There is never a good reason to deny the right of the consumer to opt-out. Sawyer and Infogrames knew what they were doing, and I am pretty sure all of us who played the actual, unedited game didn't mind sharing Tracks.
Punishing people who know what they are doing because people that don't know jack about computers MIGHT do something is a recurring theme of modern software developers, and I consider it abominable and an act of hubris. That assumption is why Microsoft permanently made almost every CD-ROM game before 2008 AD unplayable on "Windows X" because someone MIGHT expose themselves to an error on the SECDRV Driver. They gave no opt-out, and I lost many games. Society lost thousands, if not tens of thousands. It's also why Adobe napalm bombed twenty-five years of Internet content by force, and made it straight-up prohibited to opt out. That's not to mention that Microsoft could sneak a key logger or governmental back door in any system update (and almost certainly already have), and there is no reprieve or safety. It should have been an opt-out, not an opt-in, and not giving that option to exit should be illegal. Those decisions, plus compulsory updates and no privacy, is why I've never upgraded above my "Windows VII", no matter the security risks I face for this decision.
First and foremost, giving your program administrator permissions is not some sort of threat to your computer if you are diligent in dealing with bugs and have a program with a very, VERY narrow focus, as you do. I've ran "Open Roller Coaster Tycoon II" as an Administrator every time I've played it, for years. ORCT2 can be played offline, and if there is any exploit to take control of the computer through an ORCT2 server, no one's found it yet. Why should the ORCT2 development board act as if one exists, thereby punishing people that know what they are doing, instead of waiting for it to be discovered?
You don't even have to automatically enable administrative positions. That assumes everyone wants to put the paths in the Infrogrames Interactive folder where they were intended to be placed. You could simply generate a notice when you change the ORCT2 to an area that would require administrator positions, stating that "ORCT2 requires administrative positions to utilize this path". That way, people can have their choice without compromising security; that wouldn't happen anyway, you designed this game far too well to make that hole easy to find. ORCT2 is a reverse-engineered version of one of the safest and most well-coded video games ever, so I doubt you're going to run into exploits unless Sawyer himself left one.
Second, you actually believe that the precedent of writing to the Program Files is gone? Have you ever used the Steam Launcher Program? EVERYTHING in that program, including all Mods downloaded from the Steam Workshop, all custom content, all screenshots and images, and so on are ALL read AND written to the Program Files. That doesn't matter if the user is a Guest or an Administrator, or anyone else in between. Is Valve working against the OS? Is Ludeon ("Rimworld's" creator) working against the OS?
If there is some security prevention blocking writing data to the Program Files, I've never seen it in my twenty-five years of computing, unless my user account was deliberately restricted like the Guests, or otherwise blocked via things like the Group Policy Editor. For an example of a very recent game that writes to the Program Files folder on ANY account, refer to "Rimworld", which stores all Mods in either the Steam Workshop.
I think that people who download your game should be allowed to decide where the folders go, AND decide what the names of the folders are. If a person wants their Tracks folder on their "I" drive and their "Saved Games" folder in the My Documents folder, that should be permitted.
Absolutely not. The My Documents Folder is defined in the Registry, just like My Pictures, My Music, and my Videos. A failture to locate them causes your User Profile to get corrupted. You have to create a new user with a working path to get back in and change the Registry for the locked out account.
Thank you for that.
It's a fantastic start, but it appears that it doesn't allow me to change the NAME of the folders. I would still have bloated, duplicitous folders because of this silly restriction.