Yeah I refuse to ever give them money directly, so I just buy Steam games used... oh wait...

Bisohock 2 was the first (and only) game I ever got that had annoying DRM stuff. It took me several hours scouring the internet and trial-and-error to get the game to a point where I could play it. Then, my save files got corrupted, I uninstalled the game, and had to repeat the hassle. And you know what? In the end, I just flat out enjoyed the game, even more than I enjoyed the first. I figured the hassle was worth it in the end.

Now, I'm not saying that DRM is good or right. I'm just saying that I can look past it to the enjoyable game. I should say, though, that I understand (partially, anyways) some people's reasoning behind their disdain for DRM, and I definitely prefer games without it. I'm mainly saying that I don't let DRM prevent me from enjoying a game.

Well, there is big difference in the value you get when you really only get to rent the games, for me I would say about a fifth of full price which usually happens in some sale within three or maybe five years after the game's release. Those full price purchases only happened because I was unaware that steam was a requirement.

No point in buying a steam game retail really. I was considering buying K&L 2: Dog Days this morning retail for $9.99 but then I realized, why the hell should I bother if I need steam. Might as well wait for a $4.99 steam (or other DD) sale price instead.

Bought Tomb Riader Legend (PS2) used for $4.99 instead. Better game, no drm outside of needing the PS2 unit. Probably buy the PC version later too if I enjoy it as much as Anniversary.

Yeah, the scotch fumes just made me take a potshot at Valve/Steam. I bought SiN Chronicles off of gogamer.com by accident once too. Shit like that is honestly why I buy very few PC games, it's too much of a pain in the ass to figure out what I'm getting. It's much easier to buy the 360 version, yeah it's showing its age but at least I know what I'm getting into, period, end of story. Ironically they have loosened their grip a bit compared to the way consoles used to be all while PC gaming has been going down the toilet.

(Not reading everyone's posts, sorry)

I'm currently on dial-up at home for the summer, so little Steam for me.

Pirating is not going to stop anytime soon, so imo companies should make it as easy as possible to buy games with as little hassle as possible. I do believe that companies should be adequately compensated, however. For instance, it might not be such a big deal for Activision or EA to have many many copies pirated because they have oodles of dough anyway, from a time when internet speed didn't make pirating convenient. But what if a small start-up game company creates an awesome game, DRM-free, and because everyone pirates it, the company cannot continue on? I'm kinda worried about the little guy, so personally I think maybe some very, very simple legal activation (or whatever) should be possible: maybe activate one time to prove the game is legal, then from that point you don't have to be online unless you /want/ to install patches, bonus content/ crap, etc. (My 2 cents)

I had the same kind of problem when I tried to install BioShock. Eventually I had to get a crack to make it work, official technical support was useless.

Down with DRM!

Huh, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic? this Dark Messiah? I can tell you this game does not need any kind of Steam activation, the retail game box it's right here, in my shelf xD. It can be, though, activable in Steam, but the retail copy is fully functional, besides standard insert-dvd drm.

I have been pretty lucky avoiding games with problem DRM until recently, then just before I found GOG a got a few games on sale.

I have some reading difficultly so cd keys ectra are often frustrating

With batman arkham asylum I was pretty annoyed that log in to GFWL was required to save looking closely at the game cover I can now see a tiny symbol rather than the normal whole top of the box.
Now I had already created a GFWL account to try and get my GOTY content to load a feat couldn't achieve after several hours of messing round , I did find a third party mod to do that,
so I try to log in, couldn't get my pass word right after about 20 minutes of trying to beat their are you a person verification got told you didn't set a security question so no changing password
then i put dawn of war 2 in see the step needed to instal it and go well that was a waste of money
at least I got planescape torment though really would have rather got it here for 1/3 of the price

My next DRM hell was with Blood Bowl
the only game I play online and their servers seem a bit flaky. I was due to play one of my friend and we just could not connect, on the other hand I was going round to his place and he had 2 computers that could run it.
So went round we both log in to our separate player accounts but because both computers had the same cd key we could not connect at the same time. after hours of installing, uninstalling, entering cd keys we finally get it sorted

bah to DRM

I'd like to add Sony BMG copy protection rootkit scandal thing just for giggles.

Actually it was a $10,000 reward. One would think that there would be people in Moscow who would be able to replicate the problem. Heck, if I could replicate the problem, I would spend the several hundred dollars to get to Moscow to come back with $10,000. I agree, it was all a myth about it physically destroying drives. Also, Starforce is still being used in Russia and other countries, with no reports of it destroying drives.

$10k is nowhere near enough money to justify the attempt. First you've got that $1k or so worth of plane tickets, then you've got the money that you'll have to put into the hardware to demonstrate that it works, then if you do that and you get over to Moscow and something doesn't work right, you're out a couple Gs with nothing to show for it.

On top of that, you've got no assurances that they'll agree that it's their software rather than something else. Which could legitimately happen even if they aren't trying to scam.

In other words, when you look at the amount of time and the outlay that one would have to pay in order to get a shot at that $10k, there's better ways of making money, and most people just aren't going to happen upon the way that it works without doing a hell of a lot of research.

I have one those cd's. The rootkit gets installed when the cd autoruns and launches the .exe but if you disable autorun (either through options or just holding down shift when the disc spins up), you can rip the audio cd drm-free without issue. I've done it a few times including my current pc. No rootkit. Given it was that easy to bypass it, why did they even bother?

For the amount of reports stating that someone would replace their drive, then have to replace it again, and then again, why wouldn't even someone in Moscow be able to replicate it with their own computer. Even back then drives were cheap. And still, Starforce is still being used in Russia and other countries, and there has been no word about the drives being destroyed.

It's a completely revamped version of Starforce that's being used now and doesn't operate with the same low-level permissions. Makes you wonder why they changed the functionality of it if it wasn't hurting people's hardware.

On the subject of the reward, I can well imagine that no one was willing to take their word that they'd pay up, given their reaction to people that reported problems and their threats of lawsuits against anyone that said anything about hardware issues. As hedwards pointed out, they'd likely just say any issues discovered were do to something else other than their software.

That system you're describing already exists. See Impulse. But it doesn't stop piracy. Once anyone cracks that system, it's done for. It doesn't matter if one person or 1000 people crack it. It only takes one, and then it's out in the wild. Everyone that would steal it will steal it.

2DBoy (the makers of World of Goo) purposely avoided any kind of DRM or activation on their game. They tracked the illegal DLs and while they said they were disappointed that people pirated the game, they also noted that it wasn't pirated any heavier or lighter than any other game with DRM. The conclusion they drew was that DRM makes zero difference in piracy numbers and they were happy to not have gone that route.