There are so many wonderful reasons to love Company of Heroes. If you haven't played it, you're really missing out. One of my old bosses used to say that the Holy Grail of gaming was to create a completely realistic and destructible environment. Well, it really looks like Company of Heroes has achieved the Holy Grail, and the result is one of the best games of the year.
Yet as much as I love both the wild multiplayer and the intense single-player gameplay, there's one thing about Company of Heroes that I love above all else: You don't need a CD in the drive to play the game. I can't emphasize just how much I love this feature. If I'm traveling, I can launch the game without worrying about having to pack the CD with me. Or if I've got 15 minutes to kill, I don't need to hunt around in my bag for the CD. It's as simple and easy as launching any other application on my PC.
The entire point of CD checks is to discourage "causal piracy," or the idea that the real danger isn't the organized crime rings out there that make millions on ripping off Hollywood and Silicon Valley, but rather the mainstream user who might be tempted to copy a game for their friends. However, at this point CD checks have become an annoyance to legitimate customers who play by the rules. Why do I have to have a CD when the entire game is installed on my hard drive? Why do I have to keep all my discs out of the box and available if I want to play games? If casual piracy is such a problem, then why don't software publishers who make much more valuable products use them as well?
The reason you don't have to put a CD in the drive to launch Microsoft Word or Adobe Photoshop is because the general consumer would scream bloody murder. It's inconvenient, it's unnecessary, and it's illogical. The only PC programs out there that require a CD check are games. Yet, as the rest of the industry has shown, it's possible to battle piracy without having to resort to CD checks. For instance, as annoying as product activation can be, it's a lot less hassle over the long run than having to haul out a CD every time you launch a game.
So why don't we scream bloody murder? I suspect it's because we've become used to CD checks over the years, not to mention all the conditioning of console games. If you want to play an Xbox or PS2 game, you put a disc in the console. However, PCs aren't consoles. Just because you need a disc in a console doesn't mean you should have to put a disc in a PC. It's time for PC publishers to wake up and smell the coffee. If they want to make PC gaming vibrant again, step one is to make better games. But step two should be to make the platform as user friendly as possible, and part of that means getting rid of the CD check. And hopefully Company of Heroes will blaze the way on this, too.
Comments
You're also right about the quality of games. If some games were truly good, people would just buy them instead of downloading. No matter how big they make 'em, if they are bad, people will just download them instead of buying, or not play the game at all.
Developers need to realize that copy protection is useless.
I'm with Korubi on that.
I know, I say we were poor but we had 4 computers for ourselves in our house. My parents owned a business, and besides computers being everywhere, we couldn't do much else.
I personally haven't had the privilege of playing Company of Heroes, but later this month, I'm picking it up. Too broke at the moment.
Edit: Love the new blog name.
I'm really surprised why PC gaming is still using CD's in the first place. A month ago, a buddy of mine gave me a copy of the latest version of A Bard's Tale. OK, so it also included Bard's Tale 1,2,& 3. It was 6 f****n' CD's in size!! OK, I understand that there was bonus material. But this package could have all fit on one DVD Rom. My buddy said it's because the company probably only wants to put between 400 - 500 MB's of info on each CD so they don't overload each one. BS, switch to DVD format. That's over 5 gB's each. I've been PC gaming since the Apple 2e. I still remember 5 & 1/4 floppy diskettes in the mid 80's. Then the 3 & 1/2, then CD Roms. Every 5 to 7 years PC gaming changed formats. It's been over 6 years since the PS2 introduced video games on DVD's. The X-box followed suit. When Halflife 2 shipped out 4 years later it was on 5 CD Roms! OK, maybe I'm being a wuss and lazy, but I'm not the only one who's sick of seeing "switch to disk 2, switch to disk 3, etc." 3, 4, 5, 6 f***ing times. The PC gaming industry should switch to DVD Roms. Come on, most PC's with a CD Rom only will not run Halflife 2 or Company of Heroes. If the PC gaming world can evolve from 5 and a 1/4 diskettes to CD Roms then they can start using DVD Roms. DVD roms have been around for almost 7 years now yet PC gaming manufacturers have refused to acknowledge their existense.
I think there's one company that's done it right so far. That's Valve. Steam is leading both the revolutions of digital distribution and piracy prevention. Even though it may not be perfect, it's by far the easiest "activation" method I've ever used before, and the process of buying and downloading games is as simple as having an internet connection fast enough to supply it. Leave the CD protection to the dinosaur companies (*cough* ea *cough*).
Anyway, kudos to the folks behind Company of Heroes running without a CD. While it is certainly the exception rather the rule I am finding more games than I used to that don’t do CD checking and all the junk associated with it. Thank goodness.
P.S.: what will be the next format? Blu-Ray or something else?
Deus Ex 2 was also on a DVD for us and that came out before HL2.
One of the few advantages of steam is that all the games are availible without a cd (which now includes titles like cod2)... assuming you are online and not on 56k.
Korubi