Steam fall down. Go BOOM.

[eldaec]

Not if the alternative doesn't fucking work.

Is there an alternative that fucking works?

Yes. Entirely downloadable, no fucking around with steamesque crap, patches that download on log out way ahead of their launch date rather than on log in every fricking day, no complaints about legitimate purchasers not being able to get in (even on launch day), and despite having to connect to servers to play it still gets you going in less than half the time that steam takes.

Another example here.

In single player games? Not that I'm aware of.

[schild]

Stardock has an all-access pass to all their games - Totalgaming.net.

Lately, they've been doing everything right and no one notices because their games AREN'T SHINY ENOUGH FOR THEM. Arrogant Gamespot/IGN fed pricks.

[Sky]

Stardock is doing a great job at safely entering the game genre, imo. Growing a nice little community core to support them despite the fickle gaming public, and a heck of a game in GalCiv.

[BlackSky]

A lot of the stuff in this thread is highly technical, and I won't claim to know much about it. But I can say this with a good degree of certainty:


As hard as one may work to put highly advanced security systems on open/closed hardware, and software, there is someone out there working just as hard (if not harder) to find a way to crack that security. They will almost always succeed, as well.

There isn't really a such thing as an "unsinkable ship", as they say.

For each brilliant mind trying to make movies harder to copy and music harder to rip, there are 200 brilliant minds making it easier than ever to copy movies and rip music.

[Roac]

Security for IT isn't really that different than military security.  No fortress is unbreakable, but nor is it the goal of the builder to make it such - the goal is to make the cost of entry in excess of the cost of success.  Worried about security, some of the most secure networks aren't connected to any outside network at all.  That is, there is no physical connection between network X and anything else, but even this isn't proof of security.  How can you break into a box that isn't plugged into the internet?  Two ways are physical break-in (walk up to the box, or one it is connected to), or get someone else to inadvertantly plant a trojan.  But because both are difficult, and with good policies even more difficult, the cost of break-in is high.

A closed system raises the cost of entry.  Open systems gain the ability to receive reports of vulnerabilities - but you're still in the rut of having to push fixes to people, which is hard.