A single lost sale.

[jiminitaur]

I warned you Vigil.  I said drop the serial code crap or lose my money.  You didn't, so I played the game for free instead.  Not the demo either.  You know what I mean.

For the record, since many will judge me as a freeloader, I have 104 games on my steam account as of now, more than 50 purchases on the android market, 10+ downloaded wii titles, ~40 PS2&PS1 games each, ~20 cartridges each for SNES, NES, & GC.  I buy games & apps, lots of them;  I believe that indy devs deserve compensation;  I even bought Creeper World immediately after playing the demo.

The current climate, however, is one of many DRM schemes that disrespect the customer without actually curbing piracy.  Some, like Securom and always online validation, are technologically intrusive.  Others, such as installations serials, are simply cumbersome relics.  Regardless of the method, crappy DRM schemes continue to propogate, because the devs believe it won't affect sales.

Increasingly, however, DRM choices are affecting sales, for better and worse.  Steam is constantly thriving because it's offers anywhere access instead of disc/key management.  Android market performs has install time license checks completely transparent to the user.  Conversely, EA and Ubisoft witness increased piracy get harassed on vendors across the web for putting their customers through stupid crap. 

And then, of course, there's the here and now.  Me with my $10 dollars in hand, never to make it's way to Vigil's digital wallet.  A meager sum to be sure, but then again, respect for the customer was also a small price to pay.  Perhaps in the end we both bought our own sense of entitlement.

[UpperKEES]

respect for the customer was also a small price to pay

Apparently your respect for indie developers is even smaller.

Just pathetic....

* Requests removal of this topic (it's not about gameplay anyway) *

[iycgtptyarvg]

I personally find the serial key (offline!) activation ok.

Unacceptable DRM:
Phone-home, always on-line, limited activations, drivers/root-kits, unskippable intros/clips, gameplay slowdowns.

[knucracker]

This person doesn't know what they are talking about regarding the serial key. I do not now and have never done online activation. The key just has to be entered and is only checked locally. The key can be used on as many systems as the player has access to. If the player ever loses their key I am happy to send it to them again.

This isn't disk protection or online activation. You do not have to be online to activate or even play the game since there is no activation.

--edit
I should also mention that all of the other games this person mentions all have protection provided by the physical media or the platform they are delivered on. PC games outside something like steam don't have a platform that can make the protection transparent.
--

But in the end I don't think this is about entering a 16 character key that doesn't do online activation. I think it is about a sense of entitlement and finding any reason, no matter how trivial, to justify disrespectful and dishonest activity.

I usually don't bother responding to things like this, since well.... There is little upside in a response. I spend 99.9% of my time trying to do a good job and create some good and fun games. I'm always grateful for the support I get and yes I am only one guy.  So every sale makes a very real difference.

Fortunately, there are still a great many honest, supportive, and just generally 'cool' fans of my games. And I think I should now get back to working hard for those guys by getting these new features, map editor, and games released.

PS:  My name is "Virgil", not "Vigil", though sometimes the later seems more appropriate.