Very nice offers on Direct2Drive, pity I can't use them

ET3D

The Direct2Driver 5 year celebration really has some nice game in there. This week the US site has Company of Heroes, World in Conflict, Supreme Commander each for $5. The UK site has Mirror's Edge for 5 pounds. Unfortunately I'm neither in NA nor the EU, so can't buy any of them, as was the problem in previous weeks.

comp_ali

Yeah , that's mean .

__________________

DJ BIG T

thats just wrong man..

__________________

BlueMak

Not NA or EU? Dude where are you? (joke)

What is the DRM situation with D2D now-days?

__________________

The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

pigdog

Well I'm in the wonderful land of Oz (Australia) and can't download from either the UK or the US D2D sites. Very frustrating.

On another, though related, note; This is the sort of situation that might well see some people decide to go and pirate. When they see people being able to buy such excellent titles for $5 - $10, but only if they live in the US or EU, the less noble might decide that it's only fair that they go the Pirate Bay route, rather than pay anything up to $90 and more for some of these titles in places like Australia.

Don't get me wrong, I don't condone Piracy in any way, shape or form. If devs and publishers don't make the cash on PC releases, then they will move even more games to console only release.

But it's almost like they are setting themselves up for a fall when they create such radically different release models in different parts of the world. Release models that almost seem to punish some regions over others.

__________________

Zardon

I always find their download speeds absolutely shockingly slow (like 5mbit max). the EA store and steam are great and can often max out my 50mbit line.

BlueMak

Totally. But at least you guys have Xbox/Windows Live. If you are in Greece (or any other number of countries) you can't have such an account. Try to purchase anything, try to even get a Gold account (where you basically give them even more money). No, they won't take it. You have to not have a greek account/live in Greece. Yes, there are ways to work around it, that's why many thousand of greeks have accounts with fake addresses etc, but when one of the good points about buying a Xbox 360 is the whole Live experience, and you can't legally get it here, I guess why pirated games are such a good business here.

You might want to try other sources for games, online Gamersgate, but for retail packaging, Play.com sends anywhere in the world, just make sure you do not have the pound sterling as a currency in the top right corner before you add things in your basket.

__________________

The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

ET3D

I order my Wii games from TheHut.com: online shop | Cheap DVDs, Blu-ray, Games | Free UK delivery, a UK site that ships worldwide. There are occasionally some pretty good prices there. For example in PC games, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky currently costs £4.73 and Crysis - Classics Edition is £6.73. Delivery is an additional £2.35 per item, which is higher that it used to be, but even with it you're paying less than on Steam in these cases.

BlueMak

I am going to take the chance. Red Alert 3 + Red Alert Uprising + Battlestations Pacific for £15 total. I mean, damn!
I was going to also get Supreme Commander Gold, but it's UK+NA only so it doesn't let me.
I won't notice the low download speed because for the last few days my internet connection is crawling.

__________________

The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

BlueMak

I set for download (through their download manager program) 2 of the games, the RA3 ones.
That was 10 hours ago. I am half way through the first game. Speeds of 40-50kb/s. That's from half to 1/4 of my (this week) average speed. Very slow. Even from Steam I had 4 times the speed 2 days ago.
Zardon, you were not kidding, this is one slow ass speed. If I leave it it will take another 10-12 hours to finish just the first one.

__________________

The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

Zardon

Yes its shocking. I remember I was asked to give feedback on the online Warhammer game and they sent me a download link to direct2drive and I gave up. my line is 50mbit which means I can get files at around 6.4mb a second. I was getting 85k and it said it would take several days to get it.

In the end I found it on newsgroups, got it there in 25 minutes and used the serial code they sent. I wouldn't go near it again.

The EA store is very capable as they clearly have put in the money required to offer good speeds for the public - steam are also impressive, although it can fluctuate wildly during peak US time and depending on which server you get, sometimes logging out and back in, moves your download to another of their servers.

I will try gamersgate at some stage, only big player I haven't tried yet.

BlueMak

I don't know for how long, but my internet connection speed is up to speed (sorry) now. Random files from another site at about 1.4MB/s. Without downloading anything else, the D2D speed is way way way up to 60KB/s!!!!!!!! *sigh*

__________________

The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

BlueMak

I am still downloading the first game. I am pretty sure I will surpass the 24 hours. They should be ashamed.

__________________

The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

BlueMak

About 24 hours in, still downloading the first game of the three. It says time remaining 15-29 hours...aosikej$"£!"£eqnwdipon3242ioh32on;ikjdsl

Are their servers optimised C64s?

__________________

The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

Zardon

yeah its quite shocking, especially for what appears to be a very successful company. They need to start spending more money on their bandwidth.

BlueMak

I wonder if they are trying to save money there for their sales lol.

1GB to go and according to it, about 7 to 19 hours for it.

Good thing I started a new game of Two Worlds lol.

__________________

The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

BlueMak

I think I was too harsh. The first game finished, after 26-27 hours. That's normal, right?

__________________

The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

Zardon

longer than a day to get a game? yeah, ill pass.

BlueMak

Oh, after installing RA3 I read the readme file and it said version 1.0.0. So, I checked the D2D site for a patch and it didn't have any. Somewhere in the support section it said that all D2D games require special patches and that new downloads have these patches already applied to them.
It didn't. I ran the game, and after a few screens with everything twitching (I get this will all new games that are first run on a non native resolution) I received a message that...something, I changed resolution and I received the message again (from RA3) that there is a new patch out, I accepted to download the patch and all was fine.
The patch was about 200-270MB (I don't remember) and it downloaded it in a few min. I thanked the Gods that I didn't have to download it from D2D and the game runs fine.
What surprised me was that I didn't get any extra requests to connect online (D2D DRM?), but I am fine with it.

__________________

The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others(Bertrand Russell)"You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil,You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them." - Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis
This is slavery, not to speak one's thought. [Euripides-The Phoenician Women (c.411-409 B.C.)] http://www.macedonia.info/FALLACIESANDFACTS.htm Sic semper tyrannis.

pigdog

Well, I'll quit my bitching about region blocking right now. I'd rather spend the extra bucks on the games, rather than on the therapy sessions that I'd surely need after going through what sounds like an incredibly tortuos experience.

And I agree; there is simply no excuse for such crappy bandwidth. I'm not going to reward that sort of performance.

__________________