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What I just E-mailed Aspyr, Sick of their shoddy ports and copy protection.

palebluedot

palebluedot

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 29, 2008
738
160
I'd suggest those of you feel the same way e-mail them something similar to feedback@aspyr.com
---------

To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing to express my disappointment in your decision to require ET: QW (Quake Wars) to require the DVD in the drive to start up. Quake Wars on Windows and Linux does not require the CD in, only your Mac port. It has been argued time and time again by all gamers that this is a ridiculous measure of copy protection.

You are punishing normal gamers like myself who LEGALLY pay and buy your software, while only make a small nuisance for people who pirate it (go on the internet right now, you can find any number of "no cd" cracks to over ride your copy protection.) I am sick and tired of having to put the CD in every time I want to play. It puts wear and tear on my drive, it makes my system slower because every time I open up Finder it has to spin up the CD (if I leave it in the drive).

What is worse is you are unduly punishing Mac users with your port when the ORIGINAL game doesn't require a CD. The login system that verifies your account name is all the copy protection you need.

Suffice to say I wanted to express my anger at this decision and let you know I will not be purchasing any more Aspyr games if this is how you all operate. It makes me upset because I wanted to support Mac gaming and was looking forward to buying CoD 4 from you. Perhaps I would change my mind if you released a patch update to disable the CD copy protection (like Blizzard did with the OS X version of Warcraft III).

If you are interested, go to http;//forums.macrumours.com and click on Apple Games. There you will find MANY threads lamenting, bashing, and bemoaning your use of copy protection which punishes people who legally buy your games and just want to relax and play them. Does not look good for business.

I am sorry for my harsh e-mail, but I paid a lot of money for your product and intended to pay a lot more for your other products, but I think I will go to MacSoft now as they do not include the archaic "enter DVD/CD in drive" method.

Thank you.
 
I have to admit, I recently bought 'The Sims 2' and it is extremely annoying having to have the DVD in the drive. It is especially annoying when starting up as it slightly slows boot-up times as the disk is checked when the computer boots up to see if it's an Apple recovery CD. Very annoying.

Again, there are many 'NO DVD' cracks that can be downloaded for The Sims 2. This is only hindering the people who legally buy the game. Shouldn't it be the other way around?
 
That's a good complaint letter. You sound like a reasonable and good customer who's annoyed by something annoying (as opposed to a whining baby who wouldn't be happy even if they provided free backrubs while you played).
 
Right on, man. DRM only hurts people who pay for the game, not the pirates themselves.
 
Glad you guys thought it was acceptable :)

You all should send em' some form of letter too. Just remember Blizz dropped their DRM on WC3, given enough complaints Aspyr will probably reconsider putting DRM on theirs as well.

(Strange that a Mac company does this for games that the WINDOWS client doesn't have... Think different indeed :p )
 
Well

Well copy protection does have its good and bad sides. But it's certainly a one sided thing. It's meant basically to protect the developers of the game.
 
StrawberryJam8 said:
Well copy protection does have its good and bad sides. But it's certainly a one sided thing. It's meant basically to protect the developers of the game.
Click to expand...

Thats whats so funny though. Its one of these things that people say "it has a good and a bad side" but it has NO GOOD SIDE. If I wanted to I could go on the net right now and in 2 min have a crack for the copy protection (not of the newest version BTW, but a crack none the less).

Copy protection punishes you for legally buying the game while the people who have cracks play it without a care in the world. Its archaic protection that doesn't work in reality and never will.
 
This is rather disappointing considering Aspyr back in the day was THE only company that ported games to the mac. I still remember waiting for the day that Tomb Raider IV came out on the mac :p. But considering that the amount of gamers that use Mac OS X isn't near the number of people that use Windows, why Aspyr is doing this to their customers is beyond me :mad:
 
Good for you.

DRM is one of the stupidest things make.

I know it helps in some areas but it most it just blows chunks...
 
what about other things that they do? their port of simcity 4 is awful and so is the rollercoaster tycoon 3 port!
 
togermano said:
what about other things that they do? their port of simcity 4 is awful and so is the rollercoaster tycoon 3 port!
Click to expand...

Thats why we need to complain. We just bend over and let them charge us higher prices for substandard products because Mac gaming is so small. Well Mac gaming will never grow if we let them release crap like they do.. its time to let them know.
 
Here comes mine:


Dear Aspyr,

I'm writing to express my concerns about an anti-piracy measure your company has taken for the recent game Enemy Territory: Quake Wars for Mac OS X.

To my best knowledge from what I have gathered reading various web sites, it appears that the game requires the DVD to be present in the disc drive at all times while the game is run. I find this to be highly annoying, for the following reasons:

  1. It's easy to find a cracked version on the internet. Only the paying customers have to go through the hassle of finding and swapping DVDs.
  2. As a would-be paying customer I wouldn't expect the experience to be WORSE than a pirated copy that can be downloaded from the internet on a lot of places.
  3. The DVD checks often slow down games, they generate a lot of noise from the disk drive, and require me to swap DVDs. Also, outside of the game this unnecessarily slows down the system when performing various tasks such as opening the Finder and doing a Spotlight search. The sound of the DVD drive degrades the game experience—as opposed to a pirated copy.
  4. While I'm always careful, especially with delicate electronics or optical media, the DVD might get lost or damaged. Now, even though I have all the required data for gameplay on my hard disk, the game won't play because there is a possibility that I could have illegally downloaded the game.
  5. To add to the insult, the PC and Linux versions don't 'feature' this check.
The bottom line is that I find it extremely irritating that the paying customer is the victim of pirates. To make it worse, it does nothing BUT annoy the paying gamers, because the ones who pirate get a cracked version off the internet.

