What no Wal - Mart near you now that is strange!

#4 is right. There is no Wall-Mart in the Netherlands, or at least not anywhere near I live. I've looked for this game in local stores and they didn't have it, so I bought it from the site. But does it matter, really? The point is that I bought it, and probably wouldn't have done so if I hadn't pirated it first.

Not that the lack of copy protection encouraged me to pirate it, as the poll option did suggest. Even for the best protected software there are cracks available, so it's not even an issue for those that know where to look (and let's be honest, you don't have to look hard for stuff like that). In fact if a company claims that it's software protection is "uncrackable" it just encourages people to pirate it more than those that are unprotected, just because most crackers love a challenge like that.

So personally I wouldn't have cared if GalCiv2 has the best copy protection ever or none at all, when looking at it from that point of view. What I do like is that I can play without the CD without having to bother with No-CD patches. So in my opinion no protection is a Good Thing.

Some people think the Stardock team are morons, they think Stardock don't know what's going on.

Are you kidding? If anything, they are genius. (genii?) If the rest of the market doesn't understand it, it is their loss, and their customer's loss. (Loss? For the company? For the customer? I'll explain below.)

Stardock has an extremely successful model which actually turns piracy into yet another sales channel. Their game upgrade / registration process (further fueled by Stardock's reputation for after-sales upgrades and enhancements) funnels illegitimate copies back into sales. And in a way that doesn't run over the customer (compare/contrast: RIAA). People won't buy the product for some altruistic motive or "to do what is right". Owners of illegitimate copies want the goods. They want the upgrades and the enhancements to the game that everyone else is getting. And with the regular updates, it is very difficult and time consuming and unreliable for most people to do that with pirated copies.

These Stardock guys are ahead of the curve. Without actually saying it, they (unofficially... wink and a nod, you know) want pirated copies because it only means more sales! Not indirectly... directly.

That's a win for them (real sales) and a win for the consumer (no DRM). Stardock has the new model for successful game sales. Too bad they didn't patent it!

I don't cry for the games industry... games have been getting lower and lower quality as time goes on, or they directly copy hit games because they cannot come up with fun games themselves. Galciv2 copies a lot of things from civilization 3 and 4 for example.

Calm down and don't be so incredible mad at this because if it wern't for games there would be no U.S. Industry

I'm going off topic to explain.