The following morning, I bought the serial. I knew if I didn’t buy the serial within 24 hours (note: 24 hour notice was NOT on the statement), they were going to press charges. Then I had to email my purchased serial to the administrator so they could drop the charges. That will be the last time I ever pirate software again!

Now I think back & I realized how stupid of an idea it was. I didn’t have a job (nor credit card). Instead of pirating the serial, I could have just asked to borrow my mom’s credit card. My mom was perfectly fine with it. Let’s not forget the serial cost $20 USD, just another reason to feel imbarrassed. I will never do that again.

This must be some strange interpretation of ‘market orientation’ I’m not aware of.

There’s no way consumers are willing to rebuild their trust and happily spend their money if companies keep rolling out products equipped with ‘weapons of annoyance and mistrust’ (like DRM).

Point well taken. In the US where we take most things for granted, including our bandwidth, I think Steam is a good thing. It automates keeping your game working (with patches), keeping your games fresh (new episodic content), and yes, keeping your games legitimate. Perhaps this is just a bait-and-switch tactic on their part, so I don’t feel like they’re getting “something for nothing” by making me jump through hoops to activate my software, but to me it seems worth it.

I think it is obvious that if the game is quality(which comes first) then people will pay for it, if it is not quality then people will either get it free or refuse to pay the sums of money expected, if you get the balance of quality and cost right you will have a hit.

It’s like these pay-as-you-go games like World of Warcraft. Yes i can see why they do it, but ipersonally find it offputting. What’s the point in paying to buy the game, and then pay more every month just to be able to play it when you want? I can’t see how cash strapped teenagers can afford to do this, and still feed their desires to get the “next big thing” that hits the market.

Still, its firmware can be modified to allow this, but most people don’t know this. They usually learn that once they start asking on forums or at PC shops like the one I’m in. And no, I don’t modify PS firmwares myself, but I used to know places where they sell modified PS2’s. They seem to have closed since then unfortunatly. Probably because consoles aren’t as popular here as PC games (again, because PC games are more easily pirated, and also because for the money you pay for a console you can get a “decent” PC and do more than play games).