Because of this 'copy protection', together with the large price difference between the Mac version and those for alternative platforms like PC, Linux and Xbox 360, I have the decided to abstain from buying Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. I think the latter (the price) could be excused and would not stop me from buying the game, but this lame copy protection had made me change my mind.

(I will of course also not download this game because I do value the work of all the people on the game, and I want to support both your company and Mac gaming as a whole. Also let me note here that although I despise this kind of copy protection, I wouldn't mind anything that does NOT impact the paying man.)

Thank you for reading this email, and I hope we will be able to do business some time on terms we can both agree on.

Regards,
Sijmen Mulder
 
Interesting.

I play SC4 on my PowerBook. I hate that they require the disc to play since you just drag the entire folder of software to the computer to install. This is just stupid. As a result of not wanting to take my DVD with me everywhere, I just duplicated it and keep it near my computer, with my original safely stored in my CD Wallet at home, where I can make another copy when this one is destroyed.

TEG
 
I Feel Your Pain!

Oh the irony! I ran into this exact same problem today with Doom 3!

Because Doom 3 requires that you insert the disc, I made an image file of it using Toast, thinking I can just mount the image when it prompts for the disc. Waste of disk space, but whatever.
Unfortunately it didn't work. Somehow it needs to read it from the drive.

When I Googled "Doom 3 dvd" the only promising results I found were cracks on torrent sites! There is no other workaround. If you don't want to be harassed for the disc each time, you need to use a pirated version of the game. So tomorrow I will "steal" a game I already own (and now feel like a complete sucker for paying for!)
 
I agree on this front. "insert the DVD" is an utterly insulting action to have to take. It does little to nothing they intend it to do, as other people on this forum have pointed out, and it gives people who actually purchase this disc no end of frustration. The ****ing game is on your HARD DRIVE - and shouldn't NEED the ****ing install disc shoved in your DVD drive to play.

I have a better idea for Aspyr. They could just take a nice digital picture of the guy responsible for this decision - giving you the finger - and then load this image upon starting the game up. That way, this person could still get the customer PO'd, but at least the game wouldn't have such a silly handicap.
 
This kind of bs is why I will never by a mac port of a game. It's not worth having to deal with a subpar port of a game just to save myself 30 seconds to boot into windows. So I am happily chugging along playing etqw in windows. Without the DVD, thank you very much.
 
I agree -- incredibly annoying. It's completely my fault, but I've lost my copy of Tiger Woods, so I can't play it any more. If the game didn't require the CD, I'd probably still play it every now and then.
 
I'm glad everyone is e-mailing them.

After sending that letter I tried an experiment and e-mailed them saying my DVD drive was broken and I wanted to know how I could play ET:QW since I had no drive but I legally owned the game.

Their response:

Hello [Name Removed],

Thank you for choosing Quake Wars for the Mac. Unfortunately, this game requires a DVD drive in order to play. There is no way around this.

I am sorry we could not resolve your issue.

Have a great day.

-Aspyr Tech Support

I then pleaded, saying I legally purchased the game and I don't understand why they would do this when Linux and Windows dont have to..

Their response again:

Hello,

Unfortunately, there is no way around needing the disc in the drive to play the game.
This fact is stated in the minimum system requirements listed on the box.
This is the way the game was built for copy protection purposes.

Sorry we couldn't help you more.
Thanks for your patience.

----

Let this be a warning. If you do break your drive or disc your SOL and will be forced to pirate the game. Way to go Aspyr. Maybe they should just hand the game out for free so we can be saved the time of having to troll weird Russian cracking sites for no-cds just to play a game we legally bought.

I can understand when they are forced to add copy protection because of the Windows developer (i.e. EA) but the fact Aspyr puts it on EVERY game that they make and not ones that just require it is a knife in the back of Mac users. Mac and PC gaming could be different (better) then console by NOT needing the DVD but instead they revert to this archaic practice because some middle managment guy feeds the dogmatic line to everyone else that this prevents copy protection. If thats true why is there a no-cd on multiple torrent sites right now?

Screw Aspyr. They seem to be a smaller, more crappy version of EA (and that is the biggest insult you can pay a gaming outfit). Steam is killing EA and its gonna bury Aspyr if it ever comes to the Mac. Thank god Macsoft is still around and listens to their customers on issues such as this. I can't wait for UT3 to be released.
 
Not that I'm a fan of disc-in-drive copy protection by any means (quite the opposite actually), but breaking your disc doesn't mean you have to pirate the game. Pretty much every company has a replacement policy. Usually this means forking over a few bucks, but hey, you're the one who broke it, you need to take some responsibility.

--Eric
 
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