What I most dislike about the current trends in DRM is that most of the schemes are hardware sensitive. Last time I upgraded (fairly major overhaul, keeping only case, drives and peripherals), I spent two days running around trying to get all my software reactivated on my "new" computer. Even now, months later, I have the occasional issue. I'm not even going to bother setting up a "games" hardware profile with all the miscellaneous junk turned off like I used to since I know it'll stop everything working again.

If I've paid for a product, I expect to be able to use it whenever and wherever I wish without having to jump through hoops. Can someone please hurry up and come up with a genius copy protection scheme that lets me do that!

One of the things I find most annoying with our society is that people who live "normal" lives are completely incapable of understanding when others have situations arise in their lives that make it impossible to carry on in a "normal" fashion.

I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder- it's the single worst not-fatal disease one can have and will shut down your life faster than you can blink. Because of having it, I have been unable to find work for the last 5 1/2 years that I can perform. I filed for disability, but of course we don't fund it properly, so its been over 3 years waiting for a court date to determine once and for all if I can get it. Otherwise, I have no income, no assets, and no means to get income.

However, my life cannot remain on hold simply because others in society are not supportive or understanding. Therefore, I have every right to continue gaming- one of the few things in life that lets me escape from my horrible reality and live "normally" for a while, and reduce my anxiety to only about 3 times the normal level. (Most of you reading this, if you had my disease, would spend your days curled in a fetal position whimpering. It's a constant struggle for me every day to fight off what you would only feel if you were stuck in the ocean with 7 sharks swimming at you ready for a snack.)

I worked 7 days a week for 8 years straight, 12, 14, 24 hours a day as an award winning virtual reality developer. Due to circumstances outside of my control (a hereditary, incurable disease and the way our business society is flawed in how it works), I can't do what I used to do- and at the same time can't just "do anything" like other people can. (When's the last time your cashier at McDonald's collapsed onto the floor unable to do anything but whimper for "help" when you were giving an order? Never? I thought so.) In that time, I bought over 1500 games. I'd reckon about two dozen were worth the 40-60 bucks. The rest never got played once after the first 1-3 day experience, because they were full of totally flawed design concepts and had skipped the QA process- even apparent to those NOT familiar with the industry.

My point is, there are circumstances that are VALID circumstances for people out there who simply cannot buy games, but yet have every right to continue gaming- and making sure that when they DO buy a game, it is a working, quality title and not a "quick buck" type of product that will never see the light of day after one use. Demos simply don't cut it. A one hour trial is pointless, and locking down half the gameplay doesn't let one understand how the game TRULY plays. Only a full experience over a week of gameplay will let one know what the truth is about the game experience.

I think of the 5 or 6 games I've borrowed- and I DO mean borrowed, because that's exactly what it is (stealing is PERMANENT), I bought 4 and knew the other 2 were not worth any money. All got deleted once I knew my answer with a few days to a week, and no negative financial impact was caused on any of the companies- in fact, 4 of them had someone without income BUY 4 games because I knew they were worth my extremely limited resources!

There are so many other issues far more deserving of attention in gaming than "piracy"... it's simply a waste "slowing down" the pirates who will always, always break the system in place, not to mention the loss of customers who will not buy a game with intrusive root kit style copy protection or simply WRONG approaches like having a single player game REQUIRE internet connectivity. How should anyone be willing to buy a game, which they now have full rights to use, and yet be denied because they can't afford to have an internet connection that month with the high cost of gas and food? It's preposterous.

All that said, I can't wait for Spore- I need no trials, samples or anything for that one. It's simply going to be the best game ever made, period. =D

I think you're confusing the right to play games you own with a 'right' to DL/pirate games you don't. The former is absolutely your right. The latter is not, no matter what condition you have. And if you own over 1500 games, I fail to see how you need to pirate to get the gaming fix you say you require to be 'normal' (if you're simply saying you're using a pirated version of a game to get a game you actually bought to work properly, that's cool, I can see that).

He said he bought 1500 games and only a couple dozen were actually worth buying. So now he pirates them to see before buying because he can't afford to spend fifty thousand bucks for a couple dozen games. Makes perfect sense to me.

KotOR II is not a BioWare title. It was done by Obsidian.

It's time to put the anti-piracy zealots in their place. I'm tired of getting caught in the crossfire between you people and your holy crusade against the evil pirate.

Can the comparisons to physical theft. Theft involves taking an actual physical item. If I steal milk from a dairy farmer, then that milk is no longer in the possession of said dairy farmer. The farmer has then lost a physical item and is no longer in possession of the milk. Anyone that can't tell the difference between making a copy of something and taking a physical item is a fool or a sophist.

Before the zealots rush in and, invariably, accuse me of being a pirate, know that I bought Sins and Gal Civ 2 + Dread Lords (and plan on buying Twilight when I have time to play it). I won't however, be buying Mass Effect or Spore despite being interested in both games.

Perhaps if people are so worried about piracy then they should stop making it so that the pirated version of a game is a better product. As it is, the pirated versions of Mass Effect will have less restrictions and more freedom than the legally purchased versions. Is Bioware trying to prevent piracy or drive more people to it? Because people are likely to pirate Mass Effect now, out of spite when they might have formerly purchased it.

Um, guys, hate to burst your bubble, but it doesn't say anything about Spore whatsoever.

oh, ok thanks.

updated the OP with info from the FAQ.

What a sad day to see something like this (

I gotta wonder, im quiet sure companys aint stupid, so why use so much cash and time on a copy protection that wont work anyways *confused*

To me it sounds like they want something else with this "every 10 day re-check" they are not telling the costumers.

Why don't people just talk to a friend who has the game first?

And if you buy a bad game, give it a bad review on a popular website.

The reason I bought Sins was that I looked over about 50 different customer reviews, and very few of them were bad.

Dude, you take your laptop camping?

I believe one of the Stardock staff did say that one of the best ways to prevent software priacy is to make it easier and better for a customer to actually purchase the game rather than pirate it. That means making it easily avaliable either through retail channels or via download (i.e. Steam), make it easy to install, and make it easy to run. Acquiring the game usually isn't much of an issue, but when a game starts wanting to do all sorts of extra "crap" during installation (i.e. authentication server connections or adding extra software) and won't run easily (you can't play because the game couldn't connect to the server), then that's where a cracked pirated version starts to provide a better user experience (don't need to buy it, it doesn't install extra junk, and you don't even need a CD).

Another thing that i'm wondering is how much $$$ would be saved if some of these companies didn't bother using these extravagant copy protection schemes? I'm sure SecuROM and Starforce does cost a rather significant amount of $$$ to integrate into games. On top of that, you may have to maintain a series of authentication servers (which costs more $$$). Are these copy protection costs outweighed by the amount of $$$ "saved" by combating piracy?

The other thing that's going to really annoy me later is that if/when sales of these games end up not meeting expectations, publishers/developers are going to start bitching and moaning about how "priacy" has hurt their sales (even if it actually is customers voting with their wallets).