Well, the only fear I have in posting this is that it won't be read and commented on. At the same time, please don't comment without reading this through and thinking about it.
Ok, so I'm a big fan of PC gaming and it's an amazing thing! I love taking my Laptop places and LANing with friends. I think anyone playing Halo PC has at least experienced the fun of playing online, right?
There is one thing that bugs me with most PC games (Including you Halo PC!)
A CD in to play.
Nothing is more discouraging then this, as a PC gamer I don't just play one or two games, I have a C:\Games folder with 8+ games in it. I love these games, why would they be installed if I didn't, right? The problem though is using a CD for a game. We keep all our games in our basement in a certain drawer. We take them out only when we need to re-install the game after a reformat or a corruption of the game.
Now really think about this point: Why should I be treated like a criminal even though I've bought the game? Is that not what a game does? It checks to see if you actually have a legit version of the game disc, which you probably do.
Now there are reasons for Bungie doing that and it's to stop piracy of the game which is completely understandable, I'd love if piracy just died out of our world and developers were given what they should be, but the problem is with the method. You put the legit buyers at an inconvenience by making them insert the disc to play while someone else can just go and torrent the game disc.
But if for some reason they do torrent the disc image and install the game, they can't play because they have no CD, right?
Wrong.
There are so many fool-proof ways of getting past a disc check.
* The torrent itself may have been an .iso, leaving the pirate to burn it and play it just like a customer would!
* If the torrent wasn't an .iso, it could have easily been packaged with an update file and a No-CD crack, leaving the pirate at a position above the customer.
As you can see, there was an effort put into stopping piracy but it has failed. Although they can't play on the servers that the paying customers play on, they can still play with other non-legit players.
Anyone can see, the system has failed. I suggest a new idea. I am a fan of Halo, but RTS's rock, which is why I also play Warcraft III.
Warcraft, as some of you may know, is owned by Blizzard, this company has done something that has gained my utmost respect. In their newest update, they relieved Warcraft 3 from needing a CD in the drive to play! How amazing is it to see that a huge company like Blizzard actually did something to enhance the customers gaming experience! Do you know how awesome it feels to launch that game without needing the CD? (Pretty awesome ;D)
Now my final point: We need this annoyance taken out or dealt with in a better fashion. It's nothing but a headache for all of us that paid and it barely even stops the non-legit players. I mean, we have CD Keys and they do a good job of letting you play online.
Please Bungie, I look up to you as a gaming company and I know you guys could even think of a better method for dealing with pirates but by going with this popular method, you're only adding onto the annoyance. Think of not only how your fans will look at you, but how other companies. You're the giant to them and by showing them that annoying your legitimate players isn't the right way to do things, you could open up a whole new era of gaming counter-measures to ensure that we get what we paid for, and they don't!
If Blizzard could do it, so can Bungie!