Also, from that linked article:

!!!

when I wake up gonna try this bad boy out.

Got to test this out on my GTX 760 and went on extreme settings and got around 30fps for scenes. Where I dropped was when motion blue effected everything looks amazing!!!

Can someone explain to me why this demo requires a Stardock activation to run, violating at least #8 and #9 in the Gamer's Bill of Rights?

Is Stardock's memory that short?

Fully agree with ctthoqqua - but with all the Steam-ing, such transgressions will be the norm rather than the exception in the future even from formerly dedicated Devs like Stardock.

They'll be able to talk themselves out of it by stating that it is Oxide Games' demo, not Stardock's, by the way...

E:wom, FE and FE:LH all used similar registration. It's a one time registration, and I think the argument is that it does not inconvenience the user. Neither #8 nor #9 say anything about having no DRM. After registering once online you can play it offline.

What's really WTF here is why a free benchmark needs registration at all. Seriously?

Your memory of what the Gamers Bill of Rights was for is a bit creative.

8 had to do with people having to keep CDs in the drive in order to play a game or enter in some obnoxious word form some page of the user manual.

9 had to do with PLAYING the game. You don't need an Internet connection to run the demo.  

Stardock has had activation on its games and software long long before the Gamers Bill of Rights.

Oxide wanted to have a vague idea of how many different people were using the benchmark to help determine what level of development it should receive in the future. Activation is a painless way to do it as it keeps the demo itself from having to phone home which we thought would more intrusive.

I was inconvenienced.  The online registration did not work, so I had to do some soft-shoe song-and-dance with some offline-tokenized registration thing that I had to copy to some local directory.

And I know of several folks who have immediately uninstalled the benchmark due to its insistence on yet another online registration.

Shame on Stardock.  This is really unacceptable.  If it were Ubisoft, I'd shrug it off (rather, I'd not even attempt to install it in the first place), but it's Stardock.  They should know better.

Oh good grief. Then you haven't used anything we've made in a decade.  Even GalCiv 2 had activation.

I'm sorry that you had to do the registration the long way, however, I'd rather complete an online registration (which the company does to protect itself) than not have the option at all or have to be online the entire time to use the product.  I'm sorry online registration is not something to be upset about.

There are a lot more important things to be upset about than this, such as incomplete games ect...

Yes, but this is a *free benchmark.*  It doesn't even rise to the lofty status of 'free game demo'.

I can understand activation on a $50 game.  I do.  But this?

Read my earlier response.

OK, fair enough.  I missed your explanation, that Oxide wanted metrics.  It just seems that # of downloads might be a more passive metric, something easy to pull.  Maybe I'm assuming too much about Valve's transparency to its clients.  

Apologies and back to drooling over Mantle.  Still hopeful for later today.

No problem.  Sorry if I came across as cranky. I was writing from the plane from a very lengthy trip.

Do you know if they are also collecting specs of people running the demo so they can identify driver and/or hardware issues? That seems like another useful thing that could be gathered (though maybe pointless until it is further developed)

I think this would be a cool benchmark for the new computer I am building vs a core 2 quad & 8800 GT