My Opinion On "EDS"

[Mak 0]

EDS - Extended Download Service

If you choose to download your copy of Armed Assault, rather than going out to purchase a hard copy, you have 30 days only to download the product. If you get a virus, it's not like Steam or any other service where you can always re-download the product in case of an emergency. Once your 30 days runs out, you can never re-download the product again.

EDS offers an extended 2 years period of time to download Armed Assault onto any PC's of your choosing. If you lose the game or it goes corrupt, you can reinstall it. This service however requires a payment of $4 USD. This is complete bullshit. What happened to a one time payment for the game and the game only? People who are downloading the game are getting ripped off. What if they need to upgrade their hard drive? What if they get viruses? I'm sure this game will be around for longer than 2 years and people want to actually own their game, not paying $39.99 every two years to get it back on their systems.

Yes one can always purchase a hard copy, but that's a hassle with CD's/DVD's. In my opinion this is completely bogus for Atari to do. There shouldn't be any extended service. Once you purchase the game, it should always be available for download.

[Warshaw 0]

Completly agree.

That's why I bought it from direct2drive.

[dmarkwick 261]

Unfortunately this is exactly the sort of activity that publishing houses think is a great idea. Expect to see lots more of it as the old dinosaurs realise that milking online customers is very lucrative. Unfortunately most people will simply go along with it all, only a very few will actually rally against it, and certainly not enough.

[churnedfortaste 0]

I agree, bullshit greed...

[goodguyswearblack9 0]

I've always liked D2D too because I can hop back on my account and download any game whenever I want.

[Dwarden 1125]

i prefer Steam ove D2D due to endless number of problems with D2D versus patching and also limited number of uses (but they maybe fixed the latter)...

[KJAM 0]

i prefer Steam ove D2D due to endless number of problems with D2D versus patching and also limited number of uses (but they maybe fixed the latter)...

I quite Agree, Steam is very useful, haivng a game permanantly tied to your account, being able to downloaded it an unlimited amount, automatic updates.

[Mabes 0]

Yeah, Steam is the best way to go if you're downloading a game, maybe BIS can talk to Steam Powered about getting ArmA put up on it.

Though, all in all, I really would prefer having a hard DVD copy (like I do with my German copy of the game).

[Mister Frag 0]

There is nothing that prevents you from making your own backup of the electronic download version on a data DVD.

You are responsible for backing up anything you don't want to lose in the event of a drive failure or some other mishap, and that goes far beyond having a copy of ArmA. I assure you that when the need for having a backup arises, you'll wish you had spent the $0.25 on a blank DVD to back up your download, and any other files and documents that you can't easily recreate.

[december 0]

I agree, Steam is the way to go.

I haven't played the games I bought on Steam for a while so when my son went to university I gave him my account and he DL the games he wanted to play.

Automatic updates and no cheating on the servers.