Good question. I don't think that it would be, for the simple reason that without such an obvious excuse they'd have no real means of justifying it. They may find other means of controlling customers though. Such as increased focus on online-centric gaming.

That said, I feel the need to point out that we've had disc checks for about as long, if not longer than we've had serials. Half-Life was the first single player game I remember needing a serial for and there were definitely a good few DOS games with disc checks before that. Some of those disc checks are a lot more problematic than online activations. It does make sense if you look at it from the standpoint of increasing the likelihood of making the customer re-buy the game, or buy the sequel (think COD) because they can no longer play the original.

Still this online control is not necessary especially since violates consumer laws

"You buy a product, its yours"

Online gaming has its place but it should not be the norm

Yeah, but software licenses try and make it seem like you're buying a service, rather than a product. That may be, to a degree, somewhat necessary. But naturally it is something that has been exploited to hell and back and I think that we can only expect that to get worse as companies see just how far they can push consumers away from ownership and onto a drip feed (Ubisoft is something of a pioneer there).

Canada recently passed a bill to graft anti DRM circumvention onto our Copyright Act. But the Supreme Court also just drew a line in the sand they call "technological neutrality" (basically meaning the digital realm gets no special privileges to tip the playing field in favour of publishers.) Also of interest, the CRTC's latest anti-spam regulations seemingly classify some flavours of DRM as spam. So we are surely going to see an official answer on this matter in the next year or two and it looks like there may be a light at the end of this tunnel.

I think with Kickstarter projects you are almost obligated to omit DRM. I mean, people are financing the project in advance. It's like before the game is even made it's already a financial success in some way (unless your goal on kickstarter wasn't nearly enough to cover all development costs). And you can't deem regular people pirates if it's regular people who funded the project in the first place, can you. Also I think that as a result of this inverted financing devs do indeed care less about the piracy that occurrs after the completion of the project. After all, their previous project was funded by the crowd in advance - why not the next one?

HD remakes, re-releases, additional new content. I know drm is good for devs/publishers, but we pay enough as it is. I think they should give us the benefit of the doubt, and keep us happy with no drm. At least GOG is trying to make this a reality.

When you buy it, sure. But when you license it, you need to shut the fuck up and put up with everything that you agreed to.

I don't know.

I think DRM is a genuine combination of them wanting to stop small time piracy (not Torrenz, they can't stop that short of controlling the internet, rather, they want to prevent you from passing a copy along to your friend) and them wanting to be able to re-sell you a copy (or to your descendant) to make an easy buck at your expense.

I'd like to think that the smalltime piracy part is BS, but looking at how the people around me are, I'd say that probably 80%+ of people would engage in smalltime piracy if they could: Your buddy asks you for a copy of that DRM-free game you just got, I think most people would give it, because their friend is right there while the developpers/publishers are a more distant abstract entity to them. That's the human condition for you in a nutshell and that's why social engineering works and why many other things in our society are screwed up.

That being said, smalltime piracy does allow games to be sold, just not as many (1 copy might be bought per group of 5 people instead of 5 copies and then you have people who don't have many RL friends).

There's nothing wrong with that provided that what they are providing is an actual service and is priced fairly given what is provided.

I don't have a problem with a service like Netflix or some browser games I've played, but I do have a problem with them picking what is essentially a single-player game and sticking some peripheral feature to it in order to claim that the game needs an external server to run.

Piracy is a convenient scapegoat, allowing the publishers to appear victimized and forced to... restrict their legitimate customers to combat piracy. (Yeah, that's the ticket.)

It is no coincidence DRM has two very beneficial side effects:

1. Eliminating the second hand market, and;
2. Enforcing vendor lock-in.

Well, it's probably the most simplistic solution and one where they get to screw us on the side as an added benefit.

I'm with you that if they had any self-respect, they'd eat a couple of lost sales instead of screwing over the entire breath of their customer base, but unfortunately, the modern corporate motto seems to be maximizing profits for the most part (not just making profits, maximizing them).