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Joe D. Schmoe - 08 Mar 2008 05:50 GMT

I'm Outraged! Thoroughly Pissed!! But, perhaps I may also be a little
behind the times, so I thought I'd ask here.

It's been a long time since I bought a computer game online. When I
found a link pointing to a Monopoly game, for $20 I jumped and bought
it. Monopoly was always my favorite board game. I entered my
registration code and all was well.

Then I tried to show it to my daughter later while she was logged in on
the same machine. I expected I would have to re-enter my name &
registration code, but it wouldn't take. After many emails with various
entities (this program displays about six different company logos on
it) I find out the game is only good for one user! No one at any of the
companies responsible for this program could or would tell me for sure,
but either I'd have to pay another $20 for her to play or possibly the
game will only run for one user, because of the DRM used (I'd never
heard the term DRM used with software programs).

This is the first program I've ever bought that wouldn't allow more
than one user on a machine to run it. I always thought when you bought
a license to run a program it was per machine, not per user.

Is this a new trend (the last game I bought was Diablo and that was
years ago)? I'll never buy from MacGameStore again!

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Richard Maine - 08 Mar 2008 07:21 GMT

> This is the first program I've ever bought that wouldn't allow more
> than one user on a machine to run it. I always thought when you bought
> a license to run a program it was per machine, not per user.

License vary all over the place. I've seen programs, where if you had n
users who used m machines, you'd need to buy n*m licenses. I don't much
approve of such things, but that doesn't keep them from happening. If
enough people refuse to buy programs with licenses like that, then that
will keep it from happening.

There is no universal rule about what licenses have to be for. If you
thought there was such a rule, I'm sorry, but it just ain't so.

I've also seen programs (quite a few of them, actually) that just didn't
work well in multi-user environments at all for reasons having nothing
to do with licensing, but more to do with the developer never actually
thinking about the matter. Buying multiple licenses doesn't necessarily
help those.

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Richard Maine | Good judgement comes from experience;
email: last name at domain . net | experience comes from bad judgement.
domain: summertriangle | -- Mark Twain

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hoops - 09 Mar 2008 00:35 GMT

>> This is the first program I've ever bought that wouldn't allow more
>> than one user on a machine to run it. I always thought when you bought
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
> thinking about the matter. Buying multiple licenses doesn't necessarily
> help those.

When you installed the program, is it possible that it installed into
your user account > applications folder only? If it installed to the
computer's application folder, sometimes there is (sometimes) an option
to "install for all users of this machine". Of course, as mentioned
above, for $20, thay may have not coded the program to be available to
all users of the same machine.
-
Hoops

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Richard Maine - 09 Mar 2008 07:25 GMT

> >> This is the first program I've ever bought that wouldn't allow more
> >> than one user on a machine to run it. I always thought when you bought
[quoted text clipped - 11 lines]
> above, for $20, thay may have not coded the program to be available to
> all users of the same machine.

Yes, I know well about all those kinds of options. I'm talking about
software where there was no such option. In particular, it hard-wired
its install location, so there was only one set of config and data
files. That's bad enough when it is just config files, but when it is
also writeable data files, that makes it pretty impractical to share.

For example, I recall trying out a usenet reader with that problem. I'll
avoid naming it because I might misrecall which one it was... and I
think subsequent versions might have fixed that anyway.

Signature

Richard Maine | Good judgement comes from experience;
email: last name at domain . net | experience comes from bad judgement.
domain: summertriangle | -- Mark Twain

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Craig L. Stevenson - 09 Mar 2008 18:10 GMT

I didn't know you could have a ~/application folder. Installation was
drag and drop so I put the program in the top level Application folder.

I think the program just isn't coded for multiple users.

Thanks all!

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Craig L. Stevenson - 09 Mar 2008 17:26 GMT

> There is no universal rule about what licenses have to be for. If you
> thought there was such a rule, I'm sorry, but it just ain't so.

Rule, no, but convention, maybe.

> I've also seen programs (quite a few of them, actually) that just didn't
> work well in multi-user environments at all for reasons having nothing
> to do with licensing, but more to do with the developer never actually
> thinking about the matter. Buying multiple licenses doesn't necessarily
> help those.

That's what I think is the situation with this Monopoly game. It's
probably a Windows port and to get it right would've required more new
code than TikGames thought it was worth, at $20 a pop.

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Clever Monkey - 11 Mar 2008 17:02 GMT

>> This is the first program I've ever bought that wouldn't allow more
>> than one user on a machine to run it. I always thought when you bought
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
> enough people refuse to buy programs with licenses like that, then that
> will keep it from happening.

Many licenses for large server apps charge per CPU, as well as per USER.

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Mac Forum / Applications / Mac Applications / March 2008

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