baltar wrote on Jan 25, 2012, 14:43:
First, The box has Paradox's logo on it, and I see it before I see the title when I launch the game. If this was being argued in a court of law, they would say "any reasonable person would assume Paradox had their hands in it." Regardless of the internal politics inside the company as to who's running what.
It's obvious that you have no idea of how things work when it comes to development and publishing. Contracts between publishers and developers vary wildly, and sometimes developers have more power than the publisher on a given title (and even the IP). Sometimes it's the developer's call (not the publisher's) to add some sort of DRM to their product. That's how things go, as anyone with a minimal knowledge of how the market works would tell you.
baltar wrote on Jan 25, 2012, 14:43:
Secondly, If I was CEO of that company, I would say "DRM free or GTFO." none of this stupidity where they dev a game and some other publisher dictates a DRM on it especially when Paradox is easily capable of self publishing their own developed games.
Well, you're not the CEO of that company (thankfully). And you got it backwards - all titles with DRM on that short list of mine were PUBLISHED by Paradox (not developed), and the DEVELOPER dictated DRM, not the publisher (Paradox). You really don't get the whole "fact checking" thing, do you?
baltar wrote on Jan 25, 2012, 14:43:
Third, and this goes for everyone on the thread, these companies pull garbage such as run a bunch of their businesses overseas, hire developers in India, take advantage of tax laws outside of the USA. They are using globalization to their maximum effect, and yet they would put in artificial barriers to block customers that try to import their games so the rest of us can't do it? Does that sound right?
Paradox does not run a bunch of their business overseas, even if they signed developers from the USA, Sweden, Russia and Brazil. They don't take advantage of tax laws outside of the USA more than any other legitimate company (and, for the record, the laws of the USA mean little to them, since they're on Sweden - and I guess publishing a US developer like Kerberos Studios would count as "overseas"?). They are not exploiting their developers (as any of the developer studios will be glad to tell you) or their users. As for the "artificial barriers" you mention, it's the way the industry works today. It's something difficult to change, unless MANY publishers are willing to do so. So take that into account.