What I wish companies would do is take the Serious Sam 3 route:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e91q5BtlxK0

Punishing pirates like that is better and much more fun.

While you have to install GfWL, you don't need to use it in any way. It is no DRM, as you can create as many offline accounts as you like with one copy. It might differ from game to game, but Fallout 3 had an *.exe that let you circumvent it altogether. It is very different from Steam in that regard.

I actually like it, as I like the achievement system that it brought to windows gaming. I'm always online anyway, so it doesn't bother me at all.

Things like that have been tried before, most infamously with Earthbound back in the 90's. More recently, though, Batman: AA had it, disabling one of Batman's abilities, and Titan Quest had it, introducing lots of bugs into the game if the copy was pirate. The issue with this approach is that, first, false positives do happen, thus punishing legal players. Second, however, and perhaps more important, is that after playing a game that's "broken" because of piracy many pirates will think the game is indeed broken and start telling people about how the game can't be played due to terrible coding, thus hitting the sales of the game quite bad (This happened with Titan Quest).

Losing sales because of that wouldn't be an issue if a developer is forthcoming of what happens to those who pirate the game. I don't think false positives are a huge risk either. A little call to tech support should resolve any issue like that.

So whenever I find myself in an unwinnable situation in a game I should call tech support lest it be some DRM implementation going haywire? I don't think so, and that's an issue with silent DRM.

Well let me be rephrase. A company should make whatever the DRM is known to everyone. It shouldn't be a bug or something small like that, but an immortal fast scorpion, a giant spider, or whatever crazy thing the developer can think of that would only appear in a pirated version of the game. Now if you bought what you think is a legit copy and have a CD key, and that specific thing pops up then you have a reason to contact support.

That's what Croteam did with SS3. The immortal fast scorpion only appears in the pirated version and no place else. It's a known piece of DRM, and it works well.

It's a known piece of DRM for people who are often online and read about the game. For your regular Johny who walks into gamespot, sees a shooting game and buys it, it isn't unless said DRM is explicitly mentioned in the box/manual. And most videogamers don't really spend their time reading about games and their DRM schemes on the net.

I for one also agree that all the games mentioned there were flawed (especially Skyrims GUI for PC, my heavens!) and would spend my money elsewhere but yeah, I guess its more of a question as to which flaws you are more willing to overlook...

Very good idea.

Of course there is the little problem that Arkham City saves get deleted sometimes as happened to lot of people. Including me. Fortunately I lost only 24 hours of gameplay. :-(
For lot of people it happened when GFWL updated themself.

not really a deal, but as Steam can't get the game online, you can buy Postal 3 (Steam Key) directly from the publisher for $40 (which is a really good deal for Europe):

http://www.postalgames.com/servlet/the-32/POSTAL-III-Steam-Key/Detail

Oh, and if you can find 19 more people who like to have the game, you can go down to $32 per game:
http://www.postalgames.com/servlet/the-34/POSTAL-III-Keys-Bulk/Detail

That's like a digital kind of selling CD-Rs labeled with crayon.

Looks like a low budget type game . I bet i will get it for free by the end of this year with a local PC gaming magazine .
Also i think the Postal series died because of this game .

http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-DDNWNC/dungeons-and-dragons-neverwinter-nights-complete 50% off

Cheaper than Skyrim , and it's already a complete collection . :p

Then again the list price is $50, making a collection of games that range from 3 to 10 years old barely $10 cheaper than a AAA RPG released 2 months ago.

EDIT: Nothing against NWN, I love them. Just pointing that out :)