My appreciation of Matrix Games has been confirmed

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SlickWilhelm
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My appreciation of Matrix Games has been confirmed

Post by SlickWilhelm »

With the upcoming release of "Jutland" by Storm Eagles Studios, I've been doing a little reading on the GameSquad forums. After discovering what their licensing policy is, I have new(and elevated!) appreciation for the Matrix Games policy. Here's a comparison:

Matrix Games: Your purchase of a license entitles you to installation on one home PC and one laptop. Your serial number may be used to install the game on both systems.

SES: Your purchase of a license entitles you to installation on as many systems as you want, BUT the actual license is only good for one system at a time. Thus, if you play DG or Jutland on your home computer at night, then want to play them while sitting at the local coffee shop on your laptop the next morning, you have to "de-register" the license from the home PC and associate it with your laptop before you can play the game on your laptop. To do this, you need to log into the SES server.

The moral of the story? Long Live Matrix Games! [:)]
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Terminus
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RE: My appreciation of Matrix Games has been confirmed

Post by Terminus »

Ditto.
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Hertston
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RE: My appreciation of Matrix Games has been confirmed

Post by Hertston »

Yup... I can just see all those thousands of kiddie pirates hunting down a torrent for a game on the Battle of Jutland, just like they did one on the Russo-Japanese war . [8|]

Some people never learn. You have to put up with this crap with some more mainstream releases, but there are two major differences. Firstly the 'Spore's and 'Far Cry 2's of this world actually are likely to have a lot of people pirating them (not the the DRM will stop them, of course) and secondly, to be brutal, there's a far bigger chance that SES will disappear at an instant's notice in a puff of recessionary smoke than EA doing so, leaving honest purchasers with a game they can't install.

No sale.
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JudgeDredd
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RE: My appreciation of Matrix Games has been confirmed

Post by JudgeDredd »

You cannot fail Matrix policy on ownership and copy protection. It's designed specifically to be easy for the purchaser.

I'm sick to death of hearing companies spout the same rubbish about lost sales and their reasons for use of invasive, annoying DRM. It's getting very old and I'm very tired of it.

Piracy is here to stay. I don't like that. But it's a fact. The harder they make it, the harder the pirates will work. It's like a light to a moth...they simply can't resist the challenge.
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RE: My appreciation of Matrix Games has been confirmed

Post by mikul82 »

Same here, I thought that game looked interesting til I saw the DRM included, and then one of the game company's staff being a jerk about the issue on their forum.  As usual, annoying/invasive DRM = no purchase from me.  It's painful too, as I've missed out on several games I wanted to play, but a game company telling me that I, as a paying customer, need to be punished or hassled because others are pirating games (which no DRM to date has stopped or slowed), means I won't be giving them my money. That also means Matrix can have more of it.
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RE: My appreciation of Matrix Games has been confirmed

Post by Zakhal »

ORIGINAL: mlc82
(which no DRM to date has stopped or slowed),
Console hardware DRMs have slowed pirating for many years - even PS3 is still uncrackable. And while xbox is crackable its that much hard that it does slow down casual pirates.

PC DRMs have been most successful in online gaming like diablo or MMOs. Singleplayer DRMs are mostly failures though - allthough I did hear that starforce did have som success in slowing down warez versions:
StarForce 3.0 has a reputation of being difficult to reverse-engineer, though StarForce 3.0 protected games are eventually cracked, or through other methods have their protection bypassed.

Cracks are sometimes released a couple of days after the official release of the game, but some games survive months or years before being compromised: Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory held 422 days before being cracked. Other games require manuals to apply cracks to, and after that step require supplemental cracks to prevent crashes, such as Colin McRae Rally 2005.
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RE: My appreciation of Matrix Games has been confirmed

Post by ilovestrategy »

I have a question. Is it one PC at a time? For example if my PC dies and I buy a new one could I re install it on the new one?
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RE: My appreciation of Matrix Games has been confirmed

Post by Marc von Martial »

ORIGINAL: ilovestrategy

I have a question. Is it one PC at a time? For example if my PC dies and I buy a new one could I re install it on the new one?

Yes
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RE: My appreciation of Matrix Games has been confirmed

Post by SuluSea »

Although Tushima and Jutland would be to my liking, I refuse to buy from SES , their terms are absolutely ridiculous.
 
 
Don't punish the paying customer base because of what a thief or pirate might do. My hunch is they are losing much more in sales by selling their games in this fashion. I can tell you for certain one customer they lost.
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RE: My appreciation of Matrix Games has been confirmed

Post by Hertston »

ORIGINAL: Marc von Martial
Yes

Presumably you would need to contact SES to free up the license, though? If your computer went completely tits-up you would be unable to unlicense, and hence re-license?
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SlickWilhelm
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RE: My appreciation of Matrix Games has been confirmed

Post by SlickWilhelm »

ORIGINAL: Hertston


Presumably you would need to contact SES to free up the license, though? If your computer went completely tits-up you would be unable to unlicense, and hence re-license?

Yes, I believe in the case of a hard drive crash, you have to actually contact their customer support via email, and then they'll reactivate you. One guy over on the gamesquad forums had to do this twice since he bought it, but was up and running within a day.
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Grell
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RE: My appreciation of Matrix Games has been confirmed

Post by Grell »

I refuse to buy from SES, they are a bunch of thieving magpies.

