I don't think it was "changed just enough to get past courts." The face hugger and the head crab, while similar, are clearly different. I mean, by your logic, the face huggers shouldn't have any special copyright protection, because they're clearly inspired by a couple natural parasites.

It's absolutely the customers. If the customers don't bend over and take it constantly and with pleasure, they'd stop using DRM.

and Runic goes bankrupt if nobody buy their product, that's not the solution.

i don't support companies which have heavy DRM or uses multiples DRM layers, or DRM like GFWL. i stopped to buy any games from EA, Ubisoft for example (except those on GOG)

Between the one used by Runic and those above , there's a large marging.

it's your choice to not support them, but don't come here and give lessons, that's not a good idea either.

And btw i have no pleasure with DRM, i have experienced too much stupid ones, to know when a DRM is a real problem and when it' doesn't. I don't have any problem with the one used in Torchliight II. (i mean technically).

The only possible issue is the 10 installtions limit allowed (which can be reseted), that's really the only stupid thing inside.

Considering that the head crabs are themselves a reference to the face huggers, I don't see why the face crabs wouldn't require a license and the pets that reference both in TL2 would. And why Valve would get all the royalties rather than having to share them with the designers that created the very similar face huggers.

And no, that's not my logic at all.

Parodies and references generally have a different status than other creations. Whether or not there's something vaguely similar in the real world isn't the issue. Who would have legal standing to bring it to court and whom would they have to pay?

gog, here's a request, let me delete my message!

Now what's wrong with vampires? I come from the country of vampires. They're ok as long as you don't taunt them with blood.

I *think* I get your point now. The difference is that, while head crabs may have taken some inspiration from face huggers, original work has already gone in. However, the head crab in TL2 is literally the Headcrab from Half-Life. It's equivalent to including Gordon Freeman as a player character; Valve owns the IP rights, so Valve has to approve what's done with the character. The pet Headcrab in T2 *might* get away with fair use, but there's also the fact that Runic profits from using the Headcrab to consider (indicated by specifically mentioning it in marketing material).

In terms of the 'based on real life' argument, the point I was driving at wasn't that someone could sue on behalf of nature, it's that something based on nature couldn't be copyrighted in the first place, so no one could really claim royalties/profit off of it. But that's a moot point because I misunderstood what you were trying to say.

Welcome to the world of regional pricing. Europe is paying 25% more. There it is €4.99 - roughly $6

One of the reason why many of us prefer. (Nearly) No regional pricing.

So, if you use Windows right here right now, you're a hypocrite. And indeed you're using it, since GOG doesn't have Linux copies. Thanks for being hypocrite.


And GOG is the same. =\

I can respect that, however when I think about the pricing of games my mind has great difficulty seeing how game pricing is or should be treated any differently than the price of cars, fresh drinking water, electricity, blue jeans, milk, eggs, pineapple, concrete blocks, hard disks, potatoes or anything else. None of those items all have a single price in a single global currency worldwide and nobody seems to ever seem concerned about that that I've observed personally. I'm all for the idea of "fairness" personally but I can't even begin to think of a single algorithm to define exactly what "fair" means as there are so many variables that vary from country to country, region to region and even person to person's situation.

I've said it in the GOG forums before but just repeating it briefly here - when it comes to the price I am being offered for a product I personally only care what the price is that is being offered to me and whether I think the product has value that meets or exceeds that price for myself. If I am offered product XYZ for $5 and I think "I believe I will get at least $5 of value out of that product and that is a good deal" then I might buy it, and if I think that the product is overpriced at that price I just wont buy it. If someone else in the world is told their price is $10 or $20, that is possibly unfair but I don't really know that for sure. Maybe the average wage in that other place in the world is double or quadruple what it is where I am. Maybe it is terrible, I don't know and it doesn't change the situation being offered to me personally. Maybe I am told my price is $20 but someone else elsewhere is told they only have to pay $10 or $5. Again, I must ask myself "will I get $20 of value from this, and is it a good deal to me for that price with my income and situation in my country?" and if the answer is "yes" then I might buy it, and if the answer is "no" or I think it isn't a great deal at $20 (regardless of the price someone else is offered), then I wont buy it. Either way, whether someone else pays more or less - what they do or don't do or what they're offered better or worse has no effect on the deal on my table. I'm not jealous or angry or upset about the fact someone else might be asked to pay more for the product or less for the product whether it is a pair of jeans, a bag of potatoes, a box of kleenex, running shoes, or a game from GOG or Steam. It's all the same to me, I either like the price I am offered and think the product is a value to me at that price and possibly buy it, or I don't think so and I don't buy it.

