Companies have a right to protect their intellectual property
I agree wholeheartedly. I simply disagree with the methods major publishers are using.
The fact that company representatives feel they need to make public statements essentially saying, "The DRM isn't as evil as past experience would suggest" or "It isn't as bad as you think, promise" helps explain why gamers are moving away from PC to the 360 and PS3.
Sure, you might be able to find proof that a new game will only check the legitimacy of a game disc rather than install what would amount to malware in other contexts, but
why bother? If you buy the game for 360 or PS3, you can dodge all that rot, save yourself the time required to properly research the DRM, not have to worry about SecuROM trashing your system, and
just play the game.
It's no wonder that gamers are abandoning the PC platform when publishers insist on selling lazy ports of console games at full MSRP and tacking on invasive DRM to add injury to insult.
(I don't want to have to hack a game on my system to make it work either... I'd rather have DRM like this than a virus.)
A virus might be easier to remove.
Regardless, most experienced pirates are using private BitTorrent trackers, where the chances of a torrent including malware is very low. The pirates download a game free of invasive DRM while paying customers have to deal with the risks and hassles of SecuROM.
But there are alternatives to SecuROM and other invasive DRM. Why major publishers don't seem to get this is beyond me.
Take Team Fortress 2, for example: Here's a widely popular game that does not come with SecuROM attached. There is, of course, a warez version, but it requires pirates to play over a LAN or on "cracked" servers. Compared to the thousands of legitimate TF2 servers available to paying customers, pirates are left with only a handful of sparsely populated servers (most of them located outside the US). Sure, you can pirate the game, but why bother? Better to just wait for a sale or drop $20 for the game.
Now, to be fair, TF2 is a multiplayer-only game. But, if I'm understanding Steam correctly, many of the methods that prevent piracy of multiplayer-only titles on Steam are also valid for single-player games.
I admit I don't understand the inner workings of Steam, nor have I forgotten how purely crapulent the first release version of Steam was. (For those who weren't there: Early versions of Steam were horrible. Valve slapped a release version on a beta product and made a mess of things. They've since cleaned up that mess, of course, and Steam is generally regarded positively.)
On the other hand, Steam essentially eliminates the option to re-sell your game, though that's not terribly relevant to someone like me who has never sold or traded in a game. Five bucks for a game that I paid 40 for so you can turn around and sell it at 34.99 used? No thanks, Gamestop.
I understand piracy is an issue in the games industry. But combating piracy with methods that are not only ineffective but also punish the legitimate consumer is
not the way to go, no matter how stubborn EA and Activision may prove in tacking SecuROM on to new releases. I sincerely have to wonder what SecuROM sales representatives are telling these publishers to get them to license SecuROM for major PC game releases time and again.
I don't expect EA and Activision to stop packaging new releases with SecuROM. I don't expect enough gamers to refuse to buy a product with invasive DRM to change the minds of key decision-makers at major publishers. I don't expect pirates to stop releasing major SecuROM-"protected" titles prior to release dates.
In short, I don't expect anything to change. My motivation in refusing to buy SecuROM-infected titles is not to change minds. My motivation is to protect my computer from invasive software that has been shown to damage computers. It's as simple as that.
If I warn other people that a new game is releasing with SecuROM attached, it's to help them make a full-informed decision. If they decide to buy the game anyway, so be it.
I admit I'm still holding out hope that Blizzard will refuse to use SecuROM or other invasive DRM on StarCraft II, but that hope is based more on my appreciation of StarCraft than on logic or evidence.
