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What Modern Games Are DRM-Free?

Posted by Soulskill on from the don't-be-annoying dept.

IceDiver writes "I used to be an avid PC gamer. However, I have only bought 1 game in the last 18 months because I am sick and tired of the problems caused by the various intrusive, and sometimes damaging DRM schemes game publishers insist on forcing upon their customers. Once burned, twice shy! The EA announcement that upcoming releases will include SecuROM, along with verification requirements and major restrictions on installations left me wondering which recently released or upcoming games (particularly major titles) are being released without DRM? Are there any? How has DRM affected your game purchasing? Will EA be negatively affected by their DRM decision?" The ongoing DRM controversy was stirred by the recent launch of Spore. We discussed the public outcry from Amazon's reviews (which were subsequently taken down and then re-posted). EA's response to the outcry was to say that only one percent of accounts tried to activate the game more than three times, which is the limit without help from their customer service. Meanwhile, their efforts to find a "balance" between preventing piracy and not hampering legal users may not have been as successful as they hoped. According to Forbes, a P2P research firm found that illegal copies of Spore had been downloaded over 170,000 times already. So, is it time to create a whitelist for game publishers and developers?

3 of 630 comments (clear)

  1. Title is wrong by unity100 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    It should say what modern games are shit free. Instead, i see a word 'DRM', that i dont know.

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  2. Re:Windows XP Activation made me a Linux user by Korin43 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Same thing happened to me with Half-life. Can't use it without paying them more money. Fuck Steam.

  3. DRM has nothing to do with piracy by LKM · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Piracy is just the scapegoat publishers use to justify DRM. Pirated versions of Spore were available even before the game was in store; DRM is useless in preventing piracy, if anything, it provokes piracy, and the publishers know this.

    The actual goal of DRM is to prevent second-hand sales of games. Publishers know that they can't convert pirates into paying customers, but they can convert people who pay for second-hand games into people who pay for new copies. So that's what they're doing.