Re: World of Whorecraft: The Chronicles of Alexstrasza
I thought the whole point of her releasing it for free was to avoid a cease and desist from blizzard for using copy-written art assets, so now shes just flat out charging for game keys for her works to stop people leaking?
Nope, this is not the case. Yes she made a Registration Key system to stop people leaking unfinished content, but it does not change her will to keep this game free.
The whole "donate some money" thing was made to keep the project alive. she has to pay her 4shared account I think and her homepage or whatever she has to pay for keeping this running. So she asked already a long time ago for donations.
Then she got a mail from angry parents because some kid donated her and the parents didn't like their kid paying for some porn. So she raised the donation system to a 20 / 25 € system so that kids weren't that attracted to the price.
The game is still free but she has to pay the traffic on her homepage and all, as you all see there are no ads on her page. The versions from the VIP Forums that are leaked or hosted on her 4shared account are BETAs. That's the "thank you" for donators from her. People that donate can already test the Beta and help her polishing it up, the rest of the people will just see the full release. So keeping the unfinished product in VIP hands with the new Registration Key is more an act of protecting the donators, showing them that she tries to honor their donations, than a step to force people to pay money.
tl:dr
Nothing changed, Betas are just better protected for leaks, so that they are still only for donators. The full release will still be FOR FREE, when it is finished.