Why Not Digitial Distribution?

[Gandalf Parker]

WOW that would totally suck with this game. I cant even begin to think what it would be like to go back at this point and play with the vanilla version right off the disc.

But Im not sure it would be true with all games. The difficult part is tracking whether or not a game is authorized to receive the patch. Minor patches might not be a big deal but full upgrades would be.

[iceboy]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

WOW that would totally suck with this game. I cant even begin to think what it would be like to go back at this point and play with the vanilla version right off the disc.

But Im not sure it would be true with all games. The difficult part is tracking whether or not a game is authorized to receive the patch. Minor patches might not be a big deal but full upgrades would be.

It has nothing to do with authorization. The store bought and digital bought are two different versions of the game. So any new patches cannot be applied!

See this thread about the new heroes v patch:

http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/t...6431050186/p/4

[Szumo]

Originally Posted by iceboy

It has nothing to do with authorization. The store bought and digital bought are two different versions of the game. So any new patches cannot be applied!

See this thread about the new heroes v patch:

http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/t...6431050186/p/4

That depends on the game. There are games where store and digital bought executables are the same.

If you go with digital distribution, the best way to do it is like Stardock does it. I've bought Space Empires V on Steam and was dissapointed to find it installs in strange directory and can't use the same updates as normal version does.
On the other hand, Galactic Civilization II bought from Stardock worked much better.

Of course, Dominions is better game than either of those, yet still i had to buy it from an internet shop in England and wait for delivery. Well worth though, since i got Dominions i bought only one more game (and that was very disappointing Spore) as i haven't got bored with Dominions 3 yet

[Archonsod]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

WOW that would totally suck with this game. I cant even begin to think what it would be like to go back at this point and play with the vanilla version right off the disc.

But Im not sure it would be true with all games. The difficult part is tracking whether or not a game is authorized to receive the patch. Minor patches might not be a big deal but full upgrades would be.

It depends on the distributor. Steam and Direct to Drive have their own DRM wrapper on the game, so nine times in ten you can't use the retail patch on their version. Gamer's Gate tends to provide the install ripped straight from the CD, so functionally it's identical to the retail release (in most cases, I recently bought Gothic III and they were kind enough to provide it pre-patched to 1.6, which they pointed out "means it can work with the community patches". Jolly nice of them I thought).
Impulse goes one better though; Stardock's intent is to allow you to register any game they carry regardless of where you bought it (primarily via CD keys and the like) so you can use the automatic update feature of Impulse with the game, which would be kind of neat for something like Dominions. Since it's verifying on CD keys no authentication issues either.

It would be nice to see Dominions up there on Impulse, although 99% of my problems with having the game shipped across the pond would be resolved if they'd just write "gift" on the customs declaration. Saves me £15 if her majesty's finest decide to poke around in my mail.

[Makinus]

I sincerely hope that future products from illwinter offer digital distribution methods...

Would you believe that my Dominions package took more than 4 months to get to me in Brazil? All because of brazilian customs bureaucracy...

[thejeff]

Why would it be hard to track?
Or any harder than telling whether a CD install is authorized or not?

I may be naive about these things, but in the end there's an executable on the user's machine, to which you apply the patch. How it got there is irrelevant. Currently it's the CD-key that determines whether it's legit or not. Why not something similar with a download?

[Gandalf Parker]

Stardock does seem to have a good lead on how to manage things. However they are not releasing their version of DD as a package. So its up to each site to try and write their own version if they want to follow in their footsteps.

Everyone is watching everyone else. Once someone really irons out all of the problems and makes it available as an installable package then I think many more sites will jump on. Just as it happened with forums, wikis, chats, and shopping carts.

[Soyweiser]

So there is money to be made for the one who perfects this? That would be some incentive for people to do it.

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by Soyweiser

So there is money to be made for the one who perfects this? That would be some incentive for people to do it.

If they have the infrastructure and the money to do so.

There's a lot of money to be made in Cold Fusion, as well, but I can understand Shrapnel not racing for the answers.

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

If they have the infrastructure and the money to do so.

There's a lot of money to be made in Cold Fusion, as well, but I can understand Shrapnel not racing for the answers.

True, but infrastructure and money are solvable problems. That is all a matter of scaling and acquiring capital. The first has been done by IT people for years now. And the second is also doable (but a bit harder in the current financial climate).

Edit:
And I'm not suggesting that Shrapnel should do it but if some company does this successfully it would be profitable for them.