DRM appeared due to and to prevent the sharing, not vice versa.

The best way is (sorted by impact):
- support who sell without drm and tell them why
- purchase drm-free and tell the developer why
- pirate
- get license from DRMshop, but game drm-free elsewhere.
- do not play at all
- use the useless boycott right*

* no impact on drmshop, no impact on developer, no exposure to game, waste your time, no support to those which home country the drmshop considers to be illegal.

I was really hoping I'd allow myself a Fallout 4 exception to my "say no to Steam" personal policy; but looks like for the moment it will go on my 'wait and see..' list.

I like to be able to play an old game years later (which is why I've purchased so many games from here - even many for which I have a boxed copy or two); but the 'day 1 patch and you cannot even play it until you do that' method of retail distribution is a big turn-off.

It's a turn-off because I don't know if, in 5 years, or 10 years, I'll be able to load up the game and play. Will it, at that time, be able to get that required patch? Who knows. And without that knowledge - it's a no-buy for me.

Maybe in a year, when perhaps a GOTY-edition comes out - the ability to play without such a patch will become possible. Or, maybe at some point a separately downloadable (and thus archivable) copy of the required patch will be available.

At THAT point in time I'll consider a purchase.

I know - who cares.. But as much as I love all the Fallouts; so far, the 'buy conditions' look to be too onerous on 4's release. Maybe later I'll get to enjoy it.

Not a grain of self-control in some ppl here!? From first hand experience: Not playing a game you like to play will not kill you. Dislike Steam so much that you do not ever want to have anything to do with it? Then do, but do not pirate. Spam thousands of mails to all Bethesda addresses you can get (be polite, maybe put pictures of pre-steam boxed games you own into it) but don't get thrown into the dumb-mans illusion of "lost sales" by pirating it.

Yeah, I own a modern PlayStation console and its nothing like Steam. At least the physical copies..... surprise, do play no matter the situation. Which part of this makes me a hypocrite, clueless person?

Retail boxes still contain game data? oO

+1

I'm a Fallout fan since the late nineties, am still waiting for Fallout: New Vegas DRM-free and won't play it before it has reached this status.
The same goes with Blizzard and some others.
There are enough alternatives and we should savour the old games more often anyway.

Please only support devs and policies you people agree with.

PC gaming is basically revived by Steam single-handedly. PC gaming was near dead probably 10 years ago, when every major title is becoming more and more console oriented. However, now we are seeing many console games moving to PC (mainly Steam). That's quite a night-and-day difference.

Witcher 3 had the exe missing in the retail DVD release too, so in my book this would be fine as long as the game doesn't require Steam afterwards, which unfortunately will since this is bethesda we're talking about.

Even if you opposed me since forever, i had respect for you, despite the fact you always were a bit sharp with words; your arguments had always been tough for me. But now you make me reconsider. I never thought thee a fool. Where did i say anything about requirements? Did i say ever "it didn't run because of requirements"?

What i said, was, it didn't run because of crappy DRM and extra layers of it and when pirated, it run pretty damn fine. Maybe you couldn't find an appropriate argument this time... I would still had respect for you, if you came out straight and said that. But no, you had to twist whatever it was i wrote and change it into something else, totally irrelevant to the matter discussed.

Never mind. If you want to play like that, i won't ever again ask anything out for you, hoping for a serious reply. My fault, yet again. I should have known better...

then delete question B) and A) is your answer - " I work with support people and look for solutions online, if things still do not work I ask for a refund and play something else"

edit : to clarify - "if I had a game which I could not run due to DRM then I would work with support people and look for solutions online, if things still do not work I would ask for a refund and play something else"

edit 2 - but to date this is a situation I have never been in...

When DRM appeared, people were using modems and giving each other diskettes, and it was called sharing - for those who can't offer the license right now. There were nearly no problems with that, until greedy people started binding stuff together and putting substantially high prices at same time - DRM in order to make people pay even if they don't like the price. Its about profitability and nothing else.

There are neither diskettes nor 33.6k baud modems found anymore in general internets, but they still do drm. Why? Have you asked yourself that question? Because its essential to understand why your offer will not work.

You misunderstand essential concept, hence you recommend which is pure nonsense. Like stopping eating hamburgers yourself so mc donalds hears your voice and adds less sugar. Unless you can hook this up to mcdonalds itself behind the scene, for their own interest and marketing, such tactic will abysmally fail. Nobody cares. Your loss.

The concept is this: they are very very greedy. Some want just to sell, others want to SELL and have full control over it. Thats the major difference.

Use case 1: pre-drmshop situation. Tell me, can a big distributor be bullshitted and FUDed by a company that develops DRM into believing that putting (investing into) restrictions on his wares will increase his sales? No.
So the actual method is to prove (numbers) that DRMed stuff will more likely be sold in first few months after release than shared - and hence offset the investment amount DRM writer demands. Publishers use DRM to win some time before its cracked, and its proven that within this time people are more likely to purchase (temptation to play fights over price and imperfect stability of cracked version).
So after few months, the title is reliably working and cracked, so those who refuse to pay enormous price over internet can (illegally) download it and reliably play it. Thats where another thing comes to play and they try to win few months by paying to companies than monitor sharing sites and sending threat letters.
In all cases, distributors know pretty well that the whole DRM scheme is disgusting to every customer type - both legal and illegal one. But do they care for customers? No, only about money - which they can stick in marketing for the new title.
Again: you can cry them a river with your boycotts.
I told you about method that works: pirate, or purchase the license(buy) from them - but download drm-free version to at least not be limited by drm. Second method will invest money into the hideous guys, but it will get you the legal ground for using the cracked (read: technical-trouble-free) copy.

Use case 2: drmshop. steam, battlenet, origin. They are not far from case 1, except they try to wrap the drm into a shiny packaging. The motto is called - since DRM is indeed giving paying (for overpriced product) customers some disadvantages in form of the risks and bad taste in mouth - lets sauce it up a bit. Here comes the tsunami of worthless features: achievements, in-game chat, special discounts, stool pidgeons (give aways - but you must install our drm), etc etc. At same time, they try very hard to get exclusivity, meaning locking out customers from other distribution channels, fragmenting user base.
Do an experiment, maybe only mentally, pour a big cup of hot milk (the game) and add some cat excrements into it (drm). Since it tastes so bad with drm(just guessing, never tasted cat excr), the idea is to put a lot of sugar. Two goals: make it taste better and hook you up (just what sugar does).

But in the end.. its still cat excrements, because they limit how user can use his software.
In predrm-shop era - Scratched disk? Your loss.
In drmshop era - No internet? Your loss.
There is zero difference.

Now please look up on my post with the real ways to resolve the drm situation. Perhaps, you'll understand more.
For example, this is why I buy from GOG - its a fair service. Against my payment, I get the license and the product which I can modify as I want in order to use it.

PS
Oh, yes, missing another option - write a clone of drmed software, but under Free Software license: permissive or copyleft. Some companies might have a problem with that, but provided you either require the data from their product, or sufficiently change stuff to not look like a blatant ripoff, there should be no issues.

Fallout 3 is banned in Germany.
Blizzard does not care.
You can purchase license to drm-ed version, but get and play a drm-free copy, if drm is bothering you.

But some crusade against publishers might move a few rocks.
Again, that won't remove Fallout 3 from index and the "boycott" aka ban yourself from product idea will not work as you expect. Index is also a form of DRM (aka your $(device,country,eye color) is not allowed). I wonder how many Germans try to circumvent youtube DRM (gema), I guess more than half of the userbase, since these browser extensions are so popular.

No matter where you try... its all about the greed, and not about customer interest.

No it is not, where did you read this?
Germany has a heavily censored version that is not banned (=can be openly advertised) but is only sold to adults, which makes the censoring a bit ironic, right? Well without the censoring it would probably have been put on the index of games that are not allowed to be advertised.
The uncensored US version isn't allowed to be openly advertised around here but can be bought via Austrian shops anyway without legal problems.
I've got both GOTY editions, the German one (the German audio isn't bad in this case) for which an uncensoring patch exists anyway and the US-version mostly for being able to use the Wanderer's Edition mod properly.

The German GOTY-edition is currently available for 7€ at Amazon and was available for 5€ for a while a few years ago at retailers.
It doesn't use DRM (not even disc check) if you use the Fallout Mod Manager and everybody is doing this anyway to fix several problems in the game that Bethesda don't want to fix themselves.

"Fallout: New Vegas" on the other hand is tied to online accounts and I'm boycotting it until this is officially patched out.
My Windows gaming partition is completely offline so I wouldn't be able to play it anyway.

Ah, another day at the GOG forum, and the anti-DRM fires are burning as always. It's so tempting to jump in and try pissing on the fire, but it's too strong for that to be effective and the smoke stings my eyes anyway.

Stay awhile and listen... and troll people for fun. :)