There's no reason to require a game disc to be in the drive. The reason given for disc-in-drive requirement, "copyright protection", is poor because that type of protection via the current means is an illusion. What prevents users from duplicating the game disc and using it in the drive? Not much. In this day and age when most computers are equipped with CD/DVD-writers, there's little to prevent users from disc duplication.
Established game developers like Blizzard Entertainment and Westwood may use a protective disc-requirement scheme, but they don't spend resources like it were important, knowing that the profits received from the number of games sold will exceed the profits lost to software piracy. That allows others to develop no-cd patches, which increases customer satisfaction. (C'mon, Larian! CRM!)
Some developers like Epic (i.e., the developers of UTxxxx) take a more logical approach. They patch out, or just not include, such tried and failed piracy-prevention schemes.
Beyond Divinity lacks a large (piracy) market because its marketing programs are scarce and its distribution too narrow. When knowledge of a game isn't widespread, software piracy will endanger the livelihood of companies like Larian. However, if it were the other way around, software piracy wouldn't hurt as much. Software piracy is inevitable. You can't stop it with weird prevention schemes, CD-Keys, multiple discs, or huge file sizes. There's no use in trying. It's far more cost-effective to "get big" so that all your markets grow.
By the way, the German version of Beyond Divinity is pirated, available, and currently being distributed illegally on the Web via a new P2P technology, and the English version of Beyond Divinity is pirated and distributed with an old chat technology. (Who were those guys in the beginning of this thread arguing whether Beyond Divinity is pirated? They're silly. Any game that gets a good score on gamerankings.com is pirated and distributed.)
Last edited by Adraeus; 18/06/04 12:02 AM.
