I don't think a downloaded game will ever be a good way to go until they can be played on computers without the internet. They have many other drawbacks for me as well. Another one is the fact that I don't have a cd label printer and if I backup anything on a blank cd or dvd it has a way of getting lost or thrown away. If it has a nice printed label on it I have never lost any game and I have around 300. I really don't want any software without a factory label on the cd or dvd and will pay extra to get them this way.

My understanding & experience is that once you've downloaded, installed & activated a game (unless it's sold as an 'online' game) you don't need to be connected to the internet to actually play it - you only need the connection to re-activate it if you have uninstalled it & want to reinstall it again from a back-up disc.

We had a long powercut earlier on in the year - I felt so lost without my PC I'm very sympathetic if you live in a part of the world where you experience this a lot! Yep! board-games by candle-light had to do!

Chrissie, I agree that this is true for many games sold by download right now. Only some seem to want you to be online when you start each time & its hard to get off while in the game.

I just remembered one of our first download purchases. We got a shareware screensaver from a small company called Trillium. The screensaver is/was called Snowqualmie. It makes all kind of particle randomness. It was made for win98, but after all these years it still works and is still very pretty.

Happily it was the old style of 'download game' - since they also snail-mailed me a key and a registered disk when we paid them. That proved to be important because the company went out of business and the 'activate online' option was no longer practicable. You couldn't even download the 'trial' again!

Jalex, I have lost games like that too. We ended up repurchasing Everett Kaser's Sherlock way back when because we hadn't physically written down our info, we had changed our email since buying it, and had ended up redoing the computer without saving the email license! That's when I got serious about saving license data in journals.

Hi Salar of Myst, do you mean that each time you want to launch & continue playing a game again after a previous session you need to be online? After initially installing, activating & starting the game do you not have the option to exit, disable internet access & relaunch the game without it?

Chrissie, in these cases the game is establishing that it is 'legitimate' with online contact every time it is launched - so no, you can't run it offline. I don't like that.

Susan, are you talking about AG's or casual games? I know very little AG's wanting to "phone home".

Bernard, Your question is an interesting one and reminded me of a recent thread I read the other day on JA. It seems Dave Gilbert's new game "Emerald City" may just require you to be online each time you launch it. Dave is the independent developer who did the Blackwell series. I just went back to that thread now seven pages long to review the reference. Of course I could not find the comment. Can you ever find something you thought you saw while trying to skim seven pages?

It seems like many are dumping on Dave saying he sold out. Play First the publisher loaded it up with DRM and "conditions". Like he had anything to say about what they did in that regard to a game they paid him to develop. As Dave said they approached him asking if he would build an adventure game for them. I am not about to dump on an indy developer trying to make a living. I've traded e-mails with Dave a few times and he seems like a nice guy and the DRM free Blackwell games he makes are very good. In fact his two Blackwell Games are the only DL games I ever purchased because they are restriction free and I will buy the third in the series. Expected in April.

But anyway check out the thread on just adventure it is an interesting read. Emerald City is in the title of the thread under adventure games on their forum. It is just possible some developers may be exploring this additional restriction.

I don't mind buyng my games digitally- I have many from Gamersgate, EA Games, Big Fish and have not ever had a problem with those games - however- I purcahsed 4 Nancy Drew games directly from Her Interactive and got the dreaded out of activation message on two of the games. No reason why really either as I had not uninstalled the games or done anything different to my PC.

Anyway, when this happened the first time it took me 10 minutes stuffing around having to register to tech support and within an hour they reactivated my game. When it happened to the second game they gave me an unlock code to use which I can on any of the games. The response back was quick and pleasant and no hassle really- but I can imagine other people not being so patient waiting the hour for reactivations etc.

I think this is correct as I downloaded the demo which I didn't have time to complete in one go. When I tried to resume playing another time offline I had to enable my internet to continue. In Dave's defence this is not to do with the actual game but with the way that Playfirst operate. They also seem to be quite intrusive & I have deleted everything to do with them from my PC.

As reported on another thread the game is being released on Big Fish on Monday. There is a series of games I particularly like that are produced by Playfirst that I only buy from Big Fish when they get them - I've never had any problem playing them offline after installation (even demos) so I think the same will apply to Emerald City!

So Salar of Myst I guess the problems of having to be online to play a game are to do with the 'policy' of the download supplier rather than the actual game?

BellaRosa - thank you for your pro download post & I'm glad you got the problems sorted out fairly quickly!

To the best of my limited knwledge this is true.
Each download Company fixes its restrictions and sticks to them, and not the game developer - some of these restrictions are more limiting and disturbing to many players, others are not. So If the developer wants or needs to get their game distributed by a particular download Companythey are obliged to accept that Companys particular rules.

I repeat, I truly wish that *all* download Companys would simply download their games without *any* restrictions over and above those that apply to ordinary boxed games.
I honestly believe that if they were to do that, both the distributors and their customer-players would benefit greatly from all points of view and with henefits to all. It would cause less hassle both to distributors and players with no disadvantages to either. And I dont think yhat their games would be pirated any more than they certainly are now, and imo probably less.

Good subject! I'm replaying the good old serie of the Myst games and as an old good timer, I simply love playing those wonderful games. If I download a very good game, I surely want to have it for a long time and replay it whithout having to keep it in my PC. So I too like box editions. Bye to everyone. Sali

Chrissie, I believe you are absolutely correct.

Susan

The bad thing about these copy protection schemes? It only hurts the people who buy the games, pirated copies have been modified to prevent this kind of things. It's time for the publishers to realize that no copy protection is safe, in the end it will only scare the honest people, who are willing to pay for the game, away!

Yes I agree absolutely Bernard --- I've been trying to make that point all the time.
Many players agree but others dont.
Since imo both distributors and developers and players would all only benefit from stopping those so called "copy protection schemes" Im hoping that a concerted cry from players will get them to eliminate them and make everybody happy including themselves.

Do you remember the shocking StarForce copy protection scheme on CD games? It caused so many problems that very many players and posters on all forums complained until eventually it was scrapped - but only after a lot of complaints and some crazies refusing to buy any games with StarForce.
I dont say that present download DRM restrictions are as bad or harmful as that, but if they serve no purpose at all and simply cause some portion of players not to buy the games, why not scrap them and not only make however many disgruntled players happy, but imo improve the status of adventure games generaly which would be good for everybody including the GameBoomers forum.