I'm not in any way suggesting that everyone in the world should see it the way I do. Everyone has their own feelings about it which are neither right nor wrong but just for them, and they're free to think or wish for what they'd like to have and express themselves about it too. I just find it easier to see things for the way they are and decide if it is of value to me or not and either spend my money or not and not be concerned about what kind of deal or lack of deal someone else might be getting better or worse than me because the whole world is "unfair" for the most part and those aren't the type of thoughts I prefer to occupy time and space in my mind personally.

For games, more and more I am setting a maximum price in USD (and I'm Canadian) of which I'm willing to pay for them, and if they go on sale below that price then it is a deal for me and I might decide to buy it. If they don't, then I probably wont. If the prices in North America were unfairly doubled or tripled overnight so to speak, it would not be the most wonderful thing in the world but it wouldn't affect how much money I spend on a given game. It might take longer for a game to drop below the maximum price threshold I set in stone for the given game which I wont increase due to some regional price increase that might be in affect. I'll simply end up buying less games because less games will meet the price point I choose as fair. I set my own fair pricing. What I don't have control over however is whether or not a game will ever reach the price I set, and if so when that might be - but I'm ok with that too.

Just my own personal situation. I'm sure others are in a similar situation or feel similarly about it and I'm sure others are in a much different situation and feel quite different. Either way at the end of the day the prices are affected probably the most by what people are willing to accept and go ahead and spend I imagine. I just wont spend money at all if I think the price is unfair and it is something not required for survival.

because they are clearly not based on the face huger, they are too different, There are almost none similarities between them.
Vote for it here!
http://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/delete_own_forum_post

Si eu vin din aceeasi tara, doar ca m-am relocat :)

I just fired up Torchlight II to refresh my memory on how multiplayer works and it does indeed have LAN multiplayer mode that works offline, which theoretically could be used over a VPN as well if someone didn't want to use the central Runic servers of if they were to go offline in the future, so that's nice to have at least. To do regular multiplayer online though does require a free Runic account login pretty much the same type of thing as most video games have these days whether the matchmaking service is completely ran by the developer or publisher, or some 3rd party service like Gamespy. There does not appear to be a direct-host method of connecting, however LAN+VPN can work around that.

So while not optimal, it doesn't appear to be something that automatically becomes unplayable (single or multi-player) if Runic goes belly up and their servers completely die. Not sure about the Steam side of things with the game, I'd have to try to play it offline to find out and I'm lazy right now. ;)

Ok to vote for it of course but there are some technical problems with allowing that, such as people quoting previous posts in their own posts and the original message vanishing both removing the message, leaving a gap in the post numbering with people wondering where the missing post went or why they can't see it, and also the hyperlink that appears in quotes would break because the post is no longer there.

The dead links could not easily be fixed because they could appear anywhere in the forums on any posts, or even on other websites linking directly to a specific comment. I doubt GOG would implement this personally if for no other reason than the confusion some people would have when links don't work anymore and they get a 404 page or some other failure mode. Plus, as people can quote others, whatever they said can still be preserved in someone else's post defeating the purpose of being able to delete something anyway really. Then people would want the ability to retroactively delete things they said from people quoting them, and well.. it all goes downhill from there IMHO. :)

Really comes down to "don't post things on the public Internet that you don't want permanently showing up 20 years later when you're running for president" pretty much. But... by all means... vote away into the big blue abyss... :)

As general i hope it will. But personally I somehow like Torchlight better then 2nd one :) Not sure why really tho :)

It does as soon as you need to reinstall, since it requires activation on installation.