The big issue for LAN gamers is that big grey area of copyright: multiple installs. Over recent years this issue has got sorta out of hand, but as much as the copyright jockeys are generally being asshats about it, they do have valid points.

What am I on about? Okay, you buy a copy of a game. You can play on one PC fine. Then you want to play your brother or something, on a network game between his laptop and your PC. But you can’t, you need another copy of the game. Is this reasonable?

In short, no.

There are some valid reasons why you are being prevented, and self-righteous trolls will bemoan them to stem the endless tide of whining CD-Key scroungers. But there is no excuse for this, because a number of games have comprimised beautifully. It is a simple case of laziness, and the neglect of network gamers in fear of the unscrupulous online pirates.

Some Rubbish Excuses

“If someone else wants to play, they should buy their own copy.”

– Bull-headed bullshit, from someone who has either done this and thinks that therefore that makes it right, or who is terrified someone somewhere might be getting for free what they have paid for.

“You only bought one game. You can’t buy a single mars bar and let everyone eat one.”

– If someone comes to my house to play Smash Bros Brawl, they don’t have to pay for their own copy. They just pick up a controller and join in. Yet if we want to play Empire together, they have to buy a copy to join in. So it’s on a different screen; well so what? There is still no technical limitation to why it can’t be done with one copy, so the one-physical-copy argument is a moot point because software is not a fucking mars bar. In the RARE event that there is one physical object that you obviously need one for each, I would buy one for each because that’s the only way it could be done. What we object to, is buying multiple copies simply to satisfy corporate neuroticism.

“It makes the game easier to copy, and people could play it for free”

– The fact of the matter is, you don’t need to give people a whole new licence full game. Saying that only proves how little one has thought the problem through. There are a number of alternatives that have been done in the past: such as Total Annihilation’s “multiplayer spawn” install, which prevented you from playing the single player or hosting a game. The Battlefield games were totally cool with you using one of the many install CDs to run the game, allowing you to have a cosy LAN of up to 4 with the 1942 Anthology version. BF2 recently removed the disc-check altogether.

“Stop being such a cheapskate and just buy it!”

– It actually works out quite expensive to be buying games not just for yourself, but for everyone that cames over to play them. I don’t believe games to be overpriced as most people do; not PC games anyway. But you try convincing people to come over for a network party, weird as that already sounds, and then add “oh by the way, you need to buy these games”. And thus dies the LAN revolution. And the thing is, not everyone is even convinced they want to play this game you love in the first place. And even then, they might not care for the main singleplayer, or want to play it at home, or even own their own computer. Should the inverse of all this be true, and they love the game and want to play it at home, they will probably want their own copy anyway. However, not playing it on LAN because it is an ass-monkey about CD Keys is sure to resign it to the bargain bin for all involved. I know I have shelved several due to this.

HALL OF SHAME

Top five worst games for LAN of all time:

1. ARMA : Armed Assualt – Due to possibly the lamest copy protection mechanism ever, I wouldn’t trust this one even if I’d bought everyone their own copy. Don’t buy it for LAN, ever.
2. Neverwinter Nights 2 – I got this expecting the kind of experience of Baldurs Gate and Icewind Dale. Instead, you all need Bioware accounts and unique CD Keys. Man, forget THAT noise. The search for a good LAN RPG continues..
3. Steam – Not a game, but a sure-fire way of making it incredibly frustrating to LAN anything. The fact that Empire Total War is the only Steam game I have bought shows that it takes a lot for me to go near this thing.
4. Starcraft 2 – Yet to be released, but if it carries on arrogantly proclaiming “no LAN support” as though we’ll all still buy it like little bitches, I look forward to ignoring it completely.
5. Command & Conquer Decade – A pack of great games, many great multiplayer games, let down by the fact that they relied on IPX, which isn’t used from Vista onwards. Surely Westwood could have fashioned a TCP/IP wrapper of some sort? Perhaps, perhaps not.