Funcom No Longer Making Offline Games

1up has commentary from Funcom, makers of games such as Anarchy Online, Dreamfall, and Longest Journey. The developer has taken the drastic step of deciding to cease creation of games without an online component. The company's CEO pins the blame squarely on game piracy. "Several stats he listed were startling if ... true, including that 200,000 illegal copies of Dreamfall had been downloaded before the game was even released and anywhere from three to ten copies of any PC game are pirated for each one sold. Adventure Gamers suggests that future offline games such as Dreamfall Chapters may require an active internet connection to prove authenticity when you play, similar to how Steam works."

There is a demo

[Anonymous Coward]

The first link on the navigation bar on the official Dreamfall [dreamfall.com] webpage says "free trial". You can supposedly download the game as a bittorrent, and if you decide to purchase it, you just need to unlock it. (I haven't tried. I'd really like to, but I don't have a computer with a good enough graphics card.)

Re:Good for them.

[ucblockhead]

I've downloaded a number of cracked games. In every single case, it was because the goddamn copy protection on a game I purchased with real money refused to find the valid CD that was sitting in the drive. Usually I only did it after spending frustrated hours with "support" trying to get a fix.