Wireless LAN and multiple copies of games

[Deanodarlo]

I'm not a big PC gamer, but since I have two PC's in the house I thought I'd setup a wireless LAN to occasionally play a few games against family and friends. I don't play online due to annoying lag and peeps having far more time than me to practise!

After doing some research and snapping up some budget titles that will run well on both machines, I currently now own:

UT 99
Q3
Starcraft & Broodwars
Warcraft III & Frozen Throne
Homeworld 2
Command & Conquer Collection - tiberian/firestorm/Red ALert 2/Yuri's Revenge/Renegade.

After getting everything setup, I then discovered for home LAN gaming one person has to purchase multiple copies of each game! Does that mean I have to buy all the above again?

Can someone with game knowledge advise me which ones don't require a second purchase. For instance, I think C&C lets you use the same serial/key and one disk in each computer.

Thanks for your help.

 

[igowerf]

A lot of games will let you use the same CD Key for LAN. I'm pretty sure Q3 and UT are like that. In fact, UT doesn't even do a CD check anymore because the developers were kind enough to remove it with a later patch. Just make sure to download the latest patches. Epic actually does this for all of the UT games.

Whenever family is over, and we want to LAN with WC3, we just pass the CD around after it the game loads on a computer. The CD check is done when the game first loads up and the CD is not needed afterwards.

This might not be allowed by the game's license, but paying for another copy of the game just to LAN with my cousins seems ridiculous to me. Old games let us install "spawn" copies which were basically multi-player-only versions of the game that let you play on LAN with just one copy of the game.

 

[Deanodarlo]

Thanks for the comments.

Yeah, I think that each game copy should come with up to 4 player LAN capabilities as part of the licence, but only one copy per machine allowed for internet play. After all, it's not as if PC's users have a split screen feature like consoles for when friends come round.

All I can do is try I guess and go from there.