[H-GEN] Re: [H-CHAT] Linux games are still proprietory

[David Jericho]

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On Thu, Apr 03, 2003 at 03:21:11PM +1000, Trent WADDINGTON wrote:
> Ok, so if you were at a LAN party and couldn't share your purchased copy
> of a game with the other people there you wouldn't get upset?  Ok, second
> question: if a game was open source but contained the same sort of
> protection, would you not be tempted to hack the source code to get rid of
> that restriction?

But knowing that about a game, I quite possibly wouldn't buy it. I've
actually not bought games in the past for that reason, inability to
play with my housemates without forking out for many copies.

Warzone 2100 was a classic example. Actually came with two CDs, and
the license let you use either CD as a key CD to play the game, also
allowing you to run it for multiplayer gaming. Quite a few games have
done the same thing.

Starcraft used to let you install on any host you wanted, and so long
as one machine in the network game had the CD in the drive, and the
same serial key on another network play install, you could play.

A bit of forethought by the authors/publishers goes a long way. I
haven't got a pirate copy of StarCraft, I never bought a copy of
StarCraft, but I've played the game many times with friends.

My goodwill towards Blizzard are far greater beacuse of that than
otherwise. I would buy Blizzard game I liked even though they are
devilspawn for killing bnetd.

OTOH, I once had to obtain a crack for Myth for a friend so we could
give multiplayer a shot. I haven't since bought another Bungie game,
and actually have not done so because of that. My goodwill towards
Bungie is far lower even though they have OSSed their Marathon engine.

-- 
David Jericho


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