I picked up Serious Sam Double D from Steam today to discover that it is one of those M$ fanbase Indie developers that have gone out of their way to program the game so that it will no t accept any game pad mapping attempts outside of a 360 game pad there for making the game only playable with a M$ game pad or mouse and keyboard.

Given the nature of the game being too difficult to play with mouse and key board it has made this game a waste of money for me.

XBox Game Pad emulation software only tends to cause the game to go into a sporadic and continuous scrolling loop on the menu page.

So I started looking for cracks to liberate the game from the Steam client. The Steam client has hidden a file that executes before the main executable and if a non-M$ game pad is only linked to the main executable it will shut off mapping for that non-M$ game pad when the game starts.

But I got to thinking - although perhaps side tracked with coys and never quite easily easily locating a crack for Serious Sam Double D my efforts started revealing all sorts of sites and places on the net where other developers software was EXTREMELY easy to find and download.

So as the ends justify the means the best way to encourage piracy is give the end use reason to start looking in that direction on the interwebs and the best way to do this is by intentionally generating software that plays big corporation games by either artificially making other struggling computer components manufacturers' components incompatible or implementing DRM that locks the legitimate user out of the game as well.
This, in turn, sends everyone looking for their own means to fix a game that did not need to be broken in the first place.

Downloading and installing the illegitimate version of this game to the folder where I had my legitimately purchased Steam version fixed the problem.

This means that this is not necessarily the evil doing of the indie developer themselves but rather Steam's obnoxious OCD with hiding executable files.

To be honest, when it comes to ethics and honesty, I don't think that there should be one single file on my PC that I do not know about or have access to myself.

My computer right?

Yeah, it's not like they built it using XNA, which restricts developers to only use XInput-based gamepads (99% of the time this means the 360 pad) because Microsoft refuses to acknowledge DirectInput even exists anymore.

Whoopsie!

While there are open-source implementations, I don't think they can be used with paid software.

Okay, can we all agree that the use of M$ as an abbreviation is childish and stupid and promise never to use it again?

Thanks.

Not trying to be "that guy" but honestly a 360 pad is pretty much essential for PC gaming these days. I can't imagine playing these indie platformers and games like Batman Arkham Asylum and Assassin's Creed without one.

On the grander topic: I think there is a point where a publisher or developer could be so callous and deceiving with the gaming community that pirating their game is morally justified, along with some kind of letter of notice. I'm not sure any game yet has reached that point yet though. I am sure some would make a case for games that require a persistent online connection to play singleplayer.

You realize Microsoft doesn't give a damn about software sales on Windows because they don't make money off of them, right?

Stop thinking they give a shit.

I don't have anyone to impress and it's shorter to type than 'MicroSucks" The problem is that if Microsoft becomes the only compatible game pad for the PC - it's going to put a shit load of really good hardware manufacturers out of business and i really hate the 360 game pad design anyway - it's only one step better than the old Game Cube controller with it's one big green Fisher Price button. Well see, that's another thing. Microsoft did a damn good job with Windows XP but I'm hearing so much complaining that Win 7 just totally sucks with most games made before 2009 - why couldn't they just put all their effort into improving the next OS?

How is it they don't make anything from their office and OS products?

I don't want to see Microsoft sink but they've really been taking a big shit in my gaming hobby for years now.

They stopped caring about PC games the moment they released the original XBox. There's no money for them on PC gaming. It's all consoles, where they get a cut of everything in their little closed and closely controlled platform.

Windows 7 isn't as bad as a lot of people say... most of the issues are related to them abandoning functions used by earlier versions of DirectX (DirectInput, DirectSound) or restricting direct hardware access by software.

Microsoft sinked years ago.

Well, personally I think it's the best gamepad I have ever used, but I realize that is subjective. Most people I know agree with me though.

In any case I do agree that having one gamepad to rule them all is kind of against the nature of PC gaming, but I think most people are okay with it because it adds a sense of stability and ease of use. Same thing could be said for a lot of things lately, like auto-patching or account-based ownership... ease of use wins out against freedom to choose. Shit, that's why consoles are more popular.

I don't have an Xbox thus an Xbox controller. I however do have a great controller I feel comfortable using. It's a bigass controller with a tons of buttons. So why exactly do I need to buy an Xbox controller to play a PC game? Not ease of use; I can use mine easily.

I've got 3 pads (4 with THIS) and every time a developer goes "360 pad only" I send curses on their backside.
And we're unlikely to get PS3 pad to fully function, or anything with many pressure-sensitive keys for that matter, because MS has hardcoded the maximum number of axes.

Well, for once I think that the 360's pad is extremely comfortable and I've used tens of different ones in my life. It's biggest problem lies a in crappy d-pad which disqualifies it from playing anything that requires precise input from that (fighters mainly). Other than that it's close to being perfect.

Second of all, I don't really understand all of the hate aimed at Microsoft. Windows 7 is vastly superior in almost every way to it's predecessors and clinging to XP is just silly. Sure it broke some older things but then again XP did the same. I agree that Vista was a piece of turd though I firmly believe that most of its problems were connected with overestimated capabilities of computers in it's time and thus way too steep system requirements. DX10 not being directly compatible with DX9 also made the problem more complicated.

Developers that don't play fair are fair game.

On the 360 issue, I have one and I find it somewhat more comfortable than my PS3 controller. But I totally understand people being pissed when they can't use their perfectly good controller on some game just cause it's not a 360 one. There are some cool controllers out there and it's a shame you can't always use them.

But in honesty by now you should expect it. Simply because most games that play better with a controller are developed for the Xbox 360 and then just ported over. And that comes with a lot of other issues, not just the controller one. Uncool, and you can always vote with your wallet when it comes to poor ports. So if it bothers you then make sure you do just that.

This pretty much sums it up. ^

I have a Logitech Dual Action that I paid roughly thirty NZD for and it has been awesome for entirely everything unless the game was intentionally programmed to go out of its way to ignore or disable it.