Adokat: What if I refused to use games that require a physical CD key? For exactly the same reasons you don't trust Steam. People lose CD keys all the time, or they get entered wrong and won't work, or are already activated somehow. I've weighed the risks and I think the risks of using games that require a CD key are too much for my time and money.

Gersen: The big difference with serial is that in one case the thing that can prevent you from playing the game is you, if you don't know where you put your stuff or if you are unable to enter correctly a 15-20 character code then it's your fault and your fault only (unless of course your neighbor's dog ate your game jewel case), if you want to keep playing/installing your game the only thing you have to do is to take care of your stuffs. In Steam case, or any other online activation DRM, you don't control anything, whenever you can or cannot play/install your games is 100% in Valve or anybody controlling the activation server hands.

Adokat: What if I refused to use games that require a physical CD key? For exactly the same reasons you don't trust Steam. People lose CD keys all the time, or they get entered wrong and won't work, or are already activated somehow. I've weighed the risks and I think the risks of using games that require a CD key are too much for my time and money. So, I refuse to play any games that require a CD key-don't bother telling how good or cheap they are, I don't care, because I'll never,ever, try them.

Still sound reasonable?

orcishgamer: Not only that, my buddy's CD key will work on my game (so long as we don't want to play multiplayer together, usually) as will any CD key off the net. If I bought the game, I don't mind using a different CD key if I lose mine. Since I can back it up in a text file next to the game usually I won't loose them and still have the game.

The CD key, likewise will always work, whereas any activation servers will eventually get taken down.


EDIT: Back on topic, it occurred to me, as DRM has gotten worse I've tended to punish publishers where I've wanted the PC version but it had activation. If I do buy the console version of the game I make sure to loan it to as many friends as possible (or swap them for another game). That's my workaround to avoid supporting crap I don't like.

I'm sure at least a few people at least are highly offended by this.

DarrkPhoenix: Perfectly reasonable. If a person has found that their life is hectic enough that they often misplace CD keys, or