gorwin said:
In the end, given the fact that CD Project RED is already demonstrating their loyalty to their customers by releasing the bonus content as a free patch, while any other company would have sold it as an expansion pack, the copy protection seems like a small thing to complain about to me, personally.
I beg to differ. If it wasn't for the "unofficial" patch I applied to disable the DVD check on my copy of Witcher EE, I would not have played the game (and I was on the point of returning it for a refund) making it a singular black mark on an otherwise excellent game.There are several problems that DVD/CD checks cause legitimate users, many of which are listed in
Why do people want to use no-CD/DVD patches at all? As others have mentioned, such checks are virtually useless in preventing piracy and are more indicative of the contempt that software publishers have for their customers.
gorwin said:
Stardock hates copy protection as much as gamers.
No they clearly don't, since they implement it themselves via online DRM (see their
Activation Policy for more details). This is
worse than DVD/CD checks for the following reasons:
- If the company goes bust, you lose the ability to install/use the products.
- The company can change their activation criteria at any time and enforce it (i.e. it is a one-sided contract where they can change terms to their liking - even making you pay again for activation, which Stardock do under some circumstances).
- The possibility exists for extra data to be transmitted without user knowledge or consent (e.g. hardware/software setup, browser history, private documents, etc).
With DVD/CD checks, at least the end-user has some ability to limit the downsides (e.g. keeping DVDs stored away as much as possible, not using laptops for gaming, etc). With online checks, the user is effectively reduced to renting the software, with no control over when their usage ends.In addition, Stardock's Impulse service requires .NET Framework (which bloats up your Windows registry by 1.2MB) and, since everything you purchase is tied to a single account, it means that (like Steam) they could choose to start charging annual/monthly fees to keep accounts open (if you had $200-300 worth of software tied to an account, would you be prepared to lose that by not paying say, $30/year?).Now this last point is conjecture, but given the tendency of established companies to milk/bilk customers when they gain a monopoly position (eBay's recent fees hike being a good example) I would consider it a likely, if not inevitable, one.