Posts Tagged ‘pc games’

You download games?

Filed under: Hmmm

Expanding from what we talked about yesterday I wanted to point out some fairly good alternatives to those of you who might be interested. There are like three or four main games sites where you can download pc games, one of them even works to keep a lot of the digital rights management crap off of your system. A few sites that I know of that you can purchase and download games from are GamersGate, Direct 2 Drive (D2D), Steam and Good Old Games. I would highly suggest that if you are interested in a game to check several sites especially on the weekend because they always have some sort of weekend deal going where you can often get a good and recent game fairly cheaply.

Actually, I think only one of them helps with keeping DRM from annoying you, the others are just good places to download games. If you don’t mind old games then Good old Games looks like it has a great selection of those. It is the only one of those I mentioned that I have not used yet, though. I did have an issue with the PayNova GamersGate uses, but they responded to my issue within a day and worked with me to resolve it and I would definitely use GamersGate again. D2D is pretty good with sales, and I have picked up a few from them that I wanted at nice prices. I did have an installation issue with one of their games but again, while slow, their support area has worked with me consistently to solve the issue and I would recommend them as well.

The place that covers you on annoying DRM issues is Steam and I think Good old Games. You are basically signing up for an account and your games are locked to that account. You still may have issues with installing many times, but a quick email with a reason why you need to install the game for the 23rd time will usually get you past that problem. I like how Steam has things set up as an interactive community. If they would allow us to put in our codes for games we purchased elsewhere online or in the store and utilize their system for saving the games I would be using it 98% of the time when I am dealing with games. They don’t, as I understand it right now you can add a separately purchased game to your game titles in Steam but all that does is make a shortcut from Steam to your game and doesn’t really give you the benefits of Steam. I am sure you may have different opinions on these sites and I am also sure that we would all love to hear them so we can make informed decisions on purchasing.

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Permalink Comments (0) blog May 9, 2009

Game stealing.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Why would you want to put software on your computer that often acts just like adware and attempts to control what you have already paid for? It doesn’t make sense to me either. They punish those that want to play legally and end up shooting themselves in the foot, kind of like cutting off your nose to spite your face. I don’t quite get what the thought process is the game companies go through? Put the game out with clear documentation on what the public is actually getting when they buy it and then put a huge effort into the community and ensuring that people who are playing the game illegally are painted as scum in that game community. I think if company worked to change the gamers attitudes about their games and how they do DRM it would pay off in dividends for them. They would just have to get the gamers behind them.

Can anybody really blame people for downloading games illegally? Actually, I can but in general I don’t. The companies are cracking down and making the illegal game copies so much more appealing. When a company makes it downright unpleasant for the regular public to play their games through harsh digital rights management actions, like required, continual online activation or other measures, people will choose the easier way if they want to play.

It wouldn’t be too hard to do especially if you had little to no DRM and specifically stated that and why you did it. Make the community and your users your DRM and you have people to support you, a built in audience and more revenue. If you have a few people in the forums or just around the net quietly pointing out that if you aren’t playing the game legally we want nothing to do with you because you are trying to kill what we like by not supporting the game makers, I think the message would get across. Plus you wouldn’t be driving over half of your potential gamers away with unpleasant and invasive DRM. Of course the game has to also be good, but that’s a different issue.

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Permalink Comments (0) blog May 8, 2009