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Far Cry 3 And The Stranger In A Strange Land Online activation is all the rage these days. Yet, despite the good intentions of publishers, things always go awry.
Tipster Brendan sends word that gamers who pre-ordered Crysis through EA’s digital download system, with the promise of receiving the demo a day before everyone else, have been disappointed. According to this post on EA’s forums, there’s a problem with both the demo’s delayed activation and authentication system:
I was actually able to install it, amazingly enough, but everytime I click “play” or try to run it from the Bin32 folder, it says “The game can not start. In order to launch this game, please login to the EA Download Manager to verify ownership, then try again.” Even though, of course, I’m already logged in. How about keeping your promise and removing that final barrier so we can actually, god forbid, play the demo that’s owed to us?
Apparently, no one has been able to play the demo.
Not that it’s a huge deal, we’ll all be able to play it in less than a day. Unless the problem hasn’t been resolved…
OFFICIAL-SP Demo ISSUE thread [EA Forums, thanks Brendan]
Way back when GameTap was first announced via a series of viral websites, I was highly skeptical of the service, which at the time only had a handful of older titles that were easily available via other sources or not worth playing altogether. Since then the service has grown into a respectable game delivery platform worth of my $US 9.99 a month, and with games like Clive Barker’s Jericho coming to the service for no charge to subscribers, it’s an excellent time to be paying member. As of right now there are 989 titles available, and the company has now announced that November 15th will mark the 1000th game available on the service. They aren’t telling what game that is, but they do hint that it will be from one of their publishing partners like Eidos, or Codemasters. Head over to GameTap’s website and sign up today for only $.99 your first month. They’ve got Typing of the Dead, so it pretty much pays for itself.
Right now, Steam is free. Which is lucky, since for all its benefits, it can still be a pain in the ass! Luckier still, Valve have committed to keeping it that way (the free part, not the pain/ass part), stating that not only are they planning on keeping Steam free, they’ve got a perfectly valid reason for doing so: We will not charge for The Steam Community and its features. Never even entered our mind. Part of it is to address the fact that when folks first bought Half-Life 2, Steam didn’t offer many reasons to stick around. It didn’t do enough for customers, and it didn’t justify itself. So I suppose we’re paying off a debt now.
Awfully big of them to admit that. Well played, Valve. Valve ‘Will Not Charge’ for Community Features [1UP]
