Firaxis, a request please!

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
How about being able to play whenever you want to?

You can, as long as you have the correct CD in your CD-ROM

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Dauphin
Get a second DVD drive.

Right. I'll just install it exactly where on my laptop?

[Imran Siddiqui]

They do make these things called external DVD drives .

[Kuciwalker]

Which eliminates the entire frigging point to a laptop.

[Wiglaf]

my my kuciwalker you are a little jumpy, your one line responses can be kinda grating


why not just have a unique serial number for each game that is required for installation. when you enter it, the number is phoned to the company for authentication via internet. if it is accepted, that number is locked (unless the program is uninstalled).

why is this not workable?

[Kuciwalker]

How does Firaxis know that the program is uninstalled? What if you have to reformat?

[Wiglaf]

you hit "uninstall" , run the uninstall program. when it is done it phones home.

in other words, phoning home every time you start the game should not be necessary. only at installation and uninstallation

[vondrack]

Originally posted by Wiglaf
you hit "uninstall" , run the uninstall program. when it is done it phones home.

in other words, phoning home every time you start the game should not be necessary. only at installation and uninstallation

That's too easy to defeat - you install the game, phoning home & activating the installation, then make a copy of the disk (using Norton Ghost, Drive Image, True Image - whatever tool of this sort), uninstall phoning home & getting the serial number "back", and finally put the ghost image back on - and voila, there's a working install with a serial number still "unused".

Rinse and repeat on any number of other machines.

[Henrik]

Besides I'm sure your entitled to have more than one installation for your own use should you want to (say you have two homes for instance).

And what about those people who don't have internet access and only play single player?

[MightyTiny]

And the such a system would also make life difficult in case of some sort of computer problem that couldn't be resolved without formating the harddrive - thus "uninstalling" the game without running the uninstall program.

[DrSpike]

Any or all of the above will hurt paying customers in some way.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Which eliminates the entire frigging point to a laptop.

Not at all, unless you think things like power cords "eliminate the entire frigging point to a laptop".

[Kuciwalker]

The point of a laptop is to carry as few things around as possible. So even then an external drive is stupid - I don't want to carry around all my different CD's.

Hence, hacked exe's.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Wiglaf
you hit "uninstall" , run the uninstall program. when it is done it phones home.

in other words, phoning home every time you start the game should not be necessary. only at installation and uninstallation

And as I said, if you format, poof! You have to buy a new copy!

[Kuciwalker]

Copy protection only hurts the people who buy the game, because anyone who can use bittorrent can find the no-cd hack on Google in about 5 seconds.