eatontj

Grrrrreat. As soon as my new laptop arrives, I'm buying. Thanks everyone for the help.

Kristian

It is a little irritating having to have the CD in to play. Surely there must be a more sensible, modern solution to piracy?

Many ultra-portable laptops these days come only with USB DVD/CD drives and the fact my laptop does means that if I want to play FM I have to carry the chunky CD drive around.... rather defeating the point of a slim and light laptop!

Chas (Psyatika)

Mate, just don't quit the game!

I'm sure your laptop is stable enough to handle being on for a few days. This isn't 1997.

Once you get past the "War Child Music" nonsense, you can take the disc out, no worries!

Neji

Would be better to not have it at all. As soon as a game comes out, it is cracked anyway. The only people it hurts is the geniune customer when they can't play a game because of ridiculous copy protection.

Skunner

Well people who download the game illegally can't get the latest patches until they're cracked either.

So if you'd end up needing to use the disc to play anyway if you were to get the latest patches.

B. Stinson

There are.

But the problem is that they're always cracked and outdated in about five seconds.

lamaros

I truly doubt the "requires CD to play" is more annoying for pirates than genuine customers. But for some reason companies all over the world seem to think it's fine to put practices in place to annoy people who've bought the game in order to stop people pirating the thing for all of about 5 miniutes.

It would be nice if the boxed version came with some sort of online validation method.

Dreaded Walrus

Maybe SI could take a leaf out of Trackmania's book, and only require the CD for validation every few days? When you insert the CD, you're free to run the program as often as you like for the next few days, and then it requires the CD for re-authorisation.

Just... do it without the Starforce. :thdn:

Neji

Maybe SI could take a leaf out of Trackmania's book, and only require the CD for validation every few days? When you insert the CD, you're free to run the program as often as you like for the next few days, and then it requires the CD for re-authorisation.

Just... do it without the Starforce. :thdn: </BLOCKQUOTE>

That would be... horrible.

eatontj

I think the solution is to have some sort of internet revalidation at random times. Just make sure it's something that isn't overbearing (it takes multiple fails before forcing you to connect to the internet to continue playing) and runs in the background.

CD protection seems outdated and runs against the flow of progress toward digital media and ultra slim PCs.

But hey, this digital WSM sounds great, so it seems like SI Games is already on the right track. Hope it works.