industry. look at the music industry(seriouslY wtf are they thinking)

Another reason why companies allow Full evaluations of software/Hardware of products because they belive what they are offering is good and what you want and feel you'll want to buy it, and if afterwards you don't owell on to the next customer. They don't act like omg start crying. or we just lost money. Smart companies know people want 1st hand full on experince with it.

I used a T1 for my personal Use at home because thats the only thing available(that i'm willing to justify to myself at the moment cost wise $300.00MRC you wanna pay that?) I have access to 2x DS3 for my business so yea(sure i could use it all for myself but that wouldn't be good business i'm for my customers not trying to screw them like most who have no business skills).

Hmm you obviously don't know much about Big ISP business. or the Money involved to setup a Connection in a City yet your saying just get them to install, sorry not that simple. If there is no Line for internet to get in, then that means digging a trench(or putting up poles), running cable, Manpower equipment and then, setting the correct pricing plan to offset the cost of duing said install and not making any money probbaly for several years. if a phone company/cable company will charge almost 10k just to run a 25ft-50ft run from point a to point b underground, what do you think an install would be to do a run of between 10-50+ miles???? you could do wireless however cost double to quadropple just on parts alone.

Online Systems such as Steam and Impulse and whatever else are like MMO based systems, however your not paying for them and your not getting the free content but your being forced to use such a system to play a game you like. You might aswell charge people a monthly fee because what you are doing is no different from any online MMO. Your forcing an online authentication process on us when we don't want it and thats not needed. If your going to bitch about money again then Charge a monthly fee I would be happy to pay a MRC for content and Serives that are worth it.

I have no problem paying for a MRC on something if i'm gonna get treated like a client and someone you actualy are willing to help, no one wants to buy something then get dicked around and be treated like some customer in a retail store. theres a big difference between being someones customer(one time deal) and a Client(someone you deal with on a regular basis and try and help).

So i'm making petty excuss because i paid for something yet you treat me like a theif??? /rolls eyes. hmm and people wonder why people like me pirate or why starforce(boycotted) got assraped in the community.

Regardless I'm the one who pays your(along with everyone else who buys your products) paycheck because i buy your products, us gamers are your investor hwoever we are treated like dirt. it's amazing what we the buyer can do to a seller who doens't make us happy, thats big business.

Hmm, So i sell internet I should just limit you(my clients) access time because i feel like it and disallow you to do what i don't want you to because i feel like it???

o but if i go with your bussiness pratice i could just say "if you don't like it don't use it, or sorry to bad" i don't know i'm not sure if it's just me but i don't think that will fly with my clients/potentials.

Your using an excuss and not having faith in your customers and forcing us to use something as under handed as that, then your also stating o we don't belive in DRM(yet you use an online authentication, i could be wrong here but isn't that DRM???? which is just the same as using a copy protection system and and then having a higher cost you pass onto us as a customer) but then complaining that your loseing money, instead of just Maning up and either having an MMO based system(which your halfassed doing anyways) or you do what any company in their right mind would do(have an acocunt based system with cd-key attached to it and be done with it).

Now I don;'t have a problem with impulse as an apllication itself nor do i tend to have technical problems with Steam or impluse or the like, I feel that I shouldn't be subjected to a system i'm not paying for nor am I being treated fairly.

If i wanna play offline i should be able to thats my choice, If i wanna max my upload/download and play a fgame offline i should be bale to. If i wanna leave and go on vacatio n somewhere and take a laptop with me that has  game on it that i like and play it i should be able to however wait, opps i forgot to log on as offline mode or do whatever o no i'm screwed becaus ethe company thinks i'm gonna steal something i paid for, wait wah? i think i confused myself there, steal something i paid for, hmm maybe i'm just stupid but that sounds retard owell. now i can't play. yeaaaaaaa

if your being flooded with fake support ques well sorry thats your problem not mine or your "customers" if your having a hard time dealing with the fakes i'm sorry but your interal system blows then.

