So you have first party DRM. Doh ho ho ho. Slaps me on the knee.

Good thing my answer is no.

Seriously. it should be considered as another platform

Exactly. This guy gets it.

It really is. The worst part about it is that the largest impacts oftentimes hit legit, paying customers. I can't record HDTV on one computer and watch it on another 50 feet away because the owner of the content says that the video has to be encrypted with a hardware key. Meanwhile that same TV show appeared on torrent sites minutes after the episode ended. It's silly.

I don't understand what the practical difference is. You're saying that if Windows came pre-installed with Steam and all games used it you'd be ok with it? You can't make copies of console games that will play in an un-modified console. That's DRM, my friend.

The way I see it, while DRM is annoying, I save my hatred for the people who feel entitled to own a game without having to pay for it (especially within the first week or month of the game's release), those whose greed has resulted in DRM becoming so pervasive. DRM is the symptom, the effect of the cause, an unfortunate result of a seemingly unsolvable problem. I'm not saying it works (or that it doesn't work, since I've not really seen data conclusively proving either point, at least when dealing with PC gaming), but I feel the hatred it gets is disproportionate. Nor am I saying that said over-entitled crowd is the sole source of all pirating; it's not, from what I understand, it happens for a plethora of reasons. On the other hand, I can see why, since it's easier to blame the game makers that directly inconvenience you than to blame the faceless, over-entitled masses whose greed has indirectly inconvenienced you. Plus it is a lot easier to convince companies not to implement DRM than it is to convince the masses of pirates to stop pirating.

I'm not saying what would happen (although it has happened before: see CDProjectRED and The Witcher 2) but what should happen. It's almost as if you ignored the content of my post just so you could argue with me.

I was saying why I think it probably wouldn't have the effect on the populous, not that a company wouldn't do that.

If DRM could stop piracy i would have said ok it is a cure for the disease, but it isn't it only encourage people who hate the DRM to download the pirated version in order to relive themself from the agony that is called DRM. CDProject games will get pirated but less then DRM games.

As princes leia said the more you tighten your grip more star systems will slip through your fingers.

I thought the worst thing about gaming was a bad game.... What have the times come too?

Then your Bill Gates anology was misplaced. Also, we're talking about different things. We're not allowed to discuss DRM and piracy in much detail on here, so I'll just direct you to Google. DRM and piracy are topics that have been covered over and over everywhere online. You'll be able to find arguments and data from all angles and decide for yourself.

i have no idea what you just said, or what I was saying.

No DRM doesn't exactly mean it'll be all good. Demigod, a Moba/Aeon of Strife/Dota clone/whatever you like to call it game, which had no DRM, was vastly pirated, which hurt the game in...http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2009/04/demigod-hit-by-massive-piracy-review-scores-take-beating/. Granted, this problem was likely in part due to the multiplayer focus that a Moba game has and the company not anticipating its servers having to deal with such numbers, but it's still a depressing indicator of how horrible the problem is.

This is why we can't have nice things.

Edit: In fact, this is probably why the PC gaming scene will never have nice things again, unless you don't mind Steam and games designed with consoles in mind. And on a side note, I don't actually mind those (I'm just upset at how selfish people are and that nothing can be done about it), but it's clear that a lot of people, both around here and in the PC community as a whole, do.

You make it sound like this is a recent thing, but PC gaming has always had piracy, even back when games were still distributed on floppy disks. DRM is more likely to be the death of PC gaming than piracy.

As I've said previously, piracy is much worse than it used to be. Even back in 2008 with all that controversy with Spore, piracy was far less prevalent than it is today.

Edit: For that matter, if DRM is the death of PC gaming, then by extension, piracy is the death of PC gaming. The former would not exist without the latter.

This

Close. It's DLC.

I disagree, because DRM isn't about Piracy (even http://kotaku.com/5872253/the-most-pirated-pc-xbox-360-and-wii-games-of-2011) DRM is about absolute control

seconded

Yep. It's about brand loyalty and advertising imo.

It's very much about piracy. That it's not exclusively about piracy doesn't mean that piracy concerns haven't greatly exasperated the onset of DRM. Between selfish, entitled masses stealing games and companies making questionable decisions largely aimed at stemming it, I have to put the bulk of my hatred on the selfish masses.

Edit: To make things clear, I don't particularly like DRM either. Always-online or stuff like that, I do very much dislike. I try to avoid that sort of thing if I can. But I think that blame should be distributed appropriately, not lumped solely at the publishers.

Edit2: At the same time, blame for DRM should not be rested solely on the pirates either.

You just said it 100% correct. Out of every Digital Rights Management (DRM) copy protection type that there is Always-On(line) and Cloud gaming like OnLive or Gaikai if that ever come to PC in full force on every single PC video game expect to see modding die off 100% on every single PC video game especially cloud gaming because if you played Crysis on OnLive you could not mod it at all. And this part of the future scares me since I am a PC gamer and love to mod.

VHS also had DRM. Well, copy protection. Macrovision made it so that the tapes of all kinds had that visual buzzing you will see on older, well used tapes. This effect would occur on perfectly legal tapes due to age and use, sadly. PC gaming has had DRM and copy protection since the very beginning. Even before IBM computer/the IBM standard became a thing, it was still everywhere. Some home computer games even used the dongle kind. Only time PC games really, truly, were free of DRM in some way was when CDs were new and people were too busy watching badly compressed interactive movies on their Sega CD and PC.

Few game systems have lacked DRM, too. The 3DO had no copy protection or region coding of any kind. That's the only non-handheld I know of that was like that. Doubt the CDi lacked protection.

Hahahaha. Anyone remember passcodes to load levels? Eugh....

I remember a film-obsessed friend ranting about Macrovision back in the day. He hated it because it made the tapes almost unwatchable; I'm talking about stuff he'd hire from a rental shop, so they'd obviously seen some use. He went out of his way to avoid anything that might have Macrovision because it was so bad.

I also remember the pre-PC copy-protection stuff! I only ever saw a dongle once, it plugged into a joystick port but it was extremely sensitive to movement, which wasn't good. A more common variety was a grid where you had to look up a series of squares and tell it which colour they were: colour photocopiers and scanners were unheard of then, so unless someone was prepared to sit down and copy it by hand...

There are a lot of creeps that will download any game, but some of the pirates are legitimate buyers that doesn't want anything to do with the DRM. DRM add hoops to the legit buyers something that the pirate never feels it only make piracy viable for some of the players. cant recall which game was it but one of the most pirated games of all times was one with a draconic DRM.

Removing the DRM will give the legit buyers a way to enjoy the game without the rules of a 3 party company one that can prevent the usage of the game due to reasons unrelated to the game or the game company eula. it is there to stop the second hand market, to allow the developing of less the quality games, to mask the real PC sales in order to create more consul type games.