Piracy, again

I just bought the game Space Empires IV from Strategy First/Digital River. I am not happy. Why?

1. The installation process. First I had to download a worthless piece of ass-garbage “downloader”. Which, of course, didn’t work in Linux. It downloaded a 196 mb installation file. That installation file extracted another 196 mb installation file into a temporary directory, and launched it. And that file, finally, was runnable in Linux and seems to have worked OK. I mean, c’mon! Downloaders? Fuck you, and the horse you rode in on.

2. The license. I had forgotten how ridiculously silly licence agreements were. More to the point, I’d forgotten a single purchase just allowed me to install the game on one computer – regardless of wether or not any of the computers I want to install and run the game on are ever used by anyone but me. One purchase, one installation. Got it. So, if I want to be able to play both on my main comp and my tiny EEE netbook, I get to shelf out twice as much. Gee, I never did have this problem with the old DOS games…

3. The anti-piracy crap that’s enforcing the license. Of course, copy protections have always been, well, kind of crap – but this got me genuinely pissed. Why? Well, because I paid for this fucking game, and because I still can’t fucking play it. “Key has expired”, it moans, and wants me to contact support with some “hardware key”. OK, so if I want to run the game on one computer, but both in the real OS and a virtualized OS, I also need to get another license? FUCK YOU.

I mean, this game is GREAT. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it’s AWESOME, provided you like 4x games (you know, slow-paced turn-based strategy games in space…). But it’s just not fucking worth it. I know boycotting is a blunt and stupid tool, but in this case, the ONLY way for me to enjoy this game – even within the realm of the license – is piracy.

This is fucking intolerable. Anti-piracy crap ONLY punishes the customer, NEVER the pirates.