Kinda proves my point already on your way of doing things hahah

any grammer police on

i have never pirateted ever nor will i  thats whot  i was saying muppet.i tried the demo be fore i bout it

i don't remember specificaly stating that impulse did that???? so.....

and my point on "grammer" was/is i'm making so many spelling mistakes that i dun care . but it's the interweb it's serious biz .

demos never give you the full story, i've played demos b4 that rocked, then you buy the game and are like wtf???? this isn;t the same game i played. what as a consumer am i supposed to do now after paying for a PoS game that was nothing like the demo??? lots of places won't return games once open due to cd-key use or just store policy, lots of digital places won't refund you either. lots of times game demos are made b4 the game comes out but sometimes they change key aspects of a game that don't reflect their demo anymore, somtimes demos are made after a game is made and they find that the demo has some bugs that they didn't catghc in the retail release however retail gets patched but demo doens't so now i'm goping to base my horrible experince with an outdated demo that doens't/might not reflect the real game because the company didn't release a new demo/patch for it.

Digital may be the way of the future but it lacks all of the important things that you get with retail. your paying the same price for a digital buy as a retail/morter brick buy yet coming home with way less, no manuels, no booklets, no CD/DVD nor a kool game box, i've kept all my game boxs from from Dos-based games all the way to the game snow(wife is so not happy about the storage i take up but whatever), i have over 200+ PC games and counting(bought) I also buy duplicates for lan play or my wife. Now with such an archaic way of doing this steam requires me to have 8 accounts just so i can have multiple copies which is retarded. I can't just install a game and patcha an play i'm once again subjected to installing steam/updating steam among several computers then having to d/l game content at leats now they pulle dtheir head outta their ass where i can make an arcgive but still.

I remmeber back in the day when i could buy a game i woould get 20-40+ page full colored booklets for the game. Not to mention game guides where actually worth spending $25-$50 on. I have a game guide for Starwars Xwing along with many other games that have over 250+ pages of full color Images and heavily descriptive text regarding every unit and modified unit. and payed $45 for the game brand new. Now look at today, your lucky to get a 10 page booklets with any color in it let alone anything worth while other then basic keyboard layout and copyright laws for $29-$75+ and game guides tend to give you now 25-50 pages on average. yet manufacture things items is so much easier now, also games cost have gone up to the point of costing as much as a movie yet majority of those cost don't reflect whats really going on when compared to a movie vs a video game. i'm also a computer Resseler and know damn well spending money on computers shouldn't cost that much unless your buying from Brand name compnies that mark up their products like 100-200%.  When you have people in managment who know nothing of the business this is what happens.

online auth is just a por excuss for copy protection. this take sthe words right out of my mouth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management

you either Trust your purchasers or you don't theres no inbetween. and when you don't you make more problems for us and make cost higher for us.

keep it simple keep us happy.

i dislike it, i don't like having to use any program that has to load then authentocate then checks to see if i can use what i paid for, EA has this for their own games, impulse has this for their apps that i'm aware of, I don't use impulse with my sins cause at least i have a choice on that. I bought what was it the desktop suit few months back (claimed vista support ion lotta shit) boy was taht wrong. Had top install impulse, then it said i already purchased the program but when i tried to d/l to install it told me i dind't.

this is all a form of control, they make you feel like you bouvht it but more act like your just trying thru them. worse then a full free trial.

so then i had to dick with it for about 30mins until it finaly realized i did purchase then

then i have to d/l via impulse then after that install it, then o wait update yeaa, then find out the programs didn't really work like they said they did nor worked at all. closed impulse tried opening programs from shortcut o wiat impulse has to load 1st yeaaaaaaaaaa, wait to authenticate my account, and now i can use the programs i paid for wohooo.

wow thats just fun doing that everytime. /rolls eyes

now what sucks is I also plan on buying the collectors edition cause i need me collectors editions of game si buy to(have this tick for collectors editions) but look why should i buy that too when i hate this it would just mean i'm giving into such things i hate(meh not really i don't need to assign it to impulse so, i might not be able to play online however i'm not gonna support such a gay trend to use online auth) besides i have enough friends to play lan wise so wohoo.

 i prefer ninja-ing

Yep. Runs great. It's even officially supported by Crossover Games. Getting Impulse working was far harder than getting the game itself to run, FWIW.

So I'll probably get jumped for mentioning this here, but I pirated Sins of a Solar Empire.  Upgraded it to 1.12, too.

