Yea, wouldn't normally have had an interest in this type of game [GC2], but Stardock's policy on copy protection got my interest. Bought the game and found it's the most interesting game I've ever played. I finish one game and can't wait to start the next.

- Craig

I remember my first brush with GalCiv. Version 1.0 on OS/2. Someone at work brought in a pirated version and said, "Here, play this. You won't be able to put it down."

I was so amazed that I immediately went and bought it! I figured that someone who can put out this quality stuff deserves my money.

Bill

And on top of that, they are willing to make a hard choice, no multiplayer, in order to give us an amazingly solid and fun game. Personally, I did the same thing. I read a couple reviews that this game was really great but I've heard that before and didn't want to sink my money into another blackhole game. Pirated it and by the end of the day I went out and bought it.

I'm not too proud to admit it, the very first encounter I had with GC (before the Altarian expansion) was a pirated copy, I think I was able to wait 24 hours before I bought my copy. I pre-ordered AP and GC2 and as soon as I can I'll be on the DA pre-order as well.

Someone in this thread said it right, respect the gamers and they'll respect you.

I was waiting for a followup to a similar game to this (can't remember what it was now) When I found this, I was on the fence about buying it, but the lack of copy protection, and no need for a cd swung my decision (As well as the instant delivery)

You know what, it doesn't matter what other publishers do because once you start playing GC2, all your other games will just collect dust.

That's one thing about copy protection that really screws the end user. Even if you are sure you want to buy a game, the copy protection may cause the game to be un-runable on your system. That happended to me with two games I paid good money for. They simply would not authorize on my system. I had no recourse at all. Now I always check what kind of copy protection a game uses before I buy it.

I'm glad you decided to go out and pick up a retail copy of the game.  Not only is it copy-rpotection free, you're also gonna get a lot of good patches and support for "free"  The 1.2 patch added a lot of goodies, and 1.3 should have some significant AI improvements and bug fixes. 

Brad's been pretty vocal on how he views CP, or the lack of it, impacts sales and that GC2 seems to be selling great despite being wide open, which goes completely against the arguments made by major publishers.

Oh, and this game does have a demo, a darn good one with a 100 turn limit (you can complete some games in that time frame) and some limits on game settings so you can get a pretty complete game experience on a smallish map.  If you have other friends sitting on the fence, I'd point them to the "Downloads" link on the left for the demo.

You won't regret your purchase 

-Z

you cant destroy piracy, not everywhere people even have 50$ to spend on game, but surely enough in the civilized world buying original game is a salute and respect for the creators for their time spent in the office and the afterhours especialy when it comes with no cd protection in times where piracy is at its highs

I'm curious... People keep saying how this game has no piracy protection - yet, it seems it somewhat does to me.

If you want to install the patch, you need to have the registered serial number and the email it was registered to. So, it does have a slight (easy to get over, yes... but still there) version of piracy protection

Sure, there is an activation that should be made only once. But only starting from patch 1.1. And don't forget that your serial Id should be a first hand one.

But no CD required to play, no internet connexion everytime you want to play, no hidden drivers installed. And with SDC you can also archive the whole game and burn it on CD or DVD.

And the main point was that the version 1.0 was without any protection as well as the first updates.

The whole CD copy protection idea is one that really burdens the user for the sake of protecting a publisher's financial interests. Often these protection schemes are cracked within days of a game's release. There are no-cd exe files for a lot of games floating around the net, but using them caries some risk since they are cracks done by people who just like to do that sort of thing. The whole idea is really quite ridiculous and stupid.

Stardock has the correct approach. The only hassle for me is that I need to enter my serial number and connect for authorization when I load the game the first time. On a new laptop computer, I just installed GC2 from CD then applied the 1.2 patch. I only had to enter the serial once. I can run the game on all my machines without worry of having a CD with me or an internet connection. That's the way it should be.

All publishers should be using Stardock's approach to copy protection. It makes the game most enjoyable for me as a user while protecting the publisher's interests.