This may be fine for the average game - but it will kill the sim industry. We rely on having stable installs without automatic patching (so that we can customise the install carefully), and the community relies on having new people be able to buy second-hand copies of games often ten years after they ceased being sold by the original distributor.
It is potentially almost as much of a disaster as the EA debacle (which almost killed the genre and took out 75% of flightsim studios).
This is one more case of the high-development cost, large studio, low replay value, consol style game industry's philosophy being misapplied by management.
This will also make it impossible to play using offline (stable) machines or in areas where dial-up connections are the only ones available.
If need be I'll forgo SoW and just send Oleg's team a cheque to show my support. I may as well not enjoy the sim if the industry is doomed anyway!
Hysterically,
-Avimimus
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