Slitherine

Hate to seem old-fashioned and out of touch with the 21st Century , but I miss the good old days when it was enough to enter a license key and then play a game online or offline to your heart's content. I mention this because I just purchased a new PC and have gone through no end of trouble trying to get my Steam and Blizzard (Battle.Net) games activated on my new machine. In fact I'm so irritated with Steam that I may never be able to play some of my favorite games like Civilization Five and Fallout: New Vegas again. Unpleasant sighs. Nothing is more irritating than being unable to play games that you forked out your good hard-earned cash for.

It's also interesting to note that security has been getting more intrusive with smaller indie companies as well, like for example Norm Koger's StormPowered; sort of a primitive version of Steam. Also, with people like Matrix now requiring CAPTCHA's on their Forum, I wonder how soon it will be before they deploy their own version of Steam to inconvenience customers?

I understand that we've been in a shaky and tough world-wide economy for a number of years, and that developers are definitely entitled to compensation for their efforts. Indeed, for my part I want to see people who create games that I like do well. This is a no-brainer really. What I don't like though is it seems to me a case of a few criminal hackers spoiling things for the vast majority of honest gamers. The increasingly draconian security verification methods instituted by companies are making the assumption that everyone is a criminal, and by preventing legitimate customers from accessing their purchased goods they are stealing from people and becoming criminals themselves.

Alas, I don't see this situation getting any better in the future. Food for thought.

On a more pleasant note, Slitherine is rapidly becoming one of my favorite Indie Game companies, and I hope they resist the temptation to get too intrusive and draconian with their security/verification protocols.

I think the problem with most security processes, is it proves little challenge to someone that simply will NOT pay.
And too many of the companies with the more intrusive protection methods are simply too stupid to get it.

It offends the guy that WILL pay, and only that guy.

To be blunt, I think if a copmpany is too stupid to acknowledge the stupidity of stupid methods, then they likely are also too stupid to make decent games.
Stupid is after all stupid.

In the end, all that is really required is a decent method for employing a serial. I call the multiplayer servers here for instance a good method. Keeps the pirates out even if it can't keep them from getting a stolen copy.

Because we all know, most of our wargames really lack something played solo.

I don't support the comment about tough economic times though. People will steal if they can regardless of how well off they might be. Tough times isn't the reason.

I have walked away from a few games all thanks to stupid methodologies as well. Battlefront.com simply isn't going to be selling to me.