The Moving to a New Computer Rant

[Raptisoft]

Boy, am I pissed. In the past three years, I've purchased some $5000 worth of rendering software and plugins, most of them for 3DSMax, like FinalToon, Shag-Hair and all that good stuff.

So, I moved my whole rendering setup to a new machine. Right now, only about two of my plugins work, because they all want to be "reauthorized" and "reactivated." When I try to let them do so, they come back saying they can't, because they're already activated elsewhere.

This is a real problem for me. I now have five outstanding e-mails to various support centers, all unanswered for at least 24 hours, asking them how the heck I unauthorize on one machine, and reauthorize on another, since "unauthorize" isn't an option anywhere, and I can't authorize on a new machine until it that's been done. Or something, because the inscrutable messages on all my "authorization denied" requests are along the lines of "couldn't authorize. Contact support."

* * *

Now here's why this really drives me crazy. A little online searching turns up cracks for all but one of the plugins I'm currently wrestling with. Isn't that great? Now, I can remain honest, and wait x hours/days/weeks to get myself up and running again, or I can encourage hackers by downloading their cracks for products I've already paid for, and get up and running immediately.

But here's the irony of this situation: The only person inconvenienced in this "authorize" schemes is ME, the paying customer! If I had downloaded cracked copies instead, I'd be up and running already! The hackers aren't inconvenienced... the crack downloaders aren't inconvenienced... just me! It's not enough that I pay $400 for a hair plugin-- I also must beg an audience of the king to ask him to grant me another use of the product?

As you can probably tell, I'm pretty hot about this right now. I mean, I'm an indie game developer-- the crackers hit me too. Maybe if these plugin people have to price their product so high that a black market economy would make them unviable, they're in the wrong business. I mean, I'm an indie game maker. When I release a game, it's cracked in days, sometimes hours, and yet I still maintain a profit margin. And when someone buys my product, they own it, no questions asked!

Just felt like ranting. Three days since getting a new computer and I'm still not ready to move my whole dev apparatus to it because of these delays.

[Jack Norton]

Yeah this sucks!!
This is really a loophole... protection exist because of pirates, but then legitimate customers are pissed because of protection and start to think "next time won't buy it original!"... :(

[Ricardo C]

Crack the suckers. What would happen if one of the developers went belly-up and you were left with a legally purchased but unusable piece of software?

[Raptisoft]

Only problem is, I'm terrified of cracks. Whether justified or not, I've been successfully implanted with the notion that "if you download a crack, it's actually an exe that deletes all the files on your computer."

See, 3dsmax kinda does it well... it has this license exporting utility that lets you dump a license to another machine.

[Reactor]

I had a long discussion with the developers of Zbrush back when I purchased it, and they pretty much agreed the authentication system was a waste of time because their program got cracked anyway. Yet, they still use it. I also just heard of a plugin (a good one for a particular program) that no longer works for people, because the company stopped supporting it. It can now no longer be authenticated.

Be my guest, rant away!

[Savant]

Most developers end up including copy protection because their publisher insists on it. The developers know it doesn't do a whole lot but the publishers are in control so...

[Robert Cummings]

I use cracks for my games all the time simply because I don't want the CD in there. I'm happy to crack my stuff cos I paid for it. Why even bother telling us? it's yours, crack the shitty thing and be done with it.

You paid for it, just use it.

I think all this copy protection is just for in-house basically. It is actually a necessary evil because (and I know this from personal experience) even big companies often have more seats than they should. Not saying it's good, but it's enough justification for the protection to exist in this particular market.

[Mike Boeh]

So what kind of notebook did you eventually get?

[Raptisoft]

I went with Pentium M. It actually seems to be as fast as the fast ghz P4, but that might be just because it has 2x the memory.

[cliffski]

and because there is no software on it yet :D

[Abscissa]

Developers who prevent their paying customers from using what they already bought DESERVE to get cracked. Such developers are, almost literally, nothing more than a common theif.

[Total Eclipse]

You've already done the legitimate thing, which is paying for the software. Now nobody could tell you anything about cracking it.

At my office we have bought all programs as well as Windows XP Professional.

Thing is, that if I upgrade a machine with a new graphics card or processor I'm asked to re-activate Windows (which of course sucks, because I ran out of online activations and I had to use the phone activation facility, which takes around 10' to complete).

So, now, when I buy a new machine for the office, buy a copy of Windows and then install a cracked copy on the PC, to avoid stupid re-activations.

I say crack the programs and see what happens (unfortunately some cracks may not be perfect and cause your programs to freeze or misbehave in general).

[Daniel]

Agree, it's crappy when legit SW feels more crippled than pirated.

Another example is DVD movies.
I often rip my purchased DVD:s, run them through IfoEdit and burn them again to get rid of all annoying warning screens and User Option Prohibitions (such as not beeing able to pause, skip chapters, change subtitles etc during play).

[Diragor]

Amen. I use a cracked copy of Windows XP Pro for two reasons:

1) XP doesn't include drivers for my network card so I have to use the phone to activate my legit copy. The cracked copy has no activation.
2) My cracked copy has SP2 slipstreamed in.