Agreed 100% Cogadh.

ive had activation limits appear in two worlds. i just phoned the company and got more activations.
it was no big deal.
certqainly nothing to scream from the rooftops over. lot of scaremongering and bandwagoning going on.
drm on a game that i must play = damn well get the game and play it regardless.
no way im cutting off my nose to spite my face.

I had activation limits appear on Mass Effect on the first day after buying it in the store and after resolving countless hardware and software glitches that made the game unplayable. Phoned, faxed and mailed EA and the only response I got was fuck off, buy another copy.
I play games because I like it, not because I have to. I'm certainly not going to spend money on something that will stop working in a day, a week or a month, just to get the questionable pleasure of begging for another activation and hearing that I'm screwed - not to mention that those games disable perfectly legitimate software on my computer.
I would have to be an idiot to spend money on that, wouldn't I?

Ugh.

I think that the very nature of PC gaming (and one of its main attractions) is the ability to do what YOU want with YOUR system. Whether that be upgrading certain parts, or all of it, binding keys for better gaming control, or tweaking every option you can to get the best gaming experience available to you.
DRM takes these advantages away from you. You will not be able to upgrade endlessly less you lose the ability to play your game. You cannot resell your game as DRM prevents the potential buyer the right to play it.
In the end I believe that money is the root of this problem. If you can't resell the game, gamers must buy new copies. If you go over you install limits or machine/upgrade limits you can no longer play unless you buy another copy. You can just forget all of this crap and buy the console version of these games (which costs more money than PC titles) and have to pay to download the rest of the game that should have come in the box; again more of your hard earned dollars are blown. The paying customer is being used as the tool to replace lost revenues and it is unfair to us. I've not turned to piracy but the temptation has certainly been there, because of these futile publisher efforts.
A soldier once said "experience is the best teacher but the wiset of men learns from other peoples experiences first." I have not been bitten by DRM as of yet and God willing I never will. Prevention is the best cure. No DRM for me!

For all of you who love steam or think that is the best DRM System out there, Imagine this: Imagine that someday valve is bought by some other company or that they simply shut down their activation servers, not allowing you to play the game you bought with you money. Just imagine that. Don't think Valve will be here forever, dont't think steam server will be up foreer also.
Just as an eye opener, did you see what hapened to some gaming server of Sierra? They whwere closed, okm they where just gaming servers you may say, but that should work as an eye opener fir you people.
Internet Actiation? What if i don't want or don't have internet, i can't play or will be stuck with a useless product for wich I already paid 50 or 60 buck, wich is, by the way, in my opinion a very over rated price for the kind of "crap" they are passing on for games these days.
Oh. Just another side info about how "unilateral" games copyright can be. Do you Know Little Big Planet PS3 hottest game? Well do you know that in their EULA (or someplace like that) they declare that anything that you, that right "YOU" create will be automaticly theirs(SONY). What do you think about them apples?

Uh, Steam doesn't work like that. If the server goes down, Steam goes into offline mode and you can still play your games, provided you have already decrypted them, which happens the very first time you launch them. That is one of the advantages Steam has over things like SecuROM 7 protected games, which will cease to function if the activation server ever goes down (assuming the publisher doesn't bother to patch the game to remove the online requirement before the server goes down).
Don't want or don't have an internet connection? How did you end up with Steam then? In this day and age, expecting PC gamers to have an internet connection is not at all unreasonable. However, requiring them to stay connected every time they want to play is unreasonable. Again, this is where Steam is superior, since once you have activated/decrypted a game, you never have to be connected again. I believe there are some games available through Steam that are exceptions to this, but that is not because of Steam, rather because the publishers of those games also chose to saddle them with SecuROM 7 on top of Steam's own DRM.
As for Sony's restrictions on LBP, have you ever actually read the EULA on any game that allows user created content? They all say that anything you create actually belongs to the publisher. I'm not saying its right, but having that clause in the LBP license/copyright is really nothing new or unusual.

