Well, I have just had an unpleasant experience trying to play one of my favourite games again after a few years.
I installed RCT3 from the CD, tried to run it and got a Runtime Exception. After looking at the Frontier Forums, I discovered the SecuROM updater, which told me it had no updates. I then had to locate and download Patch 2 (for the EU), and then re-run the SecuROM updater. Just to be able to start the game.
I was wondering if it is legally possible or even desirable to release a patch which does not have SecuROM (or has the CD requirement removed)? Hopefully, Frontier are still making some money from RCT3, but I am sure that removing the CD requirement from a game 6 years after release will have little to no financial impact, and is likely to be good PR.
I enjoy playing RCT3, but always find it annoying playing any game which requires me to find the CD to play - especially since I tend to jump into fun games such as RCT3 because another game is updating (but still requires the DVD to be present while updating).
I understand if the answer is no, there are usually stong objections within the games industry to removing copy protection, but it has been done before - the first game which comes to mind is X2: The Threat, which removed the Starforce copy protection in a patch about 8 months after release (to download the patch, you did have to enter your CD key into their website).
I installed RCT3 from the CD, tried to run it and got a Runtime Exception. After looking at the Frontier Forums, I discovered the SecuROM updater, which told me it had no updates. I then had to locate and download Patch 2 (for the EU), and then re-run the SecuROM updater. Just to be able to start the game.
I was wondering if it is legally possible or even desirable to release a patch which does not have SecuROM (or has the CD requirement removed)? Hopefully, Frontier are still making some money from RCT3, but I am sure that removing the CD requirement from a game 6 years after release will have little to no financial impact, and is likely to be good PR.
I enjoy playing RCT3, but always find it annoying playing any game which requires me to find the CD to play - especially since I tend to jump into fun games such as RCT3 because another game is updating (but still requires the DVD to be present while updating).
I understand if the answer is no, there are usually stong objections within the games industry to removing copy protection, but it has been done before - the first game which comes to mind is X2: The Threat, which removed the Starforce copy protection in a patch about 8 months after release (to download the patch, you did have to enter your CD key into their website).
