Slashdot Mirror
What Modern Games Are DRM-Free?
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?
I'm not asking pirates to care, I'm asking slashdot readers to stop defacto encouraging them by criticising the alternative (paying for the copy protected discs). When is the last time copy protection actually HURT you? I know its sort-of annoying, but I've never personally been bitten, and I'm sure it isn't that difficult to call and have your key reset anyway. Not worth getting all huffy and boycotting the developer, IMO.
Jeremy
Heh, anecdotes. See, I have NEVER had trouble playing games on Steam, EVER. How's that for a counter-anecdote? In other news...Valve recently patched some issues with the Steam *offline mode* which no one who complains about Steam ever seem to know about. I'm with bistromath on this one...Steam is the only DRM done right (for any media). Well, apart from no DRM at all, of course, but some of us live in the *real* world.