Like the famous Chuck Norris pushups joke, all of them. DRM can only ever be beneficial to the anti-theft/profit-loss paranoia of game publishers.

Then some of them go bankrupt and games remain stuck in a DRM-filled limbo that is accentuated by age and new technology in a way that can't be fixed or enjoyed by future generations. Stupidity and madness. We have planned obsolescence for almost everything else, but of course not for DRM...

Ironically enough, you're wrong..

Not talking about it never makes the wrongs go away, while talking about it have an infinitely greater chance.
You're not just talking with your opponent, but also the audience, present and future.
You can actually convince and sway people's minds and opinions about things, depending on how the conversation goes down.

I liken this sort of apathy to the same one about DRM. Not talking about DRM doesn't make it go away.
Talking about it have a greater chance of pushing back on it.

Apathy is actually the greatest enemy of reason and logic, standing in the way of righting wrongs.

It is the word itself I hate the most. D.R.M. It just doesn't roll right in my mouth when I say it out loud, several times repeatedly.

It sounds almost like R.E.M., that band which made shitty music in the 90s. "Losing my religion", oh my god the singer sounds like a lamb, baa baa losing my religion baa baa. DRM REM.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwtdhWltSIg

There was a case, where I broke the DVD of a game (don`t remember which game), that made me very angry. I then wanted to de-install it, but guess what? The de-installation program refused to de-install the game due to the fact that it couldn`t find the disc in the drive. Ridiculous (written right or wrong?), isn`t it?

LOL, how about all of them?... I mean where do you want to start:-

- Longevity. Anything online-only won't work offline plus tends to have a shorter lifespan when servers get shut down. A big issue for those who love to replay classic games.

- Sony Rootkit interfered with valid legal operation of optical drives and caused no shortage of BSOD's.

- Security. Today's "It's totally not DRM, it's anti-cheat" (reality = it often overlaps into both when it comes to enforcing account bans) like Vanguard installs themselves as a Kernel driver (exactly like Sony Rootkits) increasing the security risk of a system.

- Windows 10 has deprecated some DRM like Starforce meaning legally owned games using it won't start unless you crack them.

- FADE DRM (used by Operation Flashpoint) worked by gradually degrading gameplay instead of hard blocking the game from running, eg, your weapon got increasingly inaccurate over time until the game was unplayable. Whilst this sounds "clever" there were definitely a few false positives back in the day where people were left with an unplayable game after it being falsely triggered it in legally purchased versions.

- Games For Windows Live shutdown left broken games such as Bioshock 2 that only becomes playable again after they were released elsewhere. Some Steam versions of Fallout 3 crashes like mad due to leftover GFWL remnants whilst the cleaner GOG version that never had it is much more stable.

- 1st party DRM like Croteam's "clever" in-game stuff can be falsely triggered. Eg, getting stuck in the elevator in Talos Principle to "punish pirates" could in the Steam version be triggered by something as simple as moving the game folder from the default Program Files\Steam\steamapps to elsewhere (eg, C:\Games) and running it. The GOG version has no such issue.

- Physical DRM (eg, code wheels or printed manuals for "Enter the 3rd word on the 5th line of page 21") can be lost and replacements hard to source, particularly of "out of print" games.

- Disc-based checks (CD-ROM's) means that games can't be played on PC's without optical drives, eg, a laptop with no DVD-ROM drive when travelling unless cracked.

- Region locking. Getting punished for being born in a lower income country with cheaper games (eg, Russia) and then emigrating only to find half your game collection stops working and you're forced to rebuy the lot with no discount.

- Interferes with modding / locks modding to certain store-fronts (Creation Club / Steam Workshop) is why Skyrim isn't on GOG despite much newer games by the same studio being here.

- Whole account bans. Losing access to your entire account of games for being born in the 'wrong' country over an unrelated political disagreement.

- Denuvo has much longer startup times. Eg, even simple point & click games like Syberia 3's startup time was reduced from 47s to 7s once it was cracked out.

The real question isn't where is DRM detrimental in games, it's where it isn't...

Did you really have such a discussion? well maybe you did, there are a surprising amount of DRM-Defenders nowadays, it boggles the mind.

Did anyone ever get Bioshock 2's multiplayer content working or re-work it/reverse engineer it to work say offline, LAN-style, or peer-to-peer?

Did Bio 2's MP ever get re-worked for GameRanger for Windows or anything?

I honestly don't know. I'm more of a single player person for games like Bioshock, though I think the GOG version of B2 doesn't come with the MP component at all (for that particular game it was divided into separate SP and MP sub-folders in the install folder).

Another thought:

A requirement of using a proprietary client brings security and privacy issues. If Steam, Origin, UPlay or any other client got infiltrated with malware - and SolarWinds should have taught us that it's far from impossible, they're no saying what kind of harm can be done. But even if you'd hear about it in time and manage to get rid of the malicious client - you're locked out from your games.

And do you really know what these clients "phone home"? And even if you set your profile to private - Valve will know you have 2k+ hours into HoneySelect... if that doesn't make you feel a bit weird, how about what happens if this data got stolen (see PSN Hack in 2011)?

And additionally they use more RAM/CPU

I'm also more of a Single Player guy myself.

But, yeah - I did actually try Bio2's MP back in its G4WL days and did like it. Like most competitive-style MP-based games, skirmish modes, and/or components since the old school RTCW, Quake 1-3, and UT games era - these newer ones lack content, as they often don't ship w/ mod tools so the community can go mod-crazy and just make new modes, maps, models, equipment, etc.

Instead, it's all closed-network content stuff on game company's servers, all w/ loads of Season Passes, Expansion Passes, and/or DLC's - and at some point, that stuff loses its flavor to me...and its shelf life.

Hehehe, I was thinking of that when I wrote it too. :)
I respect your opinion even though it differs from mine.

I highly disagree. If you are not a Steam user, you do not get any benefit from Valve scheme.
Steam is for sure a very good thing for Valve, and it might be a good thing for Steam users and other DRM proponents. But this is one of the worst things that happened in the whole video games history for anyone having a strong anti-DRM stance.

Valve, through Steam, made DRM look cool. And now a lot of players no longer see the issues with DRM, and even for some started to defend this scheme!

It is well-known that it is a nightmare to sell an indie game on Steam, due to the store being flooded. We remember the couple games that managed to get through it (usually thanks to outside reviews and gaming press), but this is a bias that makes us ignore all the games that failed to get noticed.

I need examples for that, I fail to see how Valve gave people access to games they could not have bought without Steam.

There are Steam-integrated elements that I find useful - i.e. Cloud Saves; Time-Tracking; Screen-shot taking & posting; built-in controller support; Big Picture Mode; Steam Link via my Samsung TV; seeing all my Steam Friends and what they are playing (in case I want to join them or buy what they are playing); Steam Forums/Community Stuff/Steam Guides; etc etc. A lot of these features get a lot of use from me.

My biggest issues w/ most clients is: the client's required to run a game(another form of DRM), download a game, and install games; no downloader/installers from web browser (GOG does allow that, in most instances); allowing DRM schemes like Denuvo, Securom, Tages, and any other junk (which sometimes does NOT get removed); stores allowing multiple clients on their service (i.e. some Steam-games also required other clients like Rockstar Launcher/Social Club; UPLAY; etc etc); forced updates can sometimes break a game and/or break your saves; etc etc.

But, I ain't gonna live forever...so I'm going to YOLO this gaming-life and play as many games, while I possibly humanly can.