Legality question as per online games goes

[squanto]

I have posted on a Macaddict BB about how to get my legally owned copy of RTCW to install on the mac. No one has told me how, but I have been critisized. I happily play RTCW on my desktop, I even bought the special edition tin version of the game for $5 extra when it first came out.
I would like to have a ded server on my G4, and then play on my Gentoo box. My question is, is this legal?
I have been told that it isn't by the mac ppl, and that legally I should purchase another copy of RTCW to be put on the server.
What do you think? Or what does the law think?

Thanks for any input, as I do not want to be breaking the law, I like RTCW and want to be a law abiding citizen.

Andrew

[Soul-Crusher]

I'm pretty sure it is... Even if it's not, I don't think id's looking to sue people who are helping to make their game more popular by hosting additional servers.

[klieber]

IANAL, so take everything I say here with a grain of salt.

I believe it depends on the specific licensing terms of the game. I'm not familiar with RTCW, but as an example, Half-Life has a dedicated HL server (there's even an ebuild for it. ) I believe it's free to use, because it's useless unless you also own the Half-Life client, which costs money.

So, in that example, the server portion of the game and the client portion of the game are two distinct programs, each with their own licensing and EULA.

Also, going back a few more years, I seem to remember that Warcraft II allowed you to run multiple copies of the game without having multiple CDs for online play only. The idea being that all your friends would see how cool the game was and run out and buy their own copies. (come to think of it, that's why I purchased my copy)

Have you looked at the license agreement that came with the game? Also, I'd bet there's some mention of it on the website of whatever company that made the game. Or, if all else fails, email their support department and ask them.

--kurt
_________________
The problem with political jokes is that they get elected

[Tharkun]

Well yes there is an ebuild for halflife, but there's a slight problem. It comes as a .run file which displays a license you have to agree to. I just echo'd a yes to it to unpack, which is why the ebuild is now masked. The halflife server for linux comes with everything you need and is freely available so there is no question about it, you can just run it even without owning the game itself.

Now in quake you have to have the pak0.pk3 from your windows cd or buy the linux boxed version, the dl comes without it. (it's 450MB anyway :))

But I still think it's legal to play the game and have a gameserver running off the same pak0.pk3. Also I think id is not the company to bitch about this, or at least I hope, as id has shown to be "the good guys" by using opengl all the way.

[squanto]

I don't really want to read an EULA, but I think that I will. Just to see what it says. I will probably email ID too cause I am sure that I won't be able to understand the EULA.

thanks for the input!

Andrew

[ASCI Blue]

If I had to take an educated guess I'd say yes. Not everyone plays the game from <insert OS here>. It really probably depends on what the EULA says. NWN for example will allow a server and a client on 2 different rigs (NWN server on linux client on Windoze). I see no reason if one box is a server and does nothing but serve where it would conflict with one box that just plays. Legally I can't think of anything wrong with it either since it's the same copy of the game doing 2 different things.

[squanto]

Well I solved the problem. I bought an atx case and put my spare mobo in it, now it is the RTCW server on Gentoo.
As for the mac.... it is going to have gentoo on it asap.

I love ssh!
I can't afford a kvm switch