Software Companies, take note

I remember the old write protected CD's. The ones where you simply had to wait for a patch from clone-cd or some similar program and you were ready to go. Now we have to deal with software companies using virus like programs to attack our computers in an attempt to "prevent piracy".

Now, I am a pirate, I will freely admit it. I play a lot of games that I have never payed for. However, a demo doesnt really do justice to a game. I bought half life after playing a copy of my friends. I got about half way through and thought that it would be fun to play online and thus I needed a cd key to play. So I bought it. A better example though would be the new Axis and Allies game. I downloaded the game and played it for all of 2-3 hours in single player mode. I got so frustrated trying to get the game to play well that I gave up. The game was poorly made, poorly balanced, even more poorly thought out and damn near impossible at times.

The problem is here. There are games I would buy (and have bought) right when they came out....Jedi Knight Academy, Half-Life 2, Enter the Matrix......There are games I would have bought only because their packaging looked good, Civilization 2, Pax ImperiaL Eminent Domain.....There are games I have skipped because I didnt want to spend the money on, and games I bought that I pretty much left on my shelf because they sucked. If the gaming industry really wants to prevent piracy, they need to drastically lower their game prices. Those who have the name to back themselves up can charge higher prices, but saying that you charge 60 bucks for a game because everyone else does will never make your game sell better or play better.

Putting protections like this on will only increase piracy because downloading a game means not having to download these dumb ass protections.