It will not offer any offline play, sorry.

Will the games launch with their own .exe, and just require gametap to launch, or will they sill not have a .exe on your machine?

You will not have an exe file for the game on your machine. The encryption method is not changing.

I'm asking because of xfire. I'm a big user of it, and without the .exe Xfire can't support the games. Is there any plans in the distant future to give us an ex?

> {quote:title=Zorlac666 wrote:}{quote}
> I'm asking because of xfire. I'm a big user of it, and without the .exe Xfire can't support the games. Is there any plans in the distant future to give us an ex?

I doubt it, I imagine it would be very difficult to give direct access to .exes while maintaining secure encryption.

Not really. Steam is a perfect example of this. You HAVE to have steam running, yet you still have the .exe.

Works exactly the way Gametaps downloads do, except it gives you the exe (which is also probably how the games can play on 64 bit systems yes tha's off subject but it's just my assumption).

Not long after launch people figured out how to dupe steam into thinking it connected so they could play their games (I didn't follow it so I don't know if that ever got fixed or not).

GT +has+ to connect or else the games can't be decrypted.

And the 64-bit issue has nothing to do with allowing access to the .exe's or not.

Don't you have to buy the games from steam as well?

Based on my time with different DRM providers, my guess about Steam's DRM is they receive an unprotected copy of the game master from the publisher/developer and modify the .exe and add a steam dll to the folder. That's pretty much it. The addition to the .exe simply prevents the game from running unless it receives the OK from the Steam server by sending in your credentials. This leaves all of the files open to the end-user, which can be copied or modified at will.

GameTap's encryption is more of a whole package. Because we are subscription-based, all-the-games-you-want, we have to be more protective of the files. This is why our encryption scheme protects ALL the files of a game. If we only protected the .exe, there isn't anything stopping people from signing up for a month, downloading as much as they can, then replacing the .exe's with hacked ones from the internet. This is significantly less risky in a buy-and-download store like Steam, where they've already been paid and it doesn't really impact them if a user replaces the .exe. Also, Steam was a horrible platform when it launched in 2004. It only became awesome because the users stuck with it, they had great games to offer, and it eventually became the awesome service it is today around 2007!

IMO, the GameTap encryption scheme is heavy-duty, but perhaps overkill. People who are adept enough to replace exe's with unprotected ones from the internet are probably pirating games anyway and have little interest in GameTap to begin with.

One more thing to think about- GameTap launched in 2005, when publishers were still petrified of digital distribution, nobody was doing subscription download services, and there weren't a lot of sophisticated DRM choices that fit our need to assuage publishers' fears. Technology, the market, and publishers have come a long way since then. I will always be the first to admit GameTap needs to evolve in a market where balking change means death, and we always have (o! the things we have changed in 4 years... it's incredible!), but the DRM is the basis of our platform and supports half our catalog. It's the most fundamental part of our service's technology and requires a lot of planning and development to make updates. Trust us in that this merge with Metaboli is for the best and I hope you will all stick around to see what wonderful things will happen in the future.

Yeah, I am saving this post to My Docs. I'll be damned to have this one thrown away when the forums migrate! =)

Will Gametap be browser-only then? Because i think that browsers are a bit messy for something like this and I only use Google Chrome and I'm afraid it won't work with it. Using IE is not an option for me because this is the stupidest piece of shit microsoft ever released. Firefox is also only a bit better.

So will there be a Desktop version too? Pleaaseee!

> {quote:title=Lionaire wrote:}{quote}
> Will Gametap be browser-only then? Because i think that browsers are a bit messy for something like this and I only use Google Chrome and I'm afraid it won't work with it. Using IE is not an option for me because this is the stupidest piece of shit microsoft ever released. Firefox is also only a bit better.
>
> So will there be a Desktop version too? Pleaaseee!
Everyone agrees migrating to browser only is ridiculous, you know, except for the geniuses who thought they should. It's obvious they won't support all browsers and thus switching a major system to browser only is not only unfair but patently absurd.

> {quote:title=Cartigan wrote:}{quote}
> Everyone agrees migrating to browser only is ridiculous, you know, except for the geniuses who thought they should.

That sentence is rather self-contradictory.

From what I understand in the forums running off a browser is a lot less expensive. Has it occurred to you that Gametap wouldn't be able to exist without this change?

Supporting additional browsers is almost as hard as supporting another operating system...

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=0 -- IE and FF are approximately 88% of the browser market. Is it truly that inconvenient to launch IE (a free app that comes with Windows) in order to use a few web services? I honestly don't mind at all jumping on IE to use something specific like Netflix streaming. We're not asking you to change your main browser for us =)

I've moved on to Chrome as my default browser but I still have FF installed. Come Sunday evening (or Monday, whenever the switch gets flipped) I'm turning my FF into my new GT client. Its homepage will be GT and that's all it will be used for.

Yeah, precisely. I think my IE home page at my house is set to Netflix =)

> {quote:title=macnbc wrote:}{quote}
> > {quote:title=Cartigan wrote:}{quote}
> > Everyone agrees migrating to browser only is ridiculous, you know, except for the geniuses who thought they should.
>
> That sentence is rather self-contradictory.

Technically he saved himself with the commas, the main concept is still "Everyone ... except ... blah". And I'm sticking with the player idea. I hope your French masters see that in time :p...

Codeguru

Is this some kind of known fact that Gametap is losing the neat front end? I'm always loved the front end. Both the original, and our new one we have now. Looks great, easy to use, etc. I'd hate having to switch to just findng games through a web site, although if it were organized as well as the client it would be fine I guess.

> {quote:title=Wolfpup3 wrote:}{quote}
> Is this some kind of known fact that Gametap is losing the neat front end? I'm always loved the front end. Both the original, and our new one we have now. Looks great, easy to use, etc. I'd hate having to switch to just findng games through a web site, although if it were organized as well as the client it would be fine I guess.

You've been out of the loop lately!
http://www.gametap.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=30901&tstart=0
http://gametapblog.com/the-new-gametap-feature-guides-browsing-downloading-playing/
http://gametapblog.com/warning-account-lock-out-forum-freeze/
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/03/04/gametap-makeover-imminent-mac-no-longer-supported/
http://www.casualgaming.biz/news/28301/GameTap-revamp-on-the-way

Thanks! Darn, I'm not a fan of browser plug ins at all. I guess I'll do it in IE so that Firefox (which I actually use) remains free from it.

Hopefully it'll work okay, because right now the separate program is really easy to navigate, and looks great too.