Yesterday I ordered and downloaded Alpha Polaris from Amazon. Program would not install, kept getting a message of "missing files, download again". I went back and checked the specs and found that only US residents can download this program. I emailed Amazon support and recieved a reply in 10 minutes: my money refunded. Great service! Its too bad that international copyright laws restrict our ablility to d/l programs, but I guess thats the reality of modern life...sigh

I am glad to hear they gave good customer service! Sorry you were not able to download. We have restrictions here too and cannot get some UK content etc. There are many laws that prohibit this for various sites.

Ana

Staggered releases, territory/region restrictions and games that won't play if your PC location is set wrong (Two Worlds was an example of this!) must go.

The ability to communicate with people all over the world via the net makes the world feel "smaller" than it used to. I'm not sure where territory/region restrictions fit into this. Does anybody know the reasoning behind them?

Staggered releases, I suspect, happen because it's so difficult to get publishers in several different countries to line up to agree to all publish on the same day. The alternative is to wait (maybe for years) to find a US publisher, for instance, before giving a "go ahead" to a UK publisher (for instance). Slows things waaaaay down. I'm not sure there's a good answer.

Publishing and copyright laws still seem stuck in a 20th century paradigm. Have the same issue with books from Amazon although you can hide your ISP origin behind a proxy.

Hi! I might be a bit late, but if you are interested in the english digital version of Alpha Polaris you can buy it straight from the developer for just 9.95 (USD) and there are no region restrictions

You can get the game here:
Turmoil Games

THanks Veera! I always prefer buying from the developer if an option so that they get the proceeds.

Ana

Thanks Veera!

Thanks, Veera! Good point, too about the regions.