Matrix is the best company out there.

Regards,

Grell
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Awac835
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RE: My appreciation of Matrix Games has been confirmed

Post by Awac835 »

Stardock aint bad either when it comes to copy protection.
 
Matrix is good too. Just wish Matrix had less vaporware.
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RE: My appreciation of Matrix Games has been confirmed

Post by mikul82 »

ORIGINAL: Zakhal
ORIGINAL: mlc82
(which no DRM to date has stopped or slowed),
Console hardware DRMs have slowed pirating for many years - even PS3 is still uncrackable. And while xbox is crackable its that much hard that it does slow down casual pirates.

PC DRMs have been most successful in online gaming like diablo or MMOs. Singleplayer DRMs are mostly failures though - allthough I did hear that starforce did have som success in slowing down warez versions:
StarForce 3.0 has a reputation of being difficult to reverse-engineer, though StarForce 3.0 protected games are eventually cracked, or through other methods have their protection bypassed.

Cracks are sometimes released a couple of days after the official release of the game, but some games survive months or years before being compromised: Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory held 422 days before being cracked. Other games require manuals to apply cracks to, and after that step require supplemental cracks to prevent crashes, such as Colin McRae Rally 2005.

Was referring to single player PC games, I don't play console games (or know anything technical about them) or much multiplayer stuff at all [;)]
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RE: My appreciation of Matrix Games has been confirmed

Post by JudgeDredd »

ORIGINAL: Awac835

Stardock aint bad either when it comes to copy protection.

Matrix is good too. Just wish Matrix had less vaporware.
I don't know how long you've been here, and I'm not entirely sure how long I've been here, but the only vapourware I remember is...god...can't even remember the name...Cross of Iron??? A squad shooter??

That's the only one I remember in my years at Matrix...

But then I do suffer from a short memory and it may be that some I wasn't interested in slipped under the radar....but I certainly don't remember more than Cross of Iron.
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RE: My appreciation of Matrix Games has been confirmed

Post by BoredStiff »

ORIGINAL: JudgeDredd

I don't know how long you've been here, and I'm not entirely sure how long I've been here, but the only vapourware I remember is...god...can't even remember the name...Cross of Iron??? A squad shooter??

That's the only one I remember in my years at Matrix...
There's Battlegound, or Battlefields, or whatever it's currently called. They've been kicking that one around since they first opened their doors, it seems. Certainly for at least 5-6 years, probably more like 9-10.

EDIT: Combined Arms
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RE: My appreciation of Matrix Games has been confirmed

Post by Arctic Blast »

For the most part, the smaller game studios don't tend to bother with DRM, or if they do it's something not all that bad, like a key system. The bigger companies, of course, are all over the SecuROM and Starforce. I don't think it's a coincidence that, while smaller companies tend to be run and owned by gamers and programmers the big boys are run by people who do not have a clue about their business (as an example, the CEO of EA was previously running the Ad wing of Pepsi). Just notice how often these people have absolutely no idea what exactly the DRM they're putting on games actually does, or how it works. Like when the EA guy recently stated that they don't install spyware on their products...yet over on SecuROM's company page it CLEARLY STATES that it acts as spyware for the company, allowing them to see what their customers' gaming habits are.
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RE: My appreciation of Matrix Games has been confirmed

Post by Erik Rutins »

ORIGINAL: Grell
I refuse to buy from SES, they are a bunch of thieving magpies.

Let me remind everyone that criticism is always acceptable here, if it is constructive and backed up by facts, but this kind of thing is not. Whatever your opinion of other publishers, if you're going to express it like this, you should be doing it on their forums where they can respond, not here. Thanks.
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Hertston
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RE: My appreciation of Matrix Games has been confirmed

Post by Hertston »

ORIGINAL: JudgeDredd
I don't know how long you've been here, and I'm not entirely sure how long I've been here, but the only vapourware I remember is...god...can't even remember the name...Cross of Iron??? A squad shooter??

Combat Leader: Cross of Iron? It was a Steel Panthers sequel.
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RE: My appreciation of Matrix Games has been confirmed

Post by Prince of Eckmühl »

I have a number of titles that've been published by Matrix that I haven't even opened. They are still in the shrink-wrap. One of the reasons why I'm so generous in this regard is that I'm fairly certain that most of the stuff will work out of the box, and I won't have to format my HDD and reinstall the OS when I uninstall something to kill off any DRM gremlins that the proggy leaves behind. Let me state, yet again, that I'm SICK and TIRED of being punished for being honest and paying for all my software and music.

As I write this, I face something of a calamity, in that I've got hundreds of music CDs. I purchased the damn things with the sole purpose of ripping them in raw format to my HDD for playback. Well, now I've re-installed Windows so many times, that I'm bumping up against the limit for downloading licenses for some of the tracks. Yes, I know that you're supposed to backup the licenses, but M$ MP 11 and Vista won't let you back them up any longer. So, next time that I install a new drive (been eyeing a 300GB WD Velociraptor), I'm pretty sure that I'm screwed as far as my music library goes.

I hate this DRM crap. As has been stated a billion-freaking times, the perps are just messing with folks who actually pay for their products. And the day that one of those songs on my computer quits playing, I'll have purchased my last music CD. [:@]

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