Okay, this is complete BS. You're making a similar argument now as companies do for games that won't run if you have a debugger installed on your computer. That argument goes most people with debuggers on their gaming machines only use them to make cracks for the game.

It was utter nonsense then, and it's utter nonsense now when talking about emulators. The fact of the matter is that DRM never stops pirates for any length of time. Emulators are useful tools. All you're really accomplishing is pissing off customers by blaming them for your broken attempt to stop something that cannot be stopped with the methods being employed.

Uninstall the offending software before playing the game? Yeah, right. I'll just take my business to a company that's not going to try and dictate what I do with my computer in order to be allowed to play the game I bought.

That's the beauty of this business. Since none of this will actually thwart the pirates, the paying customers have all the power. Piss us off, and the pirates are the only people you've got left playing your game. I wonder how well that pays the bills?

You seem to be unable to read.

And for the record, I've around 150 games I've bought.

That analogy is like no DRM I have ever encountered in my life.  What are you going on about?

Pirates don't care about DRM. They strip it off and then play the game without the nonsense.

Paying customers get saddled with DRM, random breakage, being told "oh you can't have THAT software on your computer to use this game you bought", authentication servers acting up, and other random stupidity. This thread has several potential customers saying they won't buy games that are defective by design and inferior to the pirate version. DRM does more damage to actual customers then it ever does to piracy.

My guess is that the number of people who download pirated copies because of DRM is much greater than the number of people whining about it on the forums. Its like a little online cult, only if the publishers continue the "iron boot" technique, its gonna become a religion.

Personally, although I don't condone piracy simply because it hurts the little guys, the artists and programmers in the end, I wouldn't have any moral qualms about pirating games published by EA. I would have such qualms about pirating games published by less "evil empire" themed publishers like Stardock.

People who pirate games regardless of DRM, will always pirate games because they're free. If they weren't available, most of them wouldn't be suddenly going on a shopping spree. So basically, as many experts have been claiming for a while now, piracy is not a factor.

Bad game design, oversaturation of the market, overblown prices etc. - those are the real reasons why some games fail and companies go under. However, they are much harder to address than simply blaming pirates.

Besides, when you're explaining to your investors why your revenues aren't exactly as high as they hoped they would be, its much easier to say "those DARNED pirates have been stealin' from ya sirs, damn their boots!" than go "Weeeell, you know, its really my fault. I kinda tried to sell regurgitated crap in a shiny box and it didn't go so well as I hoped..."

I read somewhere though that Tages doesn't allow you to deregister a PC so on my 3rd PC change I wouldn't be able to install the game anymore?

Regarding TAGES:

http://forums-de.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/5251042375/m/2601015867

Multiplayer would not really work well in a game like this anyway without losing a huge amount of the gameplay. I spend a lot of time in fast-forward myself, which would be impossible in multi, and the games still last very long.

No, it seems pretty clear that you're the one who doesn't get it.

Well, good for you. That's obviously not true for a lot of other people. I wonder if you'd respond to someone having a problem with their internet connection by saying "it must be you, my DSL always works!"

What's the point of having a working computer if you can't use it to do what you want? We already have gaming devices for that purpose: consoles. Using my computer involves things like programming, since I'm a programmer. That means I have a debugger. I'm not going to remove my debugger because some game company is run by morons.

And actually my time commitment is pretty minimal. If it has DRM, I don't buy it. That requires no time.

My father in law isn't savvy enough to know how to do that. All he wants is to put the disk in and play the game. DRM blocked him from having that for no appraent reason. Are you honestly going to sit here and tell me that was actually a good thing for the industry? He's left PC gaming entirely because they failed to deliver on that simple requirement, due to random DRM breakage.

You also only get to do what the game companies decide is alright with your own hardware. I refuse to accept that, and I won't give my business to companies who try to act that way.

I don't have to do anything either, since if it requires a crack to actually be functional, I won't be buying or playing it. Pleanty of other games out there to spend my money on.

(And hey, if DRM actually worked that way, my father in law would still be playing. Go figure.)

@Monk

Sorry, but from what you described with your "console PC" you're not doing much of anything with your computer. Its not you making it work, it you do not dare to do anything not "by the book" - no wonder your system works. Its also a system where you're not really in control - not if you cannot do what you want, when you want.

Its easy to brag that your car always starts when you never take it out of the garage.

Yeah, just one problem - as Tridus said, you're not really in charge of your own computer. Step out of the envelope, and that's what the PC is all about, and your perfect system starts to wobble. If I wanted an immutable setup that can only do one thing, I would have bought a console.

Well, I do my game shopping online. Prices are a little better, or at least they used to be, plus I don't get all that annoying optical disks and boxes lying around my desk (recently for some reason I have to pay the same price regardless). Which means I download most of my games. Now, if I wanted to pirate them, I would also download the game... hmm... what an inconvenience! Not to mention that for some reason pirates often get the game at zero hour or even before its officialy released! How sorry must they feel for us poor saps waiting for the official release date so we can actually spend money on a game which might tell us we're dirty pirate scum because the DRM software doesn't like the color of our casing...

You may be willing to suck it up and take whatever crap the game publishers dish out, you may even be inclined to brag how you turned your PC into a friggin' console, but most of us would rather like to be able to use our PC's as we see fit, which includes using software we bought without it making a mess because some genius thinks that can actually stop pirates.

The_Monk maybe if we all knew what you did. But im afraid that is maybe one in 6 billion people.

Seeing your rant against ISO and CD emulation how can you say you have any experience with computers?
Last time i checked our entier Microsoft MSDN Gold Partner library came as both DVD's and as ISO's on even more DVD's
Las time i checked the Linux and FreeBSD systems i have, was downloadable as ISO files.

Tbh i cant remember the last time i used a CD burner or emulation software for anything illegal.

What piss me off the most about DRM is the fact they try and sneak it in the backdoor. The fact it aint monitored. They could sniff your home banking your emails, everything and you couldnt do a thing about it, you might not even realize it. Game publishers have been the biggest organized distributor of spyware and yet i can have the police kick down my door if i do a random port scan.

Defending the way much DRM is implemented equals those pot heads who argument that more survailance in society is ok since all the people not doing anything illegal have nothing to fear from it.