Normally, for moral and technological reasons, I only pirate old SNES games: I can't hunt them down without a hideous transaction cost for the benefit, and they run on my computer.

Sins is pretty much my only exception to that rule.  For it I have a relatively clear argument as to why I did it, and didn't just hash down 40 dollars or so.

Main reason:  It does not run on my computer.  My computer is a piece of junk, mid-quality from a few years back.  I'm lucky if it runs a browser and another program at the same time.  Sins requires more than double the specs for just the minimum.

Instead, I pirated Sins onto my dad's computer.  I did not think it was worthwhile to buy a 40 dollar game that I get to play whenever I visit my parents for breaks and whatnot.  I think this is fairly justified - buying a game when you can't play it for more than two weeks a year puts Impluse/DRM complains to shame.

Secondary moral deal-making: I love Sins.  I loved it when I first saw it, it's ruined other RTSes for me, and it's currently the main reason I want to get a better computer.  So I feel guilty about playing it without paying for it - particularly since I can see from the Dev's point of view.

So I made a deal with myself that I would promote it to my friends.  I've already convinced two of my friends to buy it, and I'm working on getting my roommate to buy it.  I would love it my dorm had a weekly Sins game going, even if I couldn't play.

And, obviously, if I ever get a computer that can run it, I'm getting it and Entrenchment.

Now, from a consumer perspective, it seems fine for me - I don't have the full value of the game, and so I don't pay the cost until I do.  From a developer perspective, it also seems fine, as having pirated the game let me show it to several people, resulting in more purchases than if I had not pirated the game.

Curious what you people think about it, though.

(Also a little worried about how well Impulse will work, given all the chatter here.)

About as easy as policing the entire world, and we know how successful *that* has been.

Allready happening

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2008/10/123_32121.html

http://www.betanews.com/article/Anonymous-web-posting-may-become-illegal-in-Kentucky/1205259640

http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/will-the-internet-always-be-anonymous--482519

All it takes is changing a few of the protocols and universal tracking becomes easier. Everyone gets a PIN to log in and your PIN gets tracked.

Your chances of getting caught pirating games is about the same as getting caught pirating music.  Does it happen?  Sure.  But I'd bet the farm they don't go after 99% of said pirates.  As to doing something illegal if I thought I wouldn't be caught?  That's pure bull.  My morals prevent me from doing so, just as they prevent me from walking out of a store with unpaid items.  You see, in my mind, that is exactly the same thing.  In most pirates minds, those are completely contrary to each other.  They believe IP is not something you can put a price on and hence should be free.  They also believe you can't 'steal it'  because it exists solely as 0s and 1s on the interwebs.

"All it takes is changing a few of the protocols and universal tracking becomes easier. Everyone gets a PIN to log in and your PIN gets tracked."

Alarmist nonsense.  To qoute a comment from the third link you provided;

"The internet is not, had never been, and never can be anonymous."

 

So many people believe the internet is truly anonymous.  This is a complete fantasy.

impulse does suck and i hate having it, but sins is a fun game.

 The reason why people pirate games is the same reason people tell lies. Being honest can cost you especially in the pocket book. Most people are honest when there is no cost.

 Piracy has nothing to do with Impulse or Steam as noted by others pirate game also requires some kind of software. As far as both Steam and Impulse I like the fact I can load up the game on my 2 desktop and 1 laptop without the disc. (I can run Steam "offline" to play Empires)

So you think that tomorrow all companies would strip away copy protection out of the goodness of their hearts if there was minimal piracy or remove install limits? I call BS. It is largely an excuse to drive up prices and reduce service.

I fail to see how this (the method you suggest) sends a stronger response. They don't know why people don't buy and nearly always pick the easy answer. They will still claim it's due to piracy or some other purported mitigating factor while clearly (and in some cases deliberately) missing the point. But then this point has been brought up else thread. Some companies get it and others don't and still others won't change their business methods until they are being demolished in the market. Big companies can do that (hold on to outmoded business models) for nigh on decades (see the music industry, EA, etc).

Yeah apparently you did -  like the entire 8 pages before your comment. It's been mentioned before and if you can't be bothered to read what others wrote and do so with an open mind I can't be bothered to cut and paste it here.