Savant: I know it´s well meant, but I don´t think this is actually such a good idea, because it´s causing the consumer some inconvenience while those warez guys will hack any patch anyway.
Registration can take any number of forms. The earliest ways to prevent piracy were those that required users to concult a manual and then type in a 'keyword'. These are still effective from what I can tell - although not popular. Yet, if all I had to do was consult the manual to upgrade my version to the latest patch, that wouldn't be such a big inconvenience.
I agree with you Hartmann that Warez pirates can overcome any security code that doesn't require 'randomly generated' information and so it would be futile to try to prevent piracy on the base CD retail version. And, for user convenience, piracy prevention at this level isn't very welcome to most users anyway.
Yet, on 'patches' with 'random information' sampled from the manual or other source that is highly correlated with CD purchase, one could thwart some of this piracy. It would give Paradox and incentive to produce good value-added patches and pirates an incentive to purchase the CD so they could upgrade.
Most folks are not as sophisticated as the users who come to this forum. Most don't know how to download or extract or install Warez software (I bet most who do come to the forum don't know this BTW - and I am not about to write an instruction manual for them).
If this doesn't really prove to be a significant problem for Paradox, then that's fine, all the better. But if it is, and if it threatens their success with EU then it potentially undermines support for further development of SW that I care about and that p*sses me off. There is too much garbage to be had already and when something good comes along and it's ripped off, that is akin to blasphemy.
OK, you may have the soapbox now.
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~ Salve ~
