A question about pre-ordered copies

[NuclearMonkey]

I pre-ordered Multiwinia. As far as I understand I will receive the key and possibility to download Multiwinia 24hrs before the official release, i.e. later today. Does that mean I will be able to play Multiwinia right away?

[KingAl]

You receive the key on release, but you'll be able to download it 24 hours early.

[Montyphy]

Does that mean I will be able to play Multiwinia right away?

In theory, yes but possibly no. IV may just be spreading out the load of dealing with the release to avoid the smashed trout that happened during the Defcon release, effectively allowing you to just load but not play. We shall just have to wait and see.

You receive the key on release, but you'll be able to download it 24 hours early.

Actually, according to the store "Pre-order today to receive your key and pre-load download 24hrs prior to release" and "By pre-ordering your copy you will receive your key 24 hours prior to launch to prevent queuing at launch."

[KingAl]

Well there you go; could've sworn it said differently. Suffice to say either way, though, in my opinion the pre-load is unlikely to allow you to play online matches -- I'm guessing that this'll be controlled centrally from the meta-server, so if Multiwinia uses the same scheme as Defcon you may be able to play local matches without authentication. It's possible but, it seems to me, unlikely that Multiwinia's system will be different/ that the download entails some kind of launch one-off that dials in before allowing an install.

[Aegis Tyra]

Turns out, it's neither. You can't play at all, no .exe or .config file supplied with the pre-load. Huh.

[RabidZombie]

Exactly. Pre-load. Doing exactly as it said on the HTML formatted tin.