No, it's the company's loss, and that's why companies that use nasty copy protection are being just as dumb as you are.

Let's play a questions-and-answers game, shall we?

Q: Has anyone ever refused to buy a game because of invasive copy protection?
A: Yes.

Q: Has anyone ever not been able to play a game because of invasive copy protection that malfunctioned?
A: Yes.

Q: Has invasive copy protection ever made a customer angry at the company, and therefore lessened their opinion of said company and their products?
A: Yes.

Q: Has invasive copy protection ever stopped a game from being pirated?
A: No.

Q: Given these facts, is invasive copy protection a wise move for your business?
A: ____ <- Fill in the blank yourself. Hint: It has two letters.

COPY PROTECTION DOES NOT STOP PIRATES.
It's only purpose is to make money for the people who develop copy protection software.

And before you start slinging insults at me, I'm not a pirate. I'm a game developer with over twenty major releases on my resume.

Why is it?

I have x money I'm going to spend on games. I'm not going to magically buy more games just because there are more games I'm interested in than I have money to spend on them. If, instead of passing on them, I "steal" them, who have I hurt? Where is the effect of the wrong I've committed?

The answer is nowhere, such piracy has no victim because there is no loss to anyone. If the software wasn't going to be purchased if it wasn't for the act of piracy, nothing bad happened. It is at the worst, morally ambiguous.

Anti-piracy measures though. Where is the wrong in the currently discussed method? Assuming people can read, nowhere. It states an internet connection is required to play, asinine, but not harmful. As long as they aren't defrauding customers on release because the servers crash or something, not anymore damaging than victimless piracy is. The less benign versions though? How does a 30% drop in system performance sound? Zero level drivers opening your system up to attacks by outsiders? Your computer being hijacked and functions disabled just in case you decide to use your legitimate burning software to make copies to send to all your friends? Wearing out your drives with incessant cd checks, wearing out your cd's by requiring them to be in the drive without any valid reason? I've put up with more bullshit from anti-piracy measures causing problems than I have just plain buggy software, and you know how much of that is out there. I don't steal games, I have a whole stack of them sitting on top of my tower, and more in carrying cases. It does nothing but harm me to put inconveniences into my games that I buy.

Now, if instead of spending my money on games, I pirate them simply because I can, and blow that money I would have spent on something else, there is indeed a lost sale and someone has lost potential income. This can be considered equivalent to actual theft. Of course, you still haven't actually taken something from someone, and a minuscule portion of piracy can even laughably be attributed to actual lost sales. The idiots that try to say every download of a game is a lost sale are just that, idiots.

Gaming is a luxury, a luxury very low down the list, and very expensive. Most pirates aren't going to bother if they can't pirate, which is why the rise in piracy has done dick to sales numbers. They like to point to the huge levels of piracy compared to sales, but they never point out that the industry has been steadily expanding at a relatively stable rate despite those alarming increases.

Simple don’t buy those games and also go to the company forums and say you’re not buying them because of this stupid copy protection. Then point them to Star Dock and tell them that Star Dock is trying to make consumers happy not drive them away with crap copy protection which will be broke in about an hour after release by the hackers anyway. I did not buy Bioware because of the crap they put in there new games I stopped buying anything valve because of the crap they did to there games via copy protection. I buy Star Dock and Paradox games without question as they are simple and don’t bug you with the copy protection. I do believe many companies want there games to fail to get rid of PC games and go all consoles IMO.

Boycott any games that have bad copy protection and go to there forums and post about not buying there games. Make them feel it in the pocket and let everyone know to not buy them until they change the copy protection.

sigh this is turning into another one of those "pirates are mean evil thieves who steal from others"

i find this 10 day thing to be retarded. What if you travel around a lot and you don't have internet?? What about those people who aren't very good with computers, thier firewall or router wont allow it to connect to the internet and they will have no idea what to do about it.

tired of hearing people spamming pirates are to blame when people get turned away from buying thier products because of retarded systems like these

I was contemplating Spore, but now I saw let the Chinese have it!

I would just like to point out that I, in fact, did purchase GalCiv2 because it has no anti-piracy in it.

The only reason I ever heard about this place was because StarForce decided to throw a tantrum and posted links to GalCiv warez after Stardock rejected their DRM scheme. I read about it on Slashdot, then followed the links to this site and thought, "Hey, I like these guys. They know which way the money flows, so they don't make you put up with all the annoying crap everyone else is pushing. I wonder if their game is any good?"

Since then, I've purchased the GalCiv2/Dread Lords Gold Edition, pre-ordered the Twilight expansion, and convinced others to purchase their own copies of the game. All this is because StarForce is a bunch of vindictive crybabies and Stardock had the courage to stand up to them. So please forgive me if I find it credible that Stardock largely owes its success to its anti-DRM stance, and the pro-customer mentality that spawned it.

Trying to understand how anyone could possibly think that's a good idea is just... *facepalm*

It must collect something. From what I understand of what I've read on the BioWare forums, if you make too radical a change to your hardware, the game will force you to reactivate (and you only get 3 reactivations).

Am I missing something? Where in that link does it say anything about Spore having that copy protection? It seems exclusively for bioshock.

Anyway, it is doubtful that spore will have that sort of copy protection. One of the demostrational speeches indicated that spore would be able to be played fully offline for those without internet connections. Spore will be one of those flagship games for EA that will hit the broadest audience possible (releasing on all platforms possible) and therefore (if they are smart.. which I have my doubts as it is EA we are talking about) they will limit the copy protection. It would make sense that they would learn their lesson with as much trouble as casual gamers have getting The Sims2 to run. Spore will need to be light on the copy protection system in order to truly be a success.

Anyway, enough of my rambling. I just want to know where the forum post says anything about spore. Thanks.

Testify, brother! I also bought GalCiv Gold Edition. And I haven't even played it yet. Why did I buy it? Because of no DRM. Oh, I'll definitely play it, but the reason I bought it was no DRM and because I wanted to support Stardock's great stance on the issue. And I'll be buying Twilight of the Arnor as well.

Second post on the second page in that linked thread, by Derek French. He says:

Oh, great, so a year from now I won't be able to play it anymore!

Grrr....