Heh. This movement is growing.
First Steve Jobs, now Gabe Newell, eh?
Frankly, I think the old forms of DRM are slowly dying. They never worked, they didn't stop the pirates, and they inconvenienced the customers.
SecuROM was the only company that really saw any benefits whatsoever. EA didn't really benefit because their games were still pirated. Wal-Mart didn't benefit because they had to deal with returns. The customer certainly did not benefit because they got higher prices, often had to deal with crashes, and often had to deal with false positives and draconian "you're renting not buying" software behavior.
In fact, the customer loses the most when this type of DRM is used. The pirates lose less than the customers.
Frankly, DRM encouraged more copying than ever because it punished the people who did not pirate.
I like this quote by Gabe:
As far as DRM goes, most DRM strategies are just dumb. The goal should be to create greater value for customers through service value (make it easy for me to play my games whenever and wherever I want to), not by decreasing the value of a product (maybe I'll be able to play my game and maybe I won't).
I totally agree with Gabe on this. Give the customer value; don't punish them.
Attaching items to an account seems to work smoothly for both the consumer and the publisher. It's not the most transparent, but, it doesn't have many negatives either. Let's hope other's pick up on this trend.
Agreed. So far, this strategy seems to be the best: It offers benefits to everybody, including the customer. No, it's not totally transparent, and yes I know some people still consider it "DRM," but honestly it's the best compromise.
