Upgradable autherization key

[Morloth]

Hi everyone,

This is a repost from the discussion over here. I quote (slightly edited):

Skipping through these posts I understand nobody ever promised me anything and I got were I paid for, no problem. However I do find it a problem that I have to pay another 25 dollars (18.37 euros, thanks Montyphy ) to get Defcon to the mac while I already own the PC version. Worse if I buy the mac version I'm stuck with 2 authorization keys for my PC, which is not what I want. I understand that Ambrosia software must also get their share of the work they've done, but I guess only a part of those 18.37 euro's are actually for Ambrosia and the rest for Introversion software? In which case I'd like to suppose the following deal for both software companies:

I already have a PC key, why don't you offer me an upgrade for my existing key so it works on all platforms? This way I don't end up with 2 keys for the PC platform and I only have to pay for what I want, not for something I already have. Performing a little math to establish the price of this upgrade: 18.37 (AS's price) - 15(IV's price) = 3.37(AS's share of the deal). Montyphy already mentioned it's likely that Amrosia Software will receive more than this difference so 5 Euros sounds like a nice deal to me. You could add a couple of euros so IV also gets a piece of the action, 7.50, perfect!

I seriously hope you'll consider this option, because I for one won't pay the full 18.37 euro's for the same version of this game.


I seriously hope IV will consider this, your reactions please.
- Bram

[xander]

This is, more or less, the official ASW party line. I say this with my ASW moderator hat on.

We're extremely pleased to partner once again with Introversion to bring DEFCON to the Mac OS X platform. We've expended enormous effort to ensure that DEFCON for the Mac will be interoperable with the Windows version for network play, and also to make sure the UI experience is up to par in terms of what Mac users expect.

Ambrosia Software is responsible for the pricing of Defcon for Mac. The folks at ASW expended a great deal of effort to get Defcon up and running, and felt that an additional $5 over the Windows version was not unreasonable to cover this effort. If ASW were to allow Windows keys to work in the Mac version, or were to allow cheap upgrades, they would not be making any money off of those sales, or would be making very little money off of those sales, but would still have to support those users. Furthermore, because Windows keys are cheaper, there would be no incentive for people to buy Mac keys, which means that ASW would not be paid at all for their work.

xander

[Morloth]

Thanks for your reply Xander.

You made it clear that the distribution key of the cash is different than I though. I figured that ASW 'simpy' made a port from windows to mac, so that original code and concept is still owned by IV. Thus that only a fraction of the cash for the mac version (perhaps 30% - 40% ?) goes to ASW and the rest to IV. But if all the money goes to ASW for their efforts than my request is nonsense.

Furthermore, because Windows keys are cheaper, there would be no incentive for people to buy Mac keys, which means that ASW would not be paid at all for their work.

Well, - not relevant any more but - I originally pointed out that ASW would get their share for that work, no change there. Only IV would get only a few euros (but that again I already paid them for the game ). You already invalidated my initial theory about the distribution key so never mind .

- Bram

[xander]

You made it clear that the distribution key of the cash is different than I though. I figured that ASW 'simpy' made a port from windows to mac, so that original code and concept is still owned by IV. Thus that only a fraction of the cash for the mac version (perhaps 30% - 40% ?) goes to ASW and the rest to IV. But if all the money goes to ASW for their efforts than my request is nonsense.

I honestly don't know what portion of the proceeds go to ASW. I know that ASW pay royalties to IV for each copy sold, but I don't know how much those royalties are. In any event, it is probably safe to assume that IV make less money off of an ASW sale than a direct sale.

It is probably safe to think of it this way: the extra $5 collected by ASW represents the extra effort that went into porting Defcon, updating libraries, updating the UI (which has been done in a couple of obvious ways, and a ton of not so obvious ways), and the marketing that ASW have done. Also note that it is ASW that controls how keys that are not sold by ASW interact with ASW's version of the client, not IV. If you have a problem with the way that Win keys do or do not interact with the Mac client, the party to take it up with is ASW, not IV.

xander

[Klips]

If you have an intel mac, then you can just download bootcamp, and then use your pckey.

[xander]

If you have an intel mac, then you can just download bootcamp, and then use your pckey.

Yup, that would work.

As an aside, any chance that you could scale down your avatar? For users of IE, it takes up half the page, and dialup users shouldn't be forced to download it.. Avatars should be less than 80 px across, and about the same from top to bottom.

xander

[Morloth]

If you have an intel mac, then you can just download bootcamp, and then use your pckey.

I'm afraid I don't :/

[Klips]

If you have an intel mac, then you can just download bootcamp, and then use your pckey.

Yup, that would work.

As an aside, any chance that you could scale down your avatar? For users of IE, it takes up half the page, and dialup users shouldn't be forced to download it.. Avatars should be less than 80 px across, and about the same from top to bottom.

xander

Wierd it is only 80 pixels on my com... I will change it right away

[Montyphy]

If you have an intel mac, then you can just download bootcamp, and then use your pckey.

Yup, that would work.

As an aside, any chance that you could scale down your avatar? For users of IE, it takes up half the page, and dialup users shouldn't be forced to download it.. Avatars should be less than 80 px across, and about the same from top to bottom.

xander

Wierd it is only 80 pixels on my com... I will change it right away

But are you using IE?

[Ace Rimmer]

As an aside, any chance that you could scale down your avatar? For users of IE, it takes up half the page, and dialup users shouldn't be forced to download it.. Avatars should be less than 80 px across, and about the same from top to bottom.

xander

Or they could just download and use Firefox instead. Choose your flavor

My love of Farside, aside... it also makes browsing on the PSP a pain when a giant avatar pops up.

[shinygerbil]

As an aside, any chance that you could scale down your avatar? For users of IE, it takes up half the page, and dialup users shouldn't be forced to download it.. Avatars should be less than 80 px across, and about the same from top to bottom.

xander

Or they could just download and use Firefox instead. Choose your flavor

My love of Farside, aside... it also makes browsing on the PSP a pain when a giant avatar pops up.

It's quite likely that xander is at his highly-restrictive workplace network, so downloading Opera *cough* may not be possible.

[xander]

It's quite likely that xander is at his highly-restrictive workplace network, so downloading Opera *cough* may not be possible. :)

Actually, I am using Firefox. I recognized the image as coming from the Far Side, but saw that it was small, and didn't look as though it had been scaled to be readable. Thus, I suspected that it might be rather large, so I right-clicked on it, and requested to view image. It was rather large, so I said something about it. So, you are all wrong! Haha! Also, I use Safari, Firefox, and Opera on a daily basis, so you browser zealots can all go f*ck yourselves! ;)

As to why it looks fine in your browser, but not some others: the scaling of avatars on these forums is done using the CSS max-width and max-height attributes. IE does not properly support those attributes, so the avatar is not scaled for users of IE. It would seem that the PSP browser suffers from the same problem.

xander

[shinygerbil]

So, technically, does Opera - it scales the image but still reserves the full-sized amount of space for it, which just looks odd.

[Ace Rimmer]

So, you are all wrong! Haha!

xander

No, just everybody else except me. I never said you didn't use Firefox, I was referring to those "users of IE" you mentioned.