Local multiplayer with one license allowed?
GaelicVigil
Member Posts: 111
I have to admit, when I heard that Baldur's Gate enhanced would have a new and improved, cross-platform, multiplayer system, I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, being able to play with your buddy sounds like it will be far easier than before, but on the other hand, Baldur's Gate only really worked as a single player game.
What I mean is that games based on the Infinity Engine were designed to be paused frequently and played at a slow, methodical pace. Baldur's Gate is the anti-Diablo, where running into a pack of enemies will get you killed fast. If you or your friend are pause happy, combat and game-play in general could become a serious irritation, especially if one of you went off by yourself to explore. Playing over long-distances magnified this problem because trying to adopt of method of meticulous teamwork would just drag on the flow of the game.
On the other hand, this game system worked pretty well when played cooperatively, locally in the same room, or house and/or within talking distance. Playing multiplayer like this feels kind of like a pen & paper session where tactical decisions can be made in real time and the story can be advanced in unison together.
Granted, there will likely be support for voIP using voice communication applications for this game, but I still feel like playing side-by-side with each other is the superior way of playing this game. My question is, do I really have to purchase a copy of this game for each person in my household to play multiplayer games? If I want my son or wife to be able to hop onboard and play locally, it seems kind of painful to have to buy multiple copies. In 2012, where DRM has become more tight than ever, it may sound absurd to ask this, but the original Baldur's Gate game did in fact allow one copy to be played over a LAN in the same household.
What I mean is that games based on the Infinity Engine were designed to be paused frequently and played at a slow, methodical pace. Baldur's Gate is the anti-Diablo, where running into a pack of enemies will get you killed fast. If you or your friend are pause happy, combat and game-play in general could become a serious irritation, especially if one of you went off by yourself to explore. Playing over long-distances magnified this problem because trying to adopt of method of meticulous teamwork would just drag on the flow of the game.
On the other hand, this game system worked pretty well when played cooperatively, locally in the same room, or house and/or within talking distance. Playing multiplayer like this feels kind of like a pen & paper session where tactical decisions can be made in real time and the story can be advanced in unison together.
Granted, there will likely be support for voIP using voice communication applications for this game, but I still feel like playing side-by-side with each other is the superior way of playing this game. My question is, do I really have to purchase a copy of this game for each person in my household to play multiplayer games? If I want my son or wife to be able to hop onboard and play locally, it seems kind of painful to have to buy multiple copies. In 2012, where DRM has become more tight than ever, it may sound absurd to ask this, but the original Baldur's Gate game did in fact allow one copy to be played over a LAN in the same household.
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This makes it that much more bewildering as to why improved multiplayer would be such a high priority for the team developing BGEE. Multiplayer was barely feasable in the original game and it had little to do with interface design or connectivity. Sitting through 6 pages of text waiting for the slow reader on the other end of the country to get out of the bathroom was the problem.
Edit: Furthermore, I'm curious if this still exists in the GOG version which I made reference to above.
Why would you not want to support the makers of a product you enjoy, besides?
You may be right. I don't know if that requirement existed in the EULA or not, but I'm going to find out.
I'm not mad, Gaelic. I'm just disappointed. ;P
I'm going to go into every part of this first post to give you some options. How is playing the game with your buddy hard now? You can pick up the copy of BG and BG2 (from GoG), run BGTutu and play mutliplayer BG without any real issue. I've done 4x full multiplayer playthroughs using this method, both in a LAN and over the internet. I'm not sure that anyone who has played BG mutliplayer can say that it "only really works as a singleplayer game." It certainly is a different experience in multiplayer - the focus in multiplayer more becomes completing quests and doing completely ridiculous stuff. Obviously the focus on story and NPCs fades into the background in multiplayer BG. Additionally playing the game multiplayer is most rewarding when the players are very familiar with the game. However I say crank the speed (frame rate) forget pausing and get you some. It'll help your reflexes a little. Playing any game in a LAN is better than distance playing. So I agree with your point that BG is just better in LAN. There is always the DRM free version of BG at GoG. Alternatively you could inform the expansion designers that you would like to see a 2-pack option with a discounted per copy price. Maybe two copies for $30.
With the recent DRM we gamers had to suffer in recent years we have to put our rights as a higher priority.
Technically he is distributing copies though, since he's allowing multiple people to play concurrently the same single player game.
It comes to certainly illegal when he takes that copy and plays it at home while I'm still playing my game (in which case the game is basicly copied).
I think the baseline is: You buy the game for one person. Every other person that plays on that purchase is using a copy and thus subject to piracy laws.
In ye olden days you could easily get around this in a household by doing a full install and swapping the startup disc around, these days they're either throwing on massive DRM or (in this case) rely on your honesty. Sounds fair.
I don't see any wording whatsoever limiting the license to a single computer within the same household. In fact it says the license is good for "home use". If I have more than one computer in my "home", I assume I'm okay playing multiplayer with the same copy on both.
So there is no abuse here. Anyone who will tell you otherwise is giving their personal opinion that has nothing to do with Interplay's Terms of Use in this instance.
EULA's don't detail every possible situation. Though they do make mention of not copying the game or distributing it. What you're doing is basically enabling several people to play a single-player game concurrently with the same copy of the game.
The fact that you needed to have the CD in your drive to start up the game already indicates that they never intended people to play multi-player games using the same copy of the game.
/shrug
The EULA already covers your situation, it just doesn't detail it.