What software protection?

[Reece]

A good Idea I feel is to have the usual disccopy protection but registered users get maps etc posted to them, that way only original registered copies will get the goodies! Better than Starforce spyware/virus thats for sure!

[SilentOtto]

Originally Posted by TDK1044

One good way to insure that people buy a legal copy of the game is to include good extra features in the boxed version, such as a comprehensive manual, a high quality map of the pacific, a good ship identification book, etc. etc.... that way you REWARD people for doing the right thing.

And of course, they have a right to implement some anti-piracy mechanism in the game itself, but please, nothing that penalizes or unnecesarily burdens the legitimate owner

I cannot agree more with you on the first point. How many years has it been since we've seen any game with a good printed manual?? (AOD, Flight simulator anyone??).
That kind of thing, or a calculating ruler, ID book as you said, you can give buyers a printed ID book and not include it in-game for example. A nice map! Those can't be so costly when we talk about thousands of units sold.

On the other hand, copy protections are _always_ going to be a PITA for legit users. Crackers can and will crack anything you throw at them, theres lots of young people with the skills, time and impulse to do it, just to be "cool" in their own underworld, so I'm not too sure it would be a good thing.

If they give us a nice online gaming (not too easy for a subsim I know) they could use the method that ID software (QUAKE) or Blizzard (Diablo, Warcraft) have been using. The game is "easy" to crack for offline playing, but if u want to play online (and they should make us _want_ to play online) then you need a valid serial number which can _not_ be cracked.

But basically I'd crave for nice printed doc and maps...

[peterloo]

That should be SecuRom 7

Ubisoft has dropped StarForce and the recent games are all SecuRom 7 protected despite of the ease of SecuRom for hackers

[Really, I read other forums and saw many SecuRom 7 games are cracked within 1~2 days after street-date]

Still, you need your genuine DVD for verification, but SecuRom 7 is not as troublesome as StarForce

If Ubisoft doesn't make any change to its protection scheme, then Silent Hunter 4 will definitely be SecuRom 7 protected

[JSF]

Originally Posted by Ducimus

If it has starforce, i won't buy it until a way around it is found. Starforce i seriously beleive ate one of my DVD drives, and having replaced it, ive done what was neccessary to ensure that this new drive does not get eaten by that rotten peice of russian gorillaware. Put up with starforce, never again. NO way.

I agree. Infact, I removed SH3 from my pc because of it. Total BS.

[nightdagger]

Originally Posted by Immacolata

Alas Free far outweighs quality. A game without a copy protection will a commercial suicide these days. So many ways to swap copies, so many incentives to get the game now. We can only hope that the game copy protection will be less than insufferable, but it will be there, or the game is doomed.

TES IV: Oblivion didn't have any copy protection. Nobody can say that didn't do great.