Rockstar Social Club in its early days - i.e. when each game needed its own RSSC version or when it needed even a new version update until the unified RSL came out - was awful. You needed to find the right patch of the game, the right RSSC version for Max 3, right RSSC version for GTA4, right version of RSSC for LA Noire - etc etc. It was a pain; and good luck getting your game to boot, run, or anything...if anything was out of date.

And it was not like RSSC updated properly for itself; you often needed to find the newest patch, buried somewhere on Rockstar's website. Good luck.

Their games are now better w/ the Rockstar Launcher for all their games - as you can at least get your game going, provided you can activate it and all of that madness. But, at least a universal Rockstar Launcher now works for all of these games. But, yeah - it's still DRM'd to madness, unfortunately; which is typical Rockstar since GTA4 PC.

So people only pay attention to DRM when it's visible at first glance... Pretty saddening.

I got Max Payne 3 on Steam and just couldn't get it to work because of the damn Rockstar Social Club being forced. It just wouldn't start the game. So I bought it again on PS3, and obviously, worked without a hitch.

SimCity 5. When it was released, there was a joke going around that it would run properly if you pirate the game.

The problem is people accepting online DRM and client requirements in the first place. Which paved the way to more layers of DRM and clients on top of clients. And Steam played a huge part in this first step.
Once people had come to swallow "I need the client to play", adding another client and/or Denuvo was a comparatively small step.

Like, say, you lost a bet and have to run naked through the mall, adding a panty to your head is actually not a big deal any more ;-)

Every game ever with DRM in it.

More difficult to launch. Crashes more often. Doesn't work offline. Spies on you. Sells that data to whoever. The list goes on.

The game companies can stop their game working themselves and hide behind Steams DRM to help them.

Or of course game companies can do like Larian and release their games on Steam w/ the EXE not wrapped w/ any Steamworks, DRM, anti-tamper, or any other junk.

Essentially, making the game DRM-FREE, in the process.

Unfortunately, you'd still need Steam to get the files in the first place; and then need to back them up somewhere...so you'd have them and not need to Re-Download them.

The worst examples I can think of involve SecuROM of various types. There are two types of SecuROM: unlimited activations/installations, and another type that doesn't have these limitations, allowing unlimited installations/activations of the game.

Examples of SecuROM with unlimited installations: Grand Theft Auto 4

Examples of SecuROM with a limited number of installations: "Episodes from Liberty City" expansion pack for GTA4 "The Ballad of Gay Tony" and "The Lost and Damned" has limited numbers of installations. This means the software isn't really permanently owned by the user... it's just rentware. As soon as you run out of installations/activations, the software is no longer usable because you can't install it on new PCs. Crysis is another example with a limited number of installations/activations. Fortunately Crysis seems to have like 50 installations they allow you, but I've seen some games that only had like 3 to 5 installations. Then the user would have to waste time calling the corporate support hotline and beg them for more installations just so they could install their game they already paid for.

Thankfully SecuROM seems to have fallen out of favor with game developers and players, and I can't really think of any modern games which use it anymore. Seems like they're mostly using Steam DRM now instead, which I think is great.

SecuROM with unlimited activations doesn't prevent you from installing the game, but I've heard it was difficult to delete from your computer and created security vulnerabilities for users they wouldn't have had to deal with otherwise.

I've seen a lot of people comparing SecuROM's behavior with different types of malware/viruses because of how it works in your PC.

If Crysis had the version of SecuROM that only gives you three installations, I would have run out by now... because I've had 3 computers since the time of the release of Crysis. I was delighted to see the game is now available on GOG so I got that version and have been playing today actually.

Cheers!

Tages and SolidShield weren't so hot either; especially their Internet-activation/phone-home variants w/ limited-activations. More annoying DRM schemes.

These all needs to be removed from old games from retail and/or on any place they were distributed digitally.

I think I read the Steam version of Crysis 2 has or had one of those DRM types you mention at some point. Not sure if it still does.

I personally don't mind DRM as long as it doesn't limit the number of installations of the game or install SecuROM-like malware on my PC. A system like Steam or Denuvo DRM seems reasonable to me, and Denuvo has actually succeeded in its goal of reducing piracy because it has taken long enough for pirates to break through the DRM that the game developers can actually stop piracy for an extended period of time (but not forever) by using Denuvo and Steam in games. It varies from game to game, but I have heard of cases where pirates haven't been able to break through Denuvo security for months after the game is released, forcing pirates to either buy legit copies of the game or wait longer than many are comfortable with to play the game.

This could actually have a substantial impact on game sales, because a lot of the revenue from game sales comes in within the first few months of the game's release. So if Denuvo merely delays pirates from pirating the games -- it has succeeded in its mission, and helped the developers.

Of course some people say Denuvo is still bad because it can reduce game performance, causing problems for people with older computers who want to play newer games with Denuvo.

And if you're willing to wait long enough to play a DRM-free version of the game on GOG, why would waiting for better computer hardware that can run the game with Denuvo inside it bother you?

For those not familiar with Denuvo, it is basically a form of DRM that is embedded into the actual code of the game, making it a lot more difficult for pirates to remove. However, I have heard it doesn't install any malware-like programs on your PC like SecuROM (which linger on your PC even after the game is uninstalled), so I don't personally mind Denuvo.

Do you remember the lies of EA? "It has to be online only because the simulation is highly complex" - cue someone hacking a working offline version together in a couple of days and a year later EA allowing offline play. That plus SimCity Societies a few years before killed any lingering goodwill I had for them (a shame, a SimCity 4 - apart from the Infinite Commuter Loop bug - was spectacular)

Denuvo constantly encrypts and decrypts itself, writing & re-writing to the drive while playing. While this might not be much of an issue w/ regular HDD's b/c they aren't built like SSD's, this could be a problem w/ SSD's. Sure, it'll slow down performance b/c of this encrypting and decrypting on a regular HDD, which isn't good at all. Though, it likely won't wear out a HDD as much b/c...well, they are built to handle writers & re-writes (more so than SSD's). As someone who liked & wants high framerates, I don't want to lose frames here; framerate is life & everything to me.

Given how big most games are and you're trying to load tons of textures & even more detailed ones on newer games, all as fast you can - yeah, especially in open-world games - yeah, you really don't want this being slowed down at all. I want every frame I can get, at the resolution that I choose.

The other problem w/ the encypting & de-crypting on SSD's is - well, SSD's can only handle so much of this; depending on if it's MLC, TLC, SLC, etc etc. It's not like SSD's are cheap per how many TB's you get per the small size of these things.

And w/ the increasing amount of size on these games, you can only often put a few of these games at a time on your SSD. And if you're moving games all the time on & off this drive - well, again, you're writing & re-writing to the drive.

Even the traffic problems of SC4 were solved by a community patch.

Remember the videos of SC5 showing that the most efficient city was one continuous road with no intersections because the traffic manager was that braindead?