3 ms·

It wasn't going to stop piracy - though fighting piracy has been a constant of software commerce since the beginning - but what it was supposed to do was to sto

It wasn't going to stop piracy - though fighting piracy has been a constant of software commerce since the beginning - but what it was supposed to do was to stop the circumstance where one meets with ones friend, who bought the game .. play it together .. copy it with ease with the power of ModernOS (tm) .. and thus avoid paying for a game. If you had to read the manual, it was a chance for you (the publisher) to impress the end-user yet again, and have the pirate-copy user actually kind of 'connect' with the artwork of what you'd accomplished. I think that was a nice aspect - a respectful way to treat ones customers. Those days are long gone...

toxican 11y ago
Then you had games like Red Alert 1 and 2 that gave you 2 discs for the purpose of sharing. Granted each faction disk is missing the other faction's campaign, but still.
- vanderZwan 11y ago
  Or Starcraft where you could install "spawn" versions for the purpose of LAN multiplayer.
  - hibikir 11y ago
    The spawn feature sold a lot of copies of the game in our computer lab: After hours, the few of us that had the game set up spawn copies for everyone else to play multiplayer. After a couple of sessions, people bought their own copies to play on battle.net and play the campaign. By the end of the semester, a few dozen people bought copies from trying it in the lab. Compare that to diablo 3: When it came out, my wife and I were going to do our traditional play of the campaign, but then we learned that we'd have to buy two copies: $120 quid for playing the campaign once just wasn't cost effective compared to many other games, so we just passed.
    - navbaker 11y ago
      The cost of Diablo 3 convinced me and my brother to get Torchlight 2 instead. Best $40 we ever spent!
    - self_awareness 11y ago
      We actually bought two copies, thinking that since they require us to pay that much, it has to be a great game, just like previous Diablo titles. After finishing it I can say that it was a waste of money, we were wrong, and you did the right thing.

toxican 11y ago

Then you had games like Red Alert 1 and 2 that gave you 2 discs for the purpose of sharing. Granted each faction disk is missing the other faction's campaign, but still.

vanderZwan 11y ago
Or Starcraft where you could install "spawn" versions for the purpose of LAN multiplayer.
- hibikir 11y ago
  The spawn feature sold a lot of copies of the game in our computer lab: After hours, the few of us that had the game set up spawn copies for everyone else to play multiplayer. After a couple of sessions, people bought their own copies to play on battle.net and play the campaign. By the end of the semester, a few dozen people bought copies from trying it in the lab. Compare that to diablo 3: When it came out, my wife and I were going to do our traditional play of the campaign, but then we learned that we'd have to buy two copies: $120 quid for playing the campaign once just wasn't cost effective compared to many other games, so we just passed.
  - navbaker 11y ago
    The cost of Diablo 3 convinced me and my brother to get Torchlight 2 instead. Best $40 we ever spent!
  - self_awareness 11y ago
    We actually bought two copies, thinking that since they require us to pay that much, it has to be a great game, just like previous Diablo titles. After finishing it I can say that it was a waste of money, we were wrong, and you did the right thing.