I'll step up to the fire and be honest. I pirate games, omg yes I do!
Zomg! Heretic
Some PC game publishers have this "Release now, patch later" motto that sickens me.
Not really. It's not fiscally sound to do this (you need to keep paying the dev team to produce the patches, rather than sacking/assigning to a new project. Either way, they're essentially engaged in work (costs) which will produce no further revenue (profits)).
Early release tends to be the developer rather than the publisher. It's rare a publisher will force a release, unless they lose confidence in the project. Large publishers especially don't particularly care (they can afford to delay release. Take2 has been financing Duke Nukem Forever for how long now?). Usually, the Devs push to meet the milestones which mean they get the cash, which for smaller companies can be all thats keeping them running. Its more usual to see the opposite (the publisher refuses the release as they don't consider it complete).
In truth, 90% of the problems which are patched post release would never have even been discovered in development, no matter how long it went on for. In the first case, you have third parties who are not exactly forthcoming with their patented code (Microsoft, Graphics card makers and similar). This creates a host of problems in and of itself, since your not entirely sure of how the code will work (and it's impossible to test on every possible hardware/software combination). In addition, changes made by one of these companies to their software (like a driver update) could cause your code to no longer function, and you have no control over this.
Then you have things like balance or content patches. These are usually based on customer feedback, so you can never eliminate them until you have customers. MMORPG's in particular have a need to patch, since it's the added content and tweaks which keep people interested (and thus paying) for your game.
My biggest gripe was the lack of renting games. You could hit blockbuster and rent a console game, if you beat it in a weekend so be it, you never played it again. If the game held your interest for longer you went out and bought it.
How would renting a PC game work? Back then in order to duplicate a console game you often needed specialised equipment, which the majority of people couldn't access. With a PC, it's always been relatively easy to duplicate or otherwise copy the media. There's not really any way you could stop someone renting the game, copying it and returning it to the store (Mind you, the best copy protection around at that time usually involved code wheels or manual pages...)
It's not the same with PC games, yes I know there are demos, but often demos don't show how stable the end product will be.
Neither will a pirated copy. How do you know that the instability isn't being caused by the altered executable? Furthermore, increasingly developers are incorporating code which causes bug like behaviour if it detects a crack or similar is being used.
Complete game for download, only works for 7 days. I love those things, fantastic way to promote your product.
Would only work for games which couldn't be completed in 7 days. While I understand you dislike those kind of games that's your choice - there's a large market precisely for those kind of games. I guess this is more to do with the description of the game. If a game stated on the box it could be completed in under 8 hours play, would you bother even looking at it?
So by placing DRM on your product all your doing is annoying the hell out of the average joe who just bought your game.
There's legal reasons beyond preventing piracy to include DRM. What your saying is largely true though, DRM won't stop piracy in and of itself. I guess whats really needed is some form of DRM which the average Joe Gamer doesn't even see. Of course, since there's companies dependent on selling their particular version of DRM I doubt there's room in the market for sanity anymore
