Actually the patch is available freely from filehosting sites without any problems.

The only thing they can't do is use the Stardock's network I believe.

They can play over Hamachi as well serial key or not.

However that being said, this is an awesome game and that alone convinced me to get the original after playing the downloaded Sins for about a week although I still play over Hamachi.

I think Ironclad is trying a different approach, rather than irritate the kiddies with copy protection they are providing a great game that just by existing without all the meaningless copy protections etc.. will hopefully elicit purchases by people that keep playing it and find a value in it.

I think it's the smart way to do things in this day and age due to piracy being completely unpreventable, and wasting resources on setting up a copy protection is just that - wasted resources. There hasn't been a single game or application ever released sans those that require a hardware dongle, that hasn't been cracked and shared.

I bought my copy and my friends did too, because it's a great game worth supporting.

Same here



Helping the pirates? They don't make a profit off it it, and only provide software for the sake of providing software. I only pay for things I use or enjoy, and I really dislike spending $50 on something I'll never use again.

Sins happens to be phenomenal, and I want to support a company that created such an awesome game, so I went and paid for it.

If a game sucks, is bug ridden, unbalanced, and/or a complete waste of time, I'd rather not have to go to the trouble of returning it for my money back, if I can return it at all, most places don't accept opened games back.

It's the price game companies pay for selling shitty products, and it's a good idea for people who value their money.