Quoting vindKtiv, reply 21I'm up there. Seems that most people play the unpatched 91 version though, and a lot of people there are pirates. Still, it is a much better alternative to using Impulse to play.
And that's the exact reason I will NOT use it. Doesn't matter if it was so perfect it somehow miraculously made my computer start printing out real money, I still will not use a product that supports piracy like that. It's down right rediculous. I mean, people like me pay good money, hard earned money, to play this game and then you've got stuff like GameRanger that's allowing other people who jacked a copy off the internet to play for free. That ain't right!
I understand your anger, believe me, but at the same time I can't help but react by saying: Quit using the Internet. I heard they have pirates on there. Long time ago I used to play internet games over a service called Kali; this was out prior to Battle.Net and other services. We're talking the DOOM/Decent era. I paid for a lifetime membership and spent most of my teens playing games over it. I remember when a lot of us would use it to play Starcraft or Diablo, and we'd always have incompatabilities with pirates. People would say "Why use Kali when you could use BNet?" and truth was, at the time, we liked the Kali networks better.
It's not really the fault of GameRanger that pirates use the service; it's how Stardock's lack of DRM was setup. Judging by how the software works, I'm assuming they actually have to work somewhat (or at least get permission) from developers to support their games (considering the massive, yet still limited list of titles as opposed to being a "LAN" vpn service like Hamachi.) I guess it can be thought of along the same lines as old game networks like MPlayer, TEN, maybe even Gamespy Arcade to some degree.
I would argue the inverse of your protest would be better: If we had more people playing the retail version via Game Ranger, it would only promote more incentive for the pirates to suck it up and get the game. Let's say the game remains at its stability at present (heaven forbids) and then the free new future content comes out (new maps, Demigods etc)....pirates will be stucked at their old patch version, we'd have the new goods.
Just my 2 cents.....either way, do what you gotta do. I'm just going to choose to call the pirates fucktards and laugh when they cant join my games.
