Activation procedure (rather than CD in drive)

[Milan's Warrior]

I propose Civ4 use an activation procedure (such as the one Microsoft uses for Office) rather than forcing people to have the CD in the drive.

I have a laptop and don't want to be forced to carry around the CD everywhere.

 

[Denarr]

The problem with this is that it allows one person to install the game in 20 computers (or more) and there goes the sales of the game, making it more difficult to produce a quality game since the profit drops to 5% of what it should be.
By forcing the players to have a disk available for playing the game, the producers of games can afford to invest more time and money in the game itself and make it worth it for the consumers (us) to buy the game in the first place.
I don't see any reason to make things easier for pirates and theives to drive down the quality of games by stealing from the game producers. It's difficult enough to make money off a new game. The prospect of someone stealing all your hard work is what keeps the price of games high, just for the security programming alone.
Maybe you should write to a software company and have them explain it to you, if my general explanation isn't clear enough.

 

[pirke]

Denarr, do you really think that having the cd in the drive will stop pirates? A no-cd patch solves that problem. As far as I recall they always show up 2 or 3 days after a new patch.

Having the cd required to install a patch is a good idea though, the patch will check the cd, use some files on the cd and make the necessary adjustments to the game. When that is done you don't need the cd untill you patch it again.

Only the patches/updates should be interesting enough to install them.


And Microsoft uses a very good activation procedure. Before XP you could copy any cd. Now your new version of XP checks your hardware, asks for the license code, generates a new activation code, this activation code goes to Microsoft who gives a new activation code which you enter in XP. If everything goes well, you have 1 registered version. If you install it again, you need to go through the whole process, but
Microsoft won't give you a new activation code because your license code was already used. When you install a service pack it checks the license code, if you used a known illegal code it won't install, but then again, those service packs are really worth it to install them, if Firaxis can do the same with Civ4, there are no problems.

 

[Ballazic]

If they did that it would work. But also remeber how much hd space that would suck.

 

[judgement]

And Microsoft uses a very good activation procedure. Before XP you could copy any cd. Now your new version of XP checks your hardware, asks for the license code, generates a new activation code, this activation code goes to Microsoft who gives a new activation code which you enter in XP. If everything goes well, you have 1 registered version. If you install it again, you need to go through the whole process, but
Microsoft won't give you a new activation code because your license code was already used. When you install a service pack it checks the license code, if you used a known illegal code it won't install, but then again, those service packs are really worth it to install them, if Firaxis can do the same with Civ4, there are no problems.

What an annoying system! So if put Civ 4 on my desktop but then later decide I want it on my laptop instead, I'm out of luck? Or I have to have both hooked up to the internet and go through some annoying re-registration process any time I want to switch? No thank you!

It might be annoying to have to remember to take my CD with me on trips so I can use my laptop, but at least with the current system I can have Civ installed on both laptop and desktop and play it on whichever one I put the CD in.

 

[Denarr]

Locks only keep out the honest.
But imagine how many "honest" people would steal without the safegaurds in place.
It is statistically proven that having safegaurds in place reduces the amount of theft, and increases profit vs. cost. This allows more money to be spent on developing the game, while allowing the price of the game to remain (relatively) low.

 

[sealman]

I am for anything to protect the creaters of the game, if that means I have to carry my CD so that I can play on my laptop, so be it. Afterall, the CD does not weight that much.

In fact, the last time I compared the two, my laptop weight much more than the CD. And, I noticed that when I carry the CD in my laptop bag, I hardly notice the extra weight. My exercise regeim must really be working. Oh, sure, I may leave the CD in a hotel room but why punish the creaters for my own stupidity?

 

[Dell19]

Perhaps he meant that he has to carry the CD case separately rather than it being unbelievably heavy.

 

[Mojotronica]

The main rationale for this would be to conserve battery life. Those CD ROM drives suck the life out of a laptop way too fast. It would be awesome to be able to play a five-hour game of Civ 3 on a X-country flight.

 

[judgement]

I am for anything to protect the creaters of the game, if that means I have to carry my CD so that I can play on my laptop, so be it. Afterall, the CD does not weight that much.

In fact, the last time I compared the two, my laptop weight much more than the CD. And, I noticed that when I carry the CD in my laptop bag, I hardly notice the extra weight. My exercise regeim must really be working. Oh, sure, I may leave the CD in a hotel room but why punish the creaters for my own stupidity?

For the most part, I agree. Protecting the creators of the game from piracy is certainly worth a little bit of inconvenience on my part. Despite the small weight of the CD, however, the inconvenience is not always as negligible as your post suggests. Consider that some laptops have a removable CD drive, and that other things, such as a second battery, might be more useful in that slot on a long trip when you don't have access to a power outlet (a long plane trip, for example). In that case the inconvenience isn't the extra weight of the disc, its the fact that you can only play for half as long until your batteries die. Its still not the end of the world, but it is significantly different than just having to lug around an extra fraction on an ounce. Or consider someone who takes there laptop on a month-long summer vacation, and wants to have access to a wide variety of games during that time. They'd have to remember to bring all the CDs of any game they might want to play. One CD is negligible, but a large enough stack can become noticeable.

Neither of those situations has ever happened to me, and I'm in agreement that protecting the creators is important. I'm just pointing out that there are some situations in which needed the CD is more of an inconvenience than others.

EDIT: sorry for the redundancy with mojotronica's post, we must have been typing at the same time.

 

[LOVE_Magiska]

The main rationale for this would be to conserve battery life. Those CD ROM drives suck the life out of a laptop way too fast. It would be awesome to be able to play a five-hour game of Civ 3 on a X-country flight.

Well mate, you only need the CD when you start the game, so just take it out when you've reached the in-game menu

 

[Mojotronica]

I learn something new everyday -- sometimes two or three things...

Thanks!

 

[Milan's Warrior]

I believe that the Activation procedure Microsoft-style is safer to protect copyright than keeping the CD in the CD-Drive. To support this claim I ask whether you have seen any pirated Office XP or later (the introduced it with Office XP). It used to be common to see pirated Office, now it is not.

The advantage is not about saving the weight of the CD, but about saving the foresight of having the CD with you. Sometimes you are at the library and you want to play "just a couple of turns". Or you are stuck weighting for somebody...

 

[arkammler]

I bet MS got a patent on the Activation procedure

 

[sealman]

I would like to point out that I was being sarcastic about the weight of the CD.

 

[Dell19]

That could explain my reply...

 

[Denarr]

I believe that the Activation procedure Microsoft-style is safer to protect copyright than keeping the CD in the CD-Drive. To support this claim I ask whether you have seen any pirated Office XP or later (the introduced it with Office XP). It used to be common to see pirated Office, now it is not.

The advantage is not about saving the weight of the CD, but about saving the foresight of having the CD with you. Sometimes you are at the library and you want to play "just a couple of turns". Or you are stuck weighting for somebody...

Actually, I have seen multiple installations of XP performed, and they all seem to work fine, except that you don't seem to be able to Shut Down without interrupting the restart sequence.

I understand the inconvenience of having to have the foresight of taking the disk with you when using a laptop, I had that problem with RIVEN, and me and my dad had to constantly swap our Civ disk from one computer to the other, so we could play the game at the same time. (Actually we had the same problem with Civ II and the Wonder Movies.)

I'd probably be a bit more sympathetic if I could afford the luxury of a laptop, but I doubt it.
Maybe you could connect to your home computer via modem to access the disk, but I think that might allow similar problems to making multiple copies of the same disk. Plus the risk of having your computer accessible from outside the home.