![Mr. Green :mrgreen:](./images/smilies/icon_mrgreen.gif)
On one side, I believe a publisher should do the best to protect the sales of the games. It is his responsibility even toward the developers. If some players think that they should be able to play for free, I think it should be the producer decision, like Nadeo did already two times in the past.
I also believe a developer should do the best to improve the quality of the game. So, a protection should be the less annoying as possible. For example, I would rather look after a working internet connection ^_^ than a CD check. It is obligatory of online games and most of your computer activity these days. In that respect, I feel that Ubisoft effort is in the good direction (if they can stabilize their stuff)
So, it should be a question of balance and I will see how things get in the future in order to make my mind.
And to add to the debate, I think that if some players are able to play without a protection, because of the existence of a cracked version, I rather think that releasing somewhere the equivalent would be fair. On the other side, I like to know that people that bought the game are not feeling that they are the only one to do it, so I would prefer that a crack does not exist. If we want it to exist, we know how to make it ^_^
And by the way, even if our previous publishers still used other protections, we released TrackMania Forever without any. The game reached a particular time and it was my choice at that time to do things like this. Since maniaplanet will be even more online, I see less reason to protect it, but at the same time, I see less reason not to do it.
I will come back to you as soon as I have more information or I am making my choice over this. I would bet around September.
Florent 'Hylis' from Nadeo