Marketing aside, so long as you know what you're getting, for me it's a matter of how much I'm willing to pay for a game that I may not be able to play next month. Kinda like going to the cinema. I find it OK to pay 10€ for such a 'service', at least sometimes, but it's far more valuable if I get unlimited access in the form of a DRM-free installer.

Depends what you mean in this instance. If by it is not allowing your friend to play a game for free, a game he did not buy, at the same time as you play it on a different computer, which is strictly against any license agreements - why bother and not just let him pirate the game instead? Legally, this is the same. You have one license (copy) of the game, and therefore only one of you can, or should, be able to play it. You did not buy two licneses.

DRM can not be seen as evil, in this regards (it can be in others....) but as an enforcement of the rules you agreed to when you bought the game. DRM free, on the other hand, do not enforce this - but trust you to not break the rules yourself. I.e. not lending / giving the game to your friend in the first instance, or trusting you to abstain from playing the game as long as your friend is playing it.

Let the friend buy his own game? Like I said, household sharing is as far as I think the 'privilege' of sharing needs to go. I consider it perfectly reasonable to pay for something you play, the whole lending/sharing thing is, in my opinion, unreasonable when you're talking about digital content.

So answer this. How do you prevent unlawful sharing then if you take the shackles off? If I'm a publisher (which DRM-Free advocates never put themselves into), how do I protect my digital product from not being shared and copied to 10 other people, 9 of which never paid a dime for the copy? I put time and money into developing a product, I want a return back on that. Can you guarantee that I will get a return on every single copy that is made, even if the copy itself wasn't made by me?

A fair enough point, but it's patently obvious that even DRM doesn't prevent that. Time and again it's been demonstrated that if a person wants to 'steal' digital content, they can and will. And time and time again it's been shown that the 'shackles' only inconvenience the paying customer.

You're clearly not even bothering to read my comments since I already stated why to some extent above and I've also said I'm fine with household sharing.
Don't entirely agree, there's a fair step between lending a game from your friend and pirating a game. Just look here when it's brought up the amount of people tossing warnings of trojans and viruses from hacked games etc. (and that's for the people who actually know how to pirate) Yet if you could easily 'lend' a digital game from/to your friend it would become a basic habit of people in no time, as there's no barriers to it at all.

I've been in this discussion so many times that I don't want to get deep into it again. I'll just sign off with this: I use Steam, Origin, and GOG. I far prefer the latter not because I want to share my games but because it's convenient for me and I don't have to worry about relying on a third party whenever I decide I want to install/reinstall my games (I back up all my GOG installers the instant I purchase them).

I've been burned by DRM three times on three separate games and that was enough for me to decide it's just not worth paying out top dollar for a game that I don't know I can play due solely to the 'protection' scheme (every one of these games was cracked and pirated within hours of release - or sooner, btw).

While publishers push points like having to protect their property, the evidence just doesn't support that DRM does this.

Having said that, I'm willing to buy games tied to a client - but at a steep, steep discount only. So this insistence on 'protection' in my particular case means far less revenue for the publishers and devs. I'm sure I'm not alone in this. I'm also not opposed to some form of DRM if it's guaranteed to be removed at some reasonable time in the future after the initial sales rush is over (although I still don't believe that this sales rush will be affected if the game didn't have DRM). Again though, this means I buy after the DRM is removed and the game is discounted - less revenue again.

So yes, sure, publishers want to protect their property and they're free to do so. But the schemes they've devised to do this don't work (other than always on-line) and often only cause problems for the very people from which they don't even need to protect their property. This devalues their product severely, in my eyes. They're shooting themselves in the foot with this type of thing when it comes to potential customers like me.

No money for DRM, ever. I never paid for DRM-infected software, and never will. It's the loss of the developers and publishers if they implement this unecessary crap into their software. And I'm not into pirating software, I want to pay for the games that I like.

DRM isn't a copy protection at all. All games are available cracked mostly on the day of release. So it's a worthless effort.

