Reading comprehension class, apparently. It's not that hard to figure out: they're saying it's technically an open-world RPG, but it has the strong overall plot and rich storyline that is characteristic of (successful) closed-world RPGs.

In fairness, it's nothing new. A lot of games have tried to strike that balance; in fact, it's been a while since I've seen a classic open-world RPG, and I'm OK with that. But, I'm also really glad to *have* that freedom, even though it's not required for the central appeal of the game.

No, that's definitely DRM.
A game that needs my "sound card" (lol) can still be played if the same game is on another PC. It certainly isn't going to object if another game that I happened to buy from the same *store* is being played on another PC! It can still be played if I swap out the sound card for another one. It can *probably* even be played just by turning off sound...
Steam doesn't allow any of that.
If Steam let you just access those features which are needed for game support while simultaneously being logged into your account elsewhere, or let the game run without them, it wouldn't be DRM. But it doesn't!

If you honestly thought that just because they *told* you it was purely for technical reasons it therefore isn't DRM, you are a colossal idiot. One of the proverbial suckers, born every minute. It bears every single earmark of DRM, right down to not being able to (legally, according to Valve) re-sell the game. Only an utter moron or brainless fanboy (but I repeat myself...) would claim it is otherwise.

Wow, you're some *special* kind of stupid, aren't you? Or did you just think we all are?

Directly from the page you linked:

Can two users share a library and both play at the same time?
No, a shared library may only be accessed by one user at a time.

Go die in a fire, DRM-apologist.

Unpleasantly enough, gathering crude oil from floating slicks and contaminated beaches might actually be less destructive than extracting it from tar sands... Luckily, with the Harper Regime's war on science going better than most wars on abstract concepts, we should be spared the knowledge of whether or not that's true.

and whenever they've added any sort of setting, the default was quite restrictive.

Well good enough for me then, right? Nothing bad has happened so far, so nothing ever well.

The woman's word didn't convict them. It amounted to reasonable suspicion to pull a vehicle over, that's it. Your ignoring a big chain of events.

It could have been a female Federal agent wanting to create a parallel construction of evidence.

Its conceivable. Do you have any evidence for this beyond a mere statement of the possibility that it might be the case?

An anonymous call, by itself, warrants just the smallest of investigations -- in this case, the law enforcement official followed the vehicle and did not see any evidence of wrong doing. That should have been the end of it.

Because pulling the driver over and asking if he was drunk is an "exceptionally deep investigation"?

The woman apparently did not want to press charges

Press charges for WHAT?

or even testify since it is assumed she refused to give her name.

Not wanting to get involved is pretty normal. If I saw a drunk I wouldn't want to get dragged into court, have my character, recollections, and life torn apart by cross examination, my time wasted etc. And if the police catch up to him because of my tip, and notice he's drunk then they can take care of him without my help.

I suspect in this case, however, you'd need to have the caller identified since if the run-off-the-road case was taken to trial, the defendant has a right to cross-examine witnesses.

Only if he was charged with running the other driver off the road. If he's to be charged with drunk driving, the fact that he's impaired when pulled over is more than sufficient.

I do think they overstepped what was appropriate for the situation.

Pulling him over to see if he's drunk is inappropriate after a report he was driving badly. FWIW Drunk drivers rarely drive erratically. Their reactions and awareness is impaired; so unless something unexpected happens they'll probably appear to be driving just fine.

Considering all the nice things I've heard about American ISPs, you already seem more buttfucked than the goatse guy. But I guess from now on you'll pay extra for lube.

That sounds familiar...

Now it's starting to sound like Warcraft II and Beyond the Dark Portal, or StarCraft and Brood War, or DDRMAX and its mission pack sequels (DDRMAX2, Extreme, Extreme II, and SuperNOVA).

It would be approaching that. But again I think the difference is that the game is aware of and pushing the expansions from within the game immediately after *buying* the game.

So where Doom can be forgiven for having the Shores of Hell and Inferno greyed out because you didn't pay anything for it -- imagine you just bought Star Craft but the Broodwar campaigns are showing there, but greyed out with a $ next to them. Except that's not it either because at least starcraft was a complete game with 3 campaigns and multiplayer... its more like buying star craft, and finding the protoss and zerg campaigns are greyed out with $ next to them, and only one multiplayer map with the rest all showing that $.

Are you one of the ones whose selection criteria for the great cull are poorly defined, or one of the ones whose selection criteria are jaw-droppingly tasteless? They come in both flavors.

Mass production killed the repair business, unless it's really expensive they just come cheaper off the assembly line than having a repairman with the skills, parts and tools fix them one item at the time. I don't think I could find a seamstress or cobbler anymore if I wanted to repair my clothes or shoes, at least I'd have to search far and wide. I'm sure a tailor would do it for way too much money but it wouldn't be cost efficient. Same goes for my furniture, if anything breaks it's almost certainly easier and cheaper to replace than repair. Small electronics repair has died entirely, cars and houses are still expensive enough to repair but not much else. Particularly if you're not really sure if it's properly fixed or the repaired part is weaker than the original and taking into account that the item is worn and likely to break again sooner than a new one.

Not that it's just repairs, in many areas you're so outpaced that being self-sufficient is more expensive than at the store. Like for example my dad and I used to chop firewood, but now we buy it and if you add up the raw material cost (owning a forest patch), the production costs (chain saw, blade, chain, fuel, oil, protection gear, cleaver, transport) and a modest self cost for your time (getting there, felling, cutting into pieces, transporting to the road, cleaving, getting it home, stacking for drying) it's still cheaper to work, pay taxes and buy firewood from a company that drives around with big forest machines and creates more firewood in an hour than we can manage in a week. Customization is really more interesting and worth a premium, but it's rarely combined with the urgency of needing it from my own printer. Or if it's that urgent, I probably can't wait for the printer.

Did a quick check: There are several games on GOG with DLC.

Yeah, but too be fair, I think that's a fairly recent feature for GoG.

I know "AI: War" also uses (used?) a serial key to differentiate between the demo and full version, which was another sticking point with GoG. (Although they allow multiplayer keys for NWN etc... so there's that...)

By this point though, I don't think Arcen is ~that~ concerned. By far the majority of the revenue is from steam. They wrote that steam is 91% of the income, 3% was direct sales, and 5.9% is gamersgate and impulse. Leaving 0.1% for 'others'

http://christophermpark.blogsp...

That's a while back and still predates bionic dues being released, etc but at the time GoG and other distributors amounted to less than a 10th of a percent. (Although he candidly admits both that at the time of that writing gog was a very new distributor for them, and that gog didn't have ai war -- which is far and away their most popular game so the low numbers are entirely expected.)

Still, it suggests that its not really worth arcen's time to jump through any major hoops or obstacles to put ai-war on gog.