I know that I frequently bellyache about needing to enter CD keys. I feel I need to draw a distinction here: <\/p>\n
CD keys are something I grudgingly accept. I don’t object to them the way I object to (say) online activation. I certainly wouldn’t forswear a game over a CD key. I complain about them in the same way people complain about those invincible plastic shells that retail electronics come in. They’re annoying and they waste a half a minute of time, but they don’t challenge my ownership of the goods inside. <\/p>\n
When I moan about CD keys it’s usually because I’ve encountered a poorly-implemented one. One of my games here (I think it’s Unreal Tournament 2003 or 2004) has the key printed in a narrow sans-serif font<\/em>, which makes it hard to differentiate some characters, which leads to repeated attempts. Ugh. Just as bad is if I have to enter it twice, for no dang good reason<\/a>. I also hate if the sucker is hard to find. (I think it was Half-Life 2 that claimed the CD key was on the “back of the CD case” when there wasn’t one<\/em>, and I eventually found the thing elsewhere among the boxed ephemera.)<\/p>\n But the problems really start when the CD key isn’t enough<\/em>. When they want a CD key and<\/strong> the CD in the drive and<\/strong> SecuROM, then it can be said that the pirates are offering a superior product, while legit users are punished. <\/p>\n I’m writing this here so I can link back to it later, because it’s not always apparent to new readers that online activation is a deal-breaker, while CD keys are just an annoyance I enjoy complaining about. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I know that I frequently bellyache about needing to enter CD keys. I feel I need to draw a distinction here: CD keys are something I grudgingly accept. I don’t object to them the way I object to (say) online activation. I certainly wouldn’t forswear a game over a CD key. I complain about them […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[30],"class_list":["post-1695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-drm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1695\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}