Also I dislike the fact that activations aren’t automatically refunded, as I might want to sell on my game.

But all these other issues… well there was this guy on the Mass Effect forum, moaning that he couldn’t get the game to work and ended up re-installing Windows twice in a week and then was out of activations. Simple solution: take it back to the shop.
Product stops working, then product not fit for purpose, then product go back for refund or replacement. The EULA can harp on as much as it wants but we still have our statutory rights as consumers (at least in the UK). Screw calling EA for more activations. Game no-worky, game go back.
And y’know, if the problem really is that far-reaching, and everyone starts doing that, the publishers will soon junk any such systems when they’re having to pulp a boxed copy of the game for every DRM-fault.

Why are you still going on about reinstallation limits? I’d have thought it was an easy practice to boycott seeing as LITERALLY ZERO PC games currently available to buy feature it.

As for those proclaiming that they won’t buy any games for fear of them no longer being supported: how is the situation of online activation ceasing to be available any different from a publisher deleting a title from sale? Both cases amount to trivial inconvenience and no money changing hands at some future date.

Course, I still remember “Open your manual to page 47, go to line 12, and type the 3rd letter of the 19th word” or “Turn your outer code wheel to *symbol that looks like four different symbols* and your inner code wheel to *symbol that I am absolutely convinced isn’t on the wheel* and type the word that appears on the column labelled ‘Squidadiddly’” so CD in the drive is pretty easy to me. ;)

Besides, I’m buying my games dammit, I don’t want to call the company every time I surpass what they define as the sensible reinstallation limit, not to mention in this day and age you can’t trust long term support of especially single player titles, unless they come from studios like Valve since most companies go for the early buck and then quickly move on to the next titles so there’s a high chance that they will really not provide fixed exes or keep the activation servers up if they deem that simply not enough people are interested in the game anymore.

I reformat every 6 months or so, and no, I really don’t feel like uninstalling all my software beforehand in order to reclaim their activations or whatever so of course I’ll be against the use of such measures. All the games I buy have no problems with such actions even if they involve some sort of activation.

Also, other games in the past may have used SecuRom but I’m sure not all of them used limited activations or installs which would make me fine with them so long as it actually allowed all paying customers to play without hassle (how can indie devs provide robust measures that simply WORK and such big specialised companies can’t?). Like I said, I’m ok with one time activation and cd checks (since I can get no cd cracks) so long as they actually work properly. I’ve not purchased ANY games with limited activations copy protection involved and these days I get most of my “big” games via Steam anyway since often they don’t include the crappy original copy protection (though sometimes, apparently they do, and I avoid). I guess that will soon change and I’ll be getting them via Impulse, alongside the “smaller” games (aside from Steam exclussive stuff I guess) but that’s a tad off topic.

“We’re about to go belly up! Someone get on bittorrent and pull a cracked version, then publish it, STAT!”

Thanks for clarifying the point about comparative budgets. It is the case that fans of specialist games are more likely to support them financially. It’s not an issue of morality, just recognition that developers need to be rewarded for their work.

Your final paragraph pretty much exactly mirrors my view (and, seemingly, the market’s view) on how DRM can be responsibly used, which makes it odd that you seem to be railing against Bioshock’s DRM, which doesn’t violate these wishes.

redrain85: Uninstalling not refunding credits was an error.

You’re a fan of Art Bell I take it. Unless you personally march to the developer/publishers offices and protest outside their window I doubt they’ll get the message.

I don’t mind pirates who admit they just don’t want to pay. But pirates who try to blame it on people who have worked on the product for years really really tick me off.

I don’t like these though:
- copy protection – I don’t care about “copy” part, but I REFUSE to play with CD/DVD in drive, in fact I haven’t played with CD in drive for years now, and I still haven’t played Gothic 2 (bought it 3 years ago) just because I haven’t found solution how to play it without DVD in drive

- rootkits and drivers (well, I have Securom 7 installed, apparently, and haven’t noticed any issues, so it isn’t bad it seems, but still I am avoiding Starforce like a plague)