After decades of living in a linux-FOSS world, I noticed these games at a 2nd-hand street market:
- Starcraft (few different versions/themes)
- Age of Empires (few different versions/themes)
- Civilization
They were a dollar each, so why not. I grabbed. Got home, installed win7 on a machine someone dumped on a curb, but could not install any of the games b/c I live offline. Fucking hell.
When I last played Starcraft well over a decade ago, I lived online and probably thought nothing of it. But it seems clear this shitty requirement is an anti-sharing policy because these games do not inherently need Internet. You can play against the machine or on a LAN. It’s not just the elitist exclusive WAN requirement that pisses me off… there’s a privacy issue too. And what happens when I enter the product key of a used CD? They probably have a tolerance on how many times that can happen, perhaps dependant on whether the hardware changes. Fuck the nannying.
Also consider that Blizzard and Microsoft servers are not going to run forever. They can pull the plug at any time and then no one can install their game. Should be illegal to make installation needlessly dependant on a service. Forced obsolescence.
Some of these games also require a CD to be inserted, which means you must have a fucking noisey CD drive attached at all times. Back when these games were made it was no big deal because all laptops and desktops had CD drives. Not anymore. I’m mostly annoyed by having to insert the disc, wait for it to spin, then I have to hear the loud spin as I play which also wastes power. So I installed Alcohol 120 to image the Warcraft 3 disc (which I still had from yrs past). It has 3 different versions of the crack for the particular shitty scheme used on WC3. None of the images work.
Obviously if I want to play these games I will need warez versions. How good are those dodgy distros these days? I can imagine some are just the original content but you still enter a product key (which I have anyway). But if they still need a WAN that won’t cut it for me. Do the warez versions overcome all these issues? Are they still in circulation?
Alternatively, I should ask, have there been any versions of these games repackaged and re-released for the retro gamers which don’t impose the shitty protections and server dependencies?
If not, I must say unlicensed cracked versions would be the most ethical ones:
- designed obsolescence thwarted
- privacy kept
- more inclusive (offline ppl and those without CD drives)
- better UX (no fiddling with discs and hearing the spin)
Stolen from Reddit:
Assuming that the “updating” thing didn’t effect any files, You can launch the game directly from C:\Program Files (x86)\Blizzard\StarCraft II\Support64\SC2Switcher_x64.exe or C:\Program Files (x86)\Blizzard\StarCraft II\Support\SC2Switcher.exe
Since you don’t have internet connection it’ll fail attempting to connect to Blizzard services, it’ll give you the option to play offline (seems the only way to access offline mode nowadays). from what I can see only Campaign and Melee/Arcade and replays can be played, took awhile for downloaded maps to load on the list, but starting a map works just fine. Achievements can’t be earned though, and if I remember correctly, saves might be seperated from your online ones as well. But otherwise Campaigns work as well.
I used to play Starcraft Brood War back in the day on a computer with no internet connection. What are you talking about? Same for Age of Empires and Civ.
Have you tried playing them on Linux? I know it sounds counterintuitive, but ProtonDB seems to imply that most Civ games work, as well as AOE (Definitive Edition)
Proton is great for playing old games
I never heard of ProtonDB. Even this whole “steam” thing emerged after my game playing days were mostly in the past. I was just looking to get back into gaming.
I did read at one point that some Windows-only games perform better on Linux (w/WINE) because linux is less bloated.
Anyway, thanks for the tip. I’ll have a look.
Yeah, gaming on Linux has come a very long way.
You might not even need to install Linux. It’s been so long since I’ve used Steam on Windows so I’m not sure, but you might be able to add the .exe file to Steam as a “non-Steam game” and then in the compatibility settings for the game, have it run with the Proton translation layer.
That’s how you would do it in Linux. I’m not sure if Steam in Windows gives you those compatibility options or not.
And back in the day you may have used WINE but these days you’re probably going to want to use Proton (which is like wine but made for games specifically).
Not sure how far you’ll get with steam if you are offline only though
For the required cd drive : normally you use a virtual one (like daemon tools) . For the computer it makes no difference
Indeed, but that’s not trivial. You can’t just
ddimage a SecuROM-protected disc and mount it. Hence why I mentioned Alcohol 120, which also had issues, thus leading me to say cracked versions are possibly the answer.If you know the “dd” command, you are already engaging in non-trivial stuff… It is just “point & click” using daemon tools, and you just need an image of the CD, which is not inherently “cracked” ; the crack is needed to bypass security (or you get a developper cd registration number, which is how it was done for old games like diablo or starcraft). Anyway, cracks for software that is not anymore published or maintained do not constitute an economic loss to said publisher, so of course it is a solution. You just risk yourself (your computer) by using modified software for which nobody else is held accountable for.
Two microsoft games and a 2k game, not surprising.
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