The worst DRM ever found isn't Starforce. It's the DRM found on digital distribution. I remember when Prey came out on DVD and on this obscure digital store called Triton, Triton suddenly went bust, and the people who bought their copies of Prey off Triton were left without an activating copy of the game that was essentially dead.
So e-tailers should stop tacking on activation DRM and go back to sending me a CD-key in my email. That way, even if somebody like Direc2Drive goes down, we can still enjoy our games.

You would be surprised at how many gamers have some of their computers not connected to the internet. I have one rig at my house that's not connected at all and I like it this way.
There is one serious flaw in your logic - sooner or later we are all forced to reinstall our OS, which means we have to reactivate all of the games.
Don't get me wrong, I use Steam from time to time (especially when playing online), but I see its flaws and I try to avoid buying games there.

I second that. CD-keys were imho the best anti-piracy protection they ever came up with, and it was not like I had to jump through hoops just to play my games. You just type the key at install and done - game is working online and offline without forcing you to deal with Secu-malware-ROM or some other crap. I could live with that.

Keeping a machine disconnected as a matter of preference and not having an internet connection at all are two completely different things. If you have an internet connection, then you have the means to get your disconnected machine online for at least the duration of a game activation. My point was that with Steam, you don't then have to keep that machine connected in order to play, unlike SecuROM 7 and other online activation based DRM. Once your Steam-enabled game is activated, put Steam in offline mode, then disconnect the machine and play as much as you want. If you don't have an internet connection at all, then the point is moot, since you shouldn't even be trying to use a Steam-enabled product in the first place.
I don't know about you, but when I reinstall my OS, the second thing I do (after installing anti-virus) is put the machine online to update the OS with all the current patches. At the same time I do that, I also update and/or activate any other software that requires it before disconnecting (if it is one of my non-permanently connected machines). I just don't see OS reinstall hassle as a valid complaint about Steam when that hassle is really no worse than the install requirements of most other software. Besides, if you are smart about your OS reinstall, you can just burn your entire Steam directory to a DVD or external backup drive, reinstall the OS, install Steam, overwrite the new Steam install with the old one from the backup, delete the ClientRegistry.blob file then launch Steam and it will re-activate everything without having to decrypt or download a single byte (it just re-verifies the existing files).
I don't want to sound like a Steam zealot here, I just feel like Steam is often given a really bad rap just because it is a form of DRM, not because it deserves it.

My biggest issues with DRM is that only affects people who bothered to acquire it legally. People acquiring it illegally make sure that the DRM is bypassed.
The best way to fight piracy is ,and will always be, offering people an incentive to actually get it legally. This could be stuff like free expansions, free dlc or even somekind of nifty little online service where people can exchange ingame stuff with eachother (replays, vids, designs, map) over stable and fast servers.

and those people, and those bandwagoning, are the ones that state that EVERYONE is going to have problems and are the most vocal.
well i never have had problems, so its completely incorrect.
as for the dull analogies of buying a cd and having to activate it....
if it wanted it, and it was the only way to get it, yes i would pay for it. i wouldnt care at all.
its only in this pathetic modern era of whiners that you get this complaining.
noone complained about dongles on commodore amiga games. why? because they were gamers not whiners and wanted to play the game not stare at the dongle and cry because they might lose it.
pfft.

What's wrong with that? Dongles are the polar opposite to DRM. The posessor of the dongle is the ultimate authority of whether he can use his software. All he needs to do is look after his own property, and he can do as he wishes indefinitaly - not unreasonable at all.
With DRM the the "owner" receives no authority whatsoever, and must appeal to a foreign party for permission to use the software. Neither the user's ability to contact the vendor, nor the vendor's ability or inclination to respond is assured. The only guarantee is that at some unspecified time in the future the software will become unusable. In exchange, some vendors absolve the user of the responsibility to maintain their belongings.
Polar opposites.

Every software will at some unspecified time in the future become unusable (different os, different storage types). That's the whole point of this site. You can't use your old copy, so you buy a new working one. It is virtually the same for retail and digital distribution.
Anyway, do you guys realize that every other thread here is about DRM? What seems to be the big deal?