Purchasing dvds is bit like… remember that Monty Python Cheese Shop sketch?

I’ve been finalizing my Infected card game, but also ordered some research material for future projects (and for bit of “just for fun” as well). I happened to spot Survivorman show and learnt there were several seasons of their show “available”. I decided to purchase, and of course since it’s year 2012 you’d think everything would be easy: just push couple of buttons and I could start watching the show, right?

Well, not exactly.

I learnt that Netflix had some survivorman episodes quite likely available. Netflix just arrived to Finland so I tried to signup. I got error “try again later”. I tried like 47 times, but no can do. I don’t know why, but I just could not sign up. Maybe I did something wrong, but well. That attempt failed.

But fear not, I could go to amazon.com and order it, right?

Wrong.

In Amazon.com, there was only Region 1 dvds, not 2. I looked into figuring out if my PS3 could play Region 1 dvds and learnt that quite likely not. Well that sucks a bit then.

Amazon.ca said “not available”.

Amazon.co.uk said “Region 1 import”, so no can do.

I then tried purchasing direct streaming through Amazon.com, just to learn that it was available only in “US store”. Of course. Sorry about trying.

Then I went to Discovery channel official store, where it was “no longer available”.

Then tried one online streaming system which told me to “view from Canada”.

Sucks to be me, I live in Finland.

Play.com could have it? It always has stuff I can buy.

Not today, no.

At this point I went to watch that Monty Python clip. You should watch too:

I then started thinking, that all this region coding requires plenty of work. Region codes didn’t just appear: these need to be programmed in the system. My playstation by default didn’t have region codes, no… those needed to be created.

So what essentially happened here is that:

Publishers put massive amount of work to ensure that I cannot buy the product.

It’s like…

I’m almost speechless.

Seriously.

I have money here that I want to hand over to you. You’ve spent your money to prevent me from buying.

Why?

Can somebody tell me why, because I’d really like to know.

(Oh, and in case you happen to know where or how I could watch – yes, I’m willing to pay – Survivorman full episodes, then please let me know. And no, I’m not buying into that “buy region free dvd player” madness just to watch one show, I have no room for that anyway.)

This entry was posted on Friday, October 19th, 2012 at 9:07 am and is filed under Game Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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FarmVille: Mac & Cheese Tree and Giant Mac & Cheese Tree now available in the store

by Brandy Shaul, Posted Mar 11th 2011 7:30PM

Earlier this week, we brought you the news that current Stouffer's promotion in FarmVille has seen the release of a new Mac&Cheese Tree in the game. If you liked receiving one free tree from the Stouffer's Farm, but wish that you could have more, your wish has now come true, as Zynga has released the tree in the marketplace - wait for it - for coins!

That's right, not only can you purchase the Mac& CheeseTree for coins, but only 1500 coins at that! This is a great opportunity to stock up on these trees and increase the rate at which you master them, without having to wait for your single tree to be ready to harvest once every two days.

Additionally, the Giant Mac&Cheese Tree is also now available in the store, at a price of 5 Farm Cash. One final thing to note is that the Mac&Cheese Tree, when placed inside the Orchard now offers the Giant Mac&Cheese Tree as a Mystery Seedling (when it was first released, it only produced more of itself).

Feel free to take all the time you want with purchasing these trees. Both are listed as permanent additions to the store, with no time limit, so we can at least expect them to be around longer than we'll actually need to continue purchasing them.

What do you think of these two trees? Will you purchase a slew of these cheap trees so that you can master them more quickly? Let us know in the comments. Bookmark this site!

Tags: cross promotion, CrossPromotion, farmville, mac cheese tree, MacCheeseTree, stouffers, zynga

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