[Sailor Steve]

I appreciate some of the points, but here are my problems.

Originally Posted by captainprid

Put yourself in UBI's shoes, you are solely responsible to your shareholders, you invest a million quid into a game and then some spotty skip rat pirates the same game and you lose potentially 20% of your income; which directly affects future game dev thereby ruining it for all of us......No SHVI (ok judging SHV most probably don't want one) but you see my point.

But it also prevents a lot of people from being able to play the game, for a variety of reasons, resulting in lost sales. Enough to make a difference? Probably not.

A few years ago, I bought an EVOIIX, my warranty depended on me buying 99 octane juice from BP, which believe me was a pain when I took a trip to the Scottish Highlands!!! but the point is, I knew about this when I spent nearly £40k on a car.

You're talking to a guy who hasn't owned a car in five years, because I don't have $400 to spend on a junker. Also, would you have bought the car if they required you to ask their permission every time you started it, and had to stay in contact with them the whole time you were driving?

This isn't a new phenomonon, games for a long time, have at least required you to register on-line.

Not really. Every game I own gives the options:

1. Register now.
2. Register later.
3. Never register.

If I can get online at the time I register. If I can't I don't. No problems.

Footy manager has required you to use Steam for a while, admittedly, you have the option not to register on the basis you have to permenantly have the disc in the disc-drive--maybe this is the way that UBI should have gone, given us the option.

Wouldn't work for me. When I tried to download SH4 UBM from Steam, they said I didn't exist.

A large proportion of the population now has broadband...

And a large proportion doesn't. When I couldn't play SH4 because my computer was in storage I bought it anyway, just to support the only subsim available. But I can't play SH5 for no other reason than that UBI says I can't. To me that's unfair and unreasonable, so I won't buy it until they let me play it. If I buy it and they never let me play it, what then?

I'm not a gamer, I'm a history buff. The few games I play are history oriented. So I buy sub sims and flight sims, because I like ships and planes. I'm the ultimate niche market, and I guess I have to suffer because companies are going to make games for people who just want to play games, and that's the way it should be. I guess I'll go back to working on my tabletop miniatures naval game and call it good.

What else can I say?