quote:
Originally posted by perigee:
And therein lies the problem. As long as the registration dependency exists, the game isn't plug'n'play. We'd all like to believe that PP will maintain the GG-Support server forever, but given the life expectancy of b-game companies and support for "obsolescent" products, who can say for sure?...
I had the impression that PP intended to eventually remove all vestiges of VM from its GC games. In fact, the game descriptions on the GC site explicitly state Currently the system still requires registration but this requirement will be removed once the patch is ready.
Perigee, I don't mean to beat a dead horse, but maybe we define "registration" differently. As I said originally, I never installed the VM launcher, I never signed on to the VM site, I never revealed any personal info, basically by my definition I never "registered" anything. All I did, I went and downloaded 1 file per game, installed it, and now I'm playing the games with no VM, no internet, no nothing. I don't even need the game CD to play.
The patch does not delete itself, so you have the option of saving it for later use. My apologies to Peter et al, but that's exactly what I'm doing, for the very reason that you stated; ie. who knows how long the support site will stay up? Anyway the important thing is to not share the patches with others who may or may not be pirates.
I fully understand your reason for wanting a self-contained package that doesn't rely on any web downloads or anything, but it seems to me if you save the patch on a CD-R/zip disk/whatever, and keep it with the game CD, you have a self-contained package. I really don't view these patches any different than the censorship removal patches that GC supplied for Chain, Kana, and the original Kango 1. I keep those patches around too, for any future need.
As for the line you quoted from PP, I read that to mean that the patch removes any requirement to register anything through VM. It does that as advertised. Of course I would hope that future print runs would have the patch rolled in, but I wanted these games. The patches are enough for me, they let me play with absolutely no VM crap of any kind. Personally I don't mind installing the game and then applying the patch, which adds about 2 minutes to the install process.
Like I said before, you're free to do what you wish, and if you want to wait for VM-less CD's, that's certainly your choice. I just want to make sure you're aware that the current CD + saveable patch does what you say you want it to do, and I won't say any more on the subject. Cheers!