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Will, Almost every new form of copy protection has caused more burden to the buyer than it has to the pirate. CD Checks basically require me to keep a stack of 10 CDs on my computer and another 20-30 CDs readily handy on a shelf within arms reach.
I can't tell you how many games I've trashed because I lost the CD key to them or in the case of Diablo 2 the ink just rubbed off the sticker.. I swear I have at least 4 copies of Diablo 2 but I only have 1 CD key because the ink smears easily.
Half-life 2 required online authorization to play it offline. Not only this, but once you authorized it required you to download the 100+mb patch. Being on crappy dialup at the time meant I spend about 6 hours downloading a patch that fixed 1-2 bugs I probably never would have noticed in the first place. It was absolutely the the worst gaming experience of my life. It very negatively influenced my opinion of the game and the developer. I refuse to have Steam installed on my system.
These are of course slightly older examples because I've almost completely migrated away from PC gaming and more toward consoles. I'm glad to see Mass Effect dumped the every 13 days re-authentication deal and hopefully Spore does too as it'll probably be the only PC game I buy for a very long time.
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“It is better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick” - Dave Barry
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