bravesirknight 说:
Also ****ty deal to the "CLOSED" beta. We open beta'd M&B, with our dollars no less, for years. It worked great for everyone! Please keep to the strategy.
though I'm relatively new on this forum I've been a gamer ever since Pong hit the shelves and I've noticed a saddening pattern, when a game is being made for fun and with passion - it turns out great and so are the revenues - but when money/copy-protection becomes an issue a charade of fail begins...
I sense that the beta is closed to minimize the risk or possibility for exploitation and that's why I chose to focus on the validity of such user monitoring systems(which may incloud copy-protection).
While I would be happy to support game-makers i am not very fond of that whole idea of copy protection and/or other methods to insure profit while ignoring the impact that it would have on the actual paying costumer.
True that this is not that whole sad StarForce mishap that plagued the X3 forums(i really hope that you *don't* know what I'm talking about, it was hell for us paying costumers while software pirates got the game free of StarForce copy-protection and free of charge) but I think that bravesirknight is right indeed when it comes to the fact that an
open beta would just create a
broader community basis and the more feedback developers are getting, the less time users needs to download mods that would replace that unused and obscure folder that happen to be called "\Native".
Reality shows that every game which is worth buying *is* getting bought - "Space Empires 5" (which wasn't even copy-protected) even though some guys from StarForce copy-protection firm *Pirated* it and released it on the web unlawfully gamers still bought it! And notice the 5, just to make a point - there were 4 more titles in that series that got bought...
I think that it safe to say that today people are buying music and software with the intention of supporting the companies that do deliver.
Dear developers, please focus more on delivering and less on policing who has or hasn't your software, there are more honost costumers then pirates and there will always be.
If the earth was full of a$$holes we wouldn't survive up to this point, then again nasa *is* working on new ways to escape the earth so I don't really know...
Cheers.