Tom's Hardware Article on New Stardock Non-Intrusive DRM

Cool. You beat me to it - congrats!

Good article. DRM has gone totally insane, where it punishes the legitimate user.

That has been the intent all along as far as I can tell since it has never "protected" me or done anything that I have ever found of "value" from the experience of be subjected to it.

I just got done with a long discussion on how drm kills the pc and a new solution needs to be found.  Let's hope someone can do it.

Hopefully, the idea that online activation can be paired with free download, if the disc is lost, and no disc in the machine.  This to me seems like an equitable trade as long as the online activation is fairly seemless and not cubersome.

To me as well. That is why I like the SD system.

Isn't that idea pretty much the way Steam operates? Which is still better than online activations alone.

The idea is that if it is harder for you to copy the game than to buy the game, that you'll buy the game.

The unfortunate consequence is that everyone who plays the game is subjected to the security checks.

You're (understandably) mistaking these security precautions as something that benefits you, such as the benefits you gain when you lock your house, arm your car alarm, or submit yourself to security checks at the airport.  Those protect you from people walking into your house to steal things, driving off with your car, and bombing your plane - all clear, visible, tangible benefits.

So you wonder, if I'm submitting myself to security measures on this software, where's my benefit?  It's very secondary - the idea here is that if they didn't install these measures, then more people would steal the game, and less people would buy it.  With less buyers, their profit margin goes down (it costs the same in development if you sell 1 copy or 1,000,000), and they have to charge more for the game ... or can't make a game on the money they expect to make ... or have to make a crappy game because they expect their profit margins to be so low.

So, by submitting to harsh DRM, you gain the dubious, hard to touch, very secondary benefit of a "low priced" game.

No, actually, the claim is that the batshit insane forms of DRM are for our benefit.  They've moved away from those nasty CD checks into something more reasonable, like anal probing.

This is an entirely serious post, obviously.

This idea fails because DRM doesn't stop piraters, never has, and probably never will. Spore had awful DRM, but the worst part is, it didn't stop piracy at all. There is no justification for DRM that doesn't stop piracy.

And yet, it does no such thing. It puts restrictions on the user, often causes problems that prevent them from playing their purchased game, does nothing to stop the pirates/thieves, and does not decrease the price of the games. In a conversation a couple days ago, someone mentioned a definition of insanity: repeating the same action over and over and expecting a different result. I'm wondering if those making the decision to use DRM are sane...

Funny When I read the notices and hear the execs talking the message always says to protect our consumers or some similar wording implying it is for my benefit. That is why it is so damn insulting.

Now since you assume I dont know any better - I'll spell it out for you - I know it is purely for their benefit. I never had a single doubt about its true purpose - my remarks were sarcastic.

I'd say it failed to accomplish that objective.