Gamersgate - anyone with recent experiences there?

[Thermal Ions]

Yes, I know it's the Steam forum, but figured the visitors here are open to digital distribution, therefore may have some personal experience with Gamersgate.

I ask, as I've noted that Assassin's Creed 2 is available from them for $5 less than Steam, and seems to have the exact same contents.

While $5 isn't much I'm thinking that not having it tied to my Steam account would enable it to be installed on another PC here also and subject to being connected to the Ubisoft server, could be played by myself on my PC, or by someone else on the 2nd PC while I'm still using my Steam account in another game. Obviously couldn't be run on both simultaneously.

So thoughts on Gamersgate, and thoughts on the approach?

Yes, I know about the DRM. No, not really happy about it, but not looking to beat that horse here.

[Drac]

Why can't you just use offline mode on steam with the 2nd PC?

[Mixa...]

because Ubi suck... their new DRM blah blah always connected blah blah
This horse is well and truly flogged


(altho it may work as long as only one of the comps is on AC2)

[Thermal Ions]

Originally Posted by Drac

Why can't you just use offline mode on steam with the 2nd PC?

Could do, but a hassle as son is normally logged into that PC with his online Steam account - so a bit of juggling back and forth between the PC's, users and online/offline mode to achieve (assuming you could have steam offline and Ubi online at the same time).

[Thermal Ions]

Originally Posted by Thermal Ions

I ask, as I've noted that Assassin's Creed 2 is available from them for $5 less than Steam, and seems to have the exact same contents.

Hmmm, seems the $5 less (and double blue coins) was an unstated pre-order special ahead of the European release date (yesterday) only. It's now gone up to $59.95 but interestingly still has 250 bonus "pre-order" blue coins (much reduced from the approx 3,000 earlier in the week). Noticed that the digital deluxe with the 3 extra maps is also the same price as the standard edition without them too. Makes me wonder if the digital deluxe version is their way of advertising what Steam calls the pre-order bonus, and if you won't be able to buy it after the US release date.

Gamersgate also obviously must have an inside line to Canberra (or is that SA) and discovered that the R18+ rating for games is in place and that AC2 has been re-rated - they show the game rated R18+ on their site. I initially figured another country must have a similar rating design, but the image filename confirms it's intended as the Australian rating (australian_classification_R.jpg).

They've done the same with Bioshock 2, so I guess someone there figures that if it's 18+ in the UK, Germany or through PEGI then it must be R18+ in Australia.

Shall be giving them a skip. Between the above, their lack of a forum, no support ticket process, only a support email address (which they provide as a working mailto: link but displaying with an [at] instead of @ in presumably a pathetic attempt to reduce harvesting), it doesn't foster much confidence in their abilities.