I can't bloody believe this!

I accidently dropped my CD, causing some light scratching on one part of it. Nothing deep at all, I have five year old CDs which are much worse, and work fine.

However, this was apparently enough to trigger the copy protection of the game! My DVD drive doesn't sound good at all when I launch the game, and when I eject the CD after awhile (since Windows basically stalls), an "Illegal copy detected" message pops up.

The thing is, I can install the game just fine! I tried it a couple of times. There's nothing wrong with either installing, or browsing the CD. It seems as it's just the copy protection which freaks out.

What can I do?

You can allways get yourself a "no cd fix" patch (look in the usual places ) That's what I've done, because my DVD player doesn't like the cd protection either. It can take up to a minute to start, with the dvd player spining like mad.

On a similar note, and pardon my language:

In a play-by-email-ish game like this, CD-style copy protection is bloody irritating, since I usually play some turns for 10 minutes, does something else with my cd-player for the next hour or two and then have to re-insert the CD again to reply to new turns.

It's OK with CD-style copy protection for games that take a straight hour or two to play, but the frequent cd-swapping has been getting so much on my nerves lately that... argh!

Couldn't the CD check be moved so that it doesn't check as long as the player plays networked multiplayer (since we already have the CD-key to check that part)? I.e. it only kicks in when the player starts up a single player or hotseat game.

I know the developers are not to blame, but the publishers. Just needed to vent my frustration.

(yeah, yeah, I'll get a crack for the game and shut up)

Hah!

I just realized that I have never started Massive Assault with a CD!

All I've ever done is play the Massive Assault Network beta, and then installed the CD game when it finally arrived, but I never actually started it.

I gave it a minute now, and it actually started, so I don't think it has anything to do with me scratching the disc (I'll make sure that is the case when my friend's copy arrive).

So, the copy protection dislikes my DVD. But, more importantly, I don't like the sound the DVD drive is making when I put the CD in, so my question is now:

Are you messing with my drive? Can my DVD drive be damaged by this silly copy protection?

Ok, I feel that I must rant a bit as well:

I simply loathe when honest, paying customers get screwed, and the pirates get the easy way out!

People here mentioned cracks, and I've seen this phenomenon in other forums as well. Cracking a game apparently makes it 1) boot without the need for the CD and 2) makes it load faster!

Great! I bought the game and now need to wait a whole minute while my DVD drive eats up my CD.

It was the same with the last music album I bought. It was copy protected, so when I wanted to put it on my mp3 player, I couldn't do it!

The only way was actually to get the album in mp3 format already, from a friend who downloaded it from the internet. And he didn't pay for it!

So, that is the state of business today?

Those who pay get into trouble, and those who don't pay get off easy?

Great message the companies today are sending.

Don't be an idiot. A burglar can smash your window, but you still lock it. Same for your door. Yes, you have to go through thw MASSIVE inconvinience of using a key in the door isntead of just the handle, but that's the world.

I can't believe how pathetic this is. You make it sound like reach for a CD and putting it in the drive is something huge challenge. If that really is the hardest element of your lives right now, then I'd love to be you.

Have you never lent a game of yours to someone? I suspect you have, which would make your a pirate, and in turn leads to this sort of copy protection intended to defeat the average pirate (i.e. someone who lends the game out). As long as games on the PC install to the HD, protection of some sort will always exist just to make it that bit harder for someone to buy one copy, then lend it to their twenty friends.

If you're going to argue against this sort of protection, and there are some arguments against it, you could at least make them sensible arguments AND take them up with the people who request the protection, the publisher.

Massive Assault Network (MAN) is a good solution of this problem, so you can play internet-games without CD. MA players were notified about great discount for convertion from MA to MAN.

I know. MAN is on my Things-To-Buy-When-I-Get-A-Job-Again list. Nice to hear there is no needless CD protection on it.

(PS: Just in case someone misunderstood me: I do not find the copy protection bad in itself, just that it wasn't neccessary for the internet-play part of the game.)