Giveaway of the Day Forums

1. 

   Dragonlair
   Member

   With the problem that Terri218 pointed out with Gamehouse yesterday, I've been trying to find backup places for the games that they appear to have lost on me (about 28 games total).

   I was checking my freebie circuit for alternative downloads. I found myself very disappointed when I did detailed searches.

   A lot of my work over the past 5 or so years is, in many way, WASTED! MyPlayCity is removing older games. If you use their "standard" method of using just a stub and find you like the game, you may be disappointed if you want to put it on another machine -- the game may be gone!

   I thought that 8 out of 13 games that were in the freebie circuit were from MyPlayCity with the other 5 being from MyRealGames. GameTop was not in the mix.

   However, what I finally found were only 2 of those 8 were still there - Galapagos and Treasures of the Serengeti.

   The others had been removed over time and I had not noticed since I work around their stubs and get the full download. I also haven't had to re-install games for over a year.

   This is disappointing. Fortunately, out of all my GameHouse games, I only have one that I have neither the date nor order number as well as no alternate method of getting the game. I'm hoping that GameHouse will honor the information I have.

   Posted 8 years ago #
2. 

   Terri218
   Member

   As many problems as I have had with Big Fish Games at least they are reliable in storing all my games purchased and I can access all of them (at least the ones I've tried so far). My Purchase History seems to be intact.

   I have faith my Gamehouse purchased games are still in my account. The problem is I can't login to access my account.

   Posted 8 years ago #
3. 

   Whiterabbit-uk
   Games Guru

   All these free game sites have to pay the original developers of the games, or the present license holders a retainer for giving away their games. I'm not 100% sure how it works, (I did research this several years ago, but I've forgotten most of the details due to my memory problems) but I'm sure they get a percentage of the cash earned by the free game site whenever a community member is forced to visit the site when they either install a game or after playing one of the games they downloaded from that site after closing it down; (becasue of the browser opening that's been coded into one of the executable). The developer gets a retainer plus a percentage of the revenue earned for each visit. If you play a lot of games from these sites, every time you close one down, they earn cash. It may be that the older games are being removed because they are possibly not getting as many downloads, which means the developer isn't earning enough cash via the free game sites for those games to justify allowing them to be given away free. All of the games given away via these free game sites are still commercial games that are still being sold by the likes of Gamehouse, Big Fish games and other arcade distributors, having them given away for free may be impacting on those sales.

   That said, I think one of the problems is related to the now common practice of disabling the browser opening, which as mentioned somewhere in these forums, is quite easy to do and is likely to lead to loss of revenue for MyPlayCity, Gametop, TooMky Games and other free game sites that earn the cash from community members frequent forced visits. As more community members have become aware of how easy it is to stop the browser opening, which I for one always found an annoyance, it consequently has reduced the income that these sites earn from community members visiting. This had had a knock on effect whereby the sites can no longer afford to pay for all of the games (becasue not only do they have to pay for each dwnload, they have to pay a retainer for the privelege of being able to give away those games). You can go online now and easily find a fix to stop your browser opening. This is becoming counter productive because reduced earning by these free game sites means they have less cash to pay the developers, so they have started to remove the less popular or older games that are not downloaded as often.

   Posted 8 years ago #
4. 

   Whiterabbit-uk
   Games Guru

   Terri, have you contacted Gamehouse? So long as you have proof that you purchased at least one game you should be able to recover your account. An email showing the invoice, and/or your email and login name should be sufficient for them to reactivate your account. You should be able to request a new password if that is the problem??

   Posted 8 years ago #
5. 

   Terri218
   Member

   Yes, Whiterabbit-uk. I now have my Mortimer Beckett games again.

   Posted 8 years ago #
6. 

   Dragonlair
   Member

   Whiterabbit-uk,

   While I don't like the browser opening garbage, it's not the biggest problem and MyPlayCity is, by far the worse offender of this problem -- GARBAGE files added. They add an extra folder and up to 19 extra files that are not needed for the game. That's up to about 8 MB/game (it used to be about 5 MB). Yes, with today's larger drives, it's not that much but it adds up.

   I just checked and I have more MyPlayCity games than from any other distributor -- 348 games. If they were only at the previous level of 5 MB / game garbage, that adds up to 1740 MB or 1.6992 GB of garbage (using 1 GB = 1024 MB). That's unreal and it's just pure garbage -- internet shortcuts, icons for internet games and such like that.

   Posted 8 years ago #
7. 

   dsekirka
   Member

   I always delete the extra icons placed on the desktop and remove all the junk files they add. The game still runs and I get no browser popup when I close the game.

   Posted 8 years ago #
8. 

   mikiem2
   Moderator

   That said, I think one of the problems is related to the now common practice of disabling the browser opening, which as mentioned somewhere in these forums, is quite easy to do and is likely to lead to loss of revenue for MyPlayCity...

   I've done some thinking on this, since I've got a conscience -- Darn It! -- & there's one *potential* consideration I'm mulling over...

   Web sites/servers get breached, often to inject code to download & run malware files. MPC would be an ideal target, since you don't have to rely on people visiting a certain page in their browser normally, but could alter a page that's visited every time someone plays a game that they got from MPC. They'd also be paying less attention because it's an annoyance that happens all the time.

   That's not & wouldn't be a reflection of the crew running MPC -- new vulnerabilities & avenues of attack are being discovered constantly, & by nature the good guys are often stuck in the role of responding rather than preventing some totally unknown threat. And some added js code wouldn't necessarily be that easy to spot, *if* they knew to look.

   Posted 8 years ago #
9. 

   Whiterabbit-uk
   Games Guru

   Hi Dragonlair, is is possible to delete the garbage files? That's a lot of wasted space. Is there a lot of registry entries as well. I haven't installed a MPC game in ages; not since my last format, so can't check myself. Thankfully I've already owned the MPC games that have been given away so far, so thankfully it's not been necessary for me to install any.

   What i find annoying about MPC games is the way they fairly frequently change their tactics, so you can get caught out and still end up with tool bars. Okay, they are easily de-activated and/or removed completely.

   Posted 8 years ago #
10. 

    Dragonlair
    Member

    Whiterabbit-uk,

    It is very easy to remove the files. The hard part is to get a copy of the full install and make it use that instead of the default installation. It's fun to steal that full download (from the temp file) between the time it finishes building it and it starts to use it. :) It suddenly says it can't continue! If you don't, it installs where IT wants to install, if you grab it, you can tell it where to install (and avoid the program files stuff). It also automatically creates a quick-launch link! The easiest way to get rid of them is run Shortcuts Manager and look for broken shortcuts after you get it installed where you want.

    By grabbing that full install (that is deleted after normal installs), you now have the install program that can be zipped for backup and re-installs later.

    I've learned what files to delete but it's hard to say other than the shortcut files and the "lnchdata" or "Inchdata" (not sure which is the name) folder because it changes from time to time. Just delete and test. If it fails, restore and try again!

    As far as I can tell, other than the "run in admin mode" flag for the default game program, there isn't much registry garbage. Normally, all it finds is the uninstall that you would expect.

    I don't remember large amounts of extra stuff using Revo Uninstaller Pro (64 bit) with MPC games.

    Posted 8 years ago #
11. 

    shawndion
    Member

    Long time I didn't post but here's my 2 cents to save some headaches.

    1. Run the stub inside sandboxie or commodo sandbox or your tool of choice copy the real installer out of the temp folder.

    2. Go check archive.org

    https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://files.myplaycity.com/files/*

    This will take time to load then under filter use exe or zip =) you'll find the old ones.

    Best regards.

    Posted 8 years ago #
12. 

    Dragonlair
    Member

    Shawndion,

    I just go to User/<useername>/appdata/local/temp for the folder of the game to be installed. I open that BEFORE I set the game to "install". I then carefully uncheck any nasties and then drag the .exe downloading to the desktop (easiest place) and hold the mouse down until it gets to about 2 seconds to finishing the download. Then release and most of the time you get an "oops" install message because you just stole the install file from under the setup. I LOVE to see that error message.

    Posted 8 years ago #

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