Not quite the argument I'm making though. I don't consider being able to give your friend a copy of your GOG download 'sharing', that's closer to piracy (unless with intent to not play till he deletes it ... I'd be willing to say this rarely happens)

The argument is more that I'm against sharing being a consumer right. Imagine if GOG had a system in place where you could see your friends game lists and you could request that friend to 'share' one of their games, temporarily moving the game from their library to yours. (yes, makes even less sense on GOG since it's DRM-Free but hey, it's the trust system, right?)

Game sharing would increase exponentially, because why not? I still remember the forums filled with 'I'll share my games list with you if you share yours with me' on the Steam Family Sharing forums before people realized it wasn't going to be that simple.

And if you can lend a game from your friend and he doesn't mind, why bother buying? Sure, some people will still buy the game, maybe down the line somewhere on a sale, because why buy it when it's still relatively expensive and you're already playing or have played it anyway?

Not only will sales drop, most likely having negative effects on prices/sale discounts, but there's a good chance it would lead to games being designed differently, adding more multiplayer focus or focus on rewarding you for playing a little every day (thus making it harder, less interesting to lend out your copy)

You don't. But...

Considering plenty of publishers have released things here on GOG and on Humble Bundle, it's pretty clear that even when put in that position, there are plenty who choose to go DRM-free for a variety of reasons.

One of the biggest reasons is...

...DRM doesn't guarantee any of this. Games released on STEAM are still pirated with alarming frequency.

And that's the rub. You can try to fight game sharing and piracy with DRM, but frequently the DRM itself can be a headache all on its own (remember all the fervor over Starforce? And those games won't even work on Windows 8 or higher because the drivers no longer function), and it doesn't actually do its job. OR you can accept that the game is going to be shared regardless and try to entice with value or ease of use instead.

FWIW, I have no issue with Steam. I think it's a fine service overall.
How is "lend a game to your friend and it's deleted on your end when they play it on theirs" any different than lending, assuming it were technically possible to implement?

There's a reason playing an album for a friend in the car doesn't constitute a public performance with additional fee requirements.

You release on a hardware based DRM system, like a console, and hope for the best. The Wii was easily cracked, the PS3 and Xbox 360 have both been cracked but are expensive and tricky to configure (last time I looked).

Releasing a game via a software only DRM system and thinking that it will not be pirated is naive. The absolute best you'll get is 24-48h window before its cracked.

Legitimate purchasers will buy, those looking for free games won't.

This still goes on.

I think the need to log on to the machine to authorise it and get user list is the perfect Storm of Social Engineering and technical design. Unfortunately the more I see of how VALVe works I think this wasn't design, just a fluke of forcing a single user system to work multi user.

Yes there are people that openly let strangers use their computer, but they're a tiny minority.

If shit ever hits the fan there are ways around the DRM

I think you'll find however that we don't have enogh time in our finite lives to download and backup all of these games - seriously.

I keep my EA games on Origin
my Ubisoft games on UPlay

I mostly buy Steam games (because they're cheap)
I use other stores (Greenman, GamersGate, etc ) only for Steam keys.

Every once in awhile I'll buy GOG but the game has to pass certain criteria; for instance it
has to be a title I know isn't going to be swamped with DLC as I trust Steam's client to manage
DLC better.

By adding a share function that allows temporary transfer of the license to another account. The basic functionality is already present in the form of geolocking that keeps you from even starting a game in a certain country even in offline mode. Just change the process from IP authorization to account authorization.

So now I have game X on my account A and I want to lend it to a friend with account B. I select "Share X with account B for 1 month". The game license gets set to "always verify online" on my account so that I can't start without the game checking (and now being denied) authorization online.

At the same time it is activated on account B with the same "always verify online" restriction and it can be played for one month. After one month the authorization on account B gets revoked and the restriction on account A lifted. Account B can no longer start the game and is instead presented with the options "uninstall" or "buy".

There you go. One license. No "parallel play". No copy.

DRMed games are still pirated up the wazoo but like this at least the honest customers don't get an additional punch in the nuts for being "dumb" enough to give you money.