The game has no copy protection but you need the a purchased copy to update it.
If you don't update it, you probably can't play it.....
Sadly.... this is probably the most effective copy protection system out there.
Although honestly I think this is "accidental" maybe not.... maybe stardock is staffed by evil "geniuses"!
If you have a retail copy, there is no need to worry or complain. If you don't. . . .
Why would it be accidental? If you're saying that they released the game in a buggy state to prevent piracy, nah. They've already gotten far more backlash from that which impacts sales than a few torrents could.
lol @ anyone pirating Elemental.
How about Linux ? Impulse is known for not working in wine (emulation). But Demigod itself works. Suppose I were to purchase windows version of Elemental for purposes of emulation. I would probably be unable to patch it. So I'm waiting for reports from http://appdb.winehq.org/ before making any decision. In the past I had to use cracks for games I paid for, including Prey (trivial to emulate, it's f** DooM3 engine) and Trine. Demos are for purposes of demonstration. Frequently a demo version works fine emulated, while a full version doesn't due to copy protection. In this case it's false advertising.
Someone pays for a game, is able to run it, but not patch it. Does a copy protection of any form make sense now ? What does a paying customer get from a copy-protected game that an unencumbered version doesn't have ?
The second can be a sad reality for some legit people that hoped for a stable game out of the box* (offline machines or whatever) but didn't get it. But if they have internet access, that can be solved.
* this goes for retail people actually.
Edit:
Elemental doesn't support emulations so no right to complain there if you try that route?
the problem is the friendly fire
What he said!
I'm pretty sure it's intentional, apparently from what I hear Stardock has said something to that effect. If it is, one thing Stardock should consider is that Pirates review games too, and rant on forums. This is Generation ME ME MEMEMEMEME a bunch of narcissistic brats who feel absolutely entitled to everything whether they've bought it or not.
I think Stardock understands that it can't stop piracy, and hopes that by giving pirates a taste with little hassle they'll bite and buy the whole game. Sadly Pirates often just assume the game is complete suck because their stolen unpatched copy wasn't absolutely flawless, even if the retail copy is patched perfect on day one.
See how the minimum requirements specify Windows operating systems? There's a reason for that.
I'm a Psichologyst in R/L and I specialize in Mind Developement and education... You are not even aware of how RIGHT you are friend!
And if this is just annoying on the net, the statistical behaviour of youths in our western society is headed toward catastrophe.
I'm afraid I can't be more specific due to language and work ethic, but still, shivers run down my spine when I think about the day the offsprings of this generation will come of age.
Is the part about no copy protection really true? At least the download version I bought from Impulse has all kinds of crappy broken DRM. If moved to a new computer it asks for authentication and product key.
Their brilliant plan of forcing everyone to hook up to Impulse to download updates, thus linking their game to an account doesn't work, either. The pirates figure out how to release patches. I think it's hilarious that little old Stardock thinks they can outsmart crackers who regularly rip off the giants like EA and blizzard.
It does not work neither in Wine, nor in VBox. I've tried it on both ATI and NVidia cards, it uses some not implemented in wine d3d calls.
Uh, yes there is. Requiring the player to download to patch the game at release to make the game playable is wrong. Not *terribly* wrong, but wrong nonetheless.
I still use Linux on some of my boxes and had it on my main desktop for a couple years (some years back), so I understand the situation, but Elemental is a Windows game and any attempts at running it in an emulated environment are prone to be experimental at best. It's just not a priority for developers. Even if it runs at first and breaks later, you can't expect support because Windows is a system requirement (as pointed out in a post above).
When I used Linux as my main OS, I would buy many of the commercial games that were available for Linux, just to support the platform. Now, four or so years later, I notice that even fewer games have native Linux versions. I understand why, and it's a shame because diversity drives innovation, but I think that if you are a PC gamer, you currently need a Windows box (or a Windows partition). Wine works for many things, but always with a performance hit, and frequently it involves a lot of tweaking.
As for the topic, people complain about any form of DRM, and if there is no DRM, they complain about no patches or content updates because the game doesn't make enough profit to finance them.
I think Stardock's approach is sensible. The games don't install some unwanted stuff on your drive and you can install on multiple computers. And as a customer I'm okay that only buyers of the game can actually update it as soon as patches are released. It's part of what I spent money for. Sure, there are and will be cracks, but typically those who release patches for pirated versions lose interest fairly quickly.
Why would need to crack Prey for Linux when there's a native Linux version available?
But I feel your pain. Linux has been my primary OS for the better part of a decade, but I've never been able to nuke my Windows partition because it's the only way to play some games. Wine works fine for a lot of games -- I currently have WarCraft III, Guild Wars, Ghost Recon, Fallout, and Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project (the latter two from GoG.com) installed, and all run like they're native builds -- but it obviously doesn't work for every game, so I need to keep Windows around if I want to be a PC gamer.
I've wished for years that developers would at least move away from proprietary APIs (in other words, DirectX) because it would make it a lot more likely that games would run on multiple platforms.
Games that don't require a "day 0" patch are the exception these days, not the rule. Even StarCraft II required a 60MB "day 0" patch before it could be played.
It's pretty standard now, though. Budgets for PC games are limited, deadlines must be kept for both promotional and financial reasons, and between version that goes to the DVD printing press and the release date quite some time passes. I, for one, am glad if there is already a patch when I buy a game. Happened with Starcraft 2, too, and they had a hundred million dollars to develop the game.
In Elemental's case the patch sizes are also very small.
who ever pirates elemental is dumb as all hell since its patched almost weekly..
A lot of people seem to be confused on Stardock and DRM. Stardock releases games in two formats: on-disk, and digital.
The DISK version of the game has absolutely no DRM and no copy protection. There's no disk check, no serial entering on installation, no nothing. You can make an image of the disk, load it up with Daemon Tools or any other virtual-drive software, install from it, and play without needing any crack, internet auth, or anything of the like.
The DIGITAL version, downloaded from Impulse only, does a transparent "activation" (account check, making sure the account installing the game has the registration for the game). There is no activation limit, no disk check, once the install passes Impulse is no longer required, so on. It can be considered a form of DRM due to being unable to install without an account with a valid registration for the game.
Stardock does not hide this fact. Whenever they talk about "no copy protection" they pretty much specifically mention the disk version. Requiring a valid registration to update the game is outside the scope of DRM and is not considered DRM. The game runs without a patch just fine (note that the "corrupt version" error is only popping up for modified executables, not old-version executables). If the game required you to update and would refuse to run with an old version, and updating needed a valid registration, *then* it would be DRM.
And you forgot to mention things like this: https://forums.elementalgame.com/394672
Moreover, CD version HAS to be activated too. I dunno where did you get an idea that it will run as is.
If you want updates, yes. Are you saying when you installed from the disk it forced you to activate and would not run the game without?
https://forums.elementalgame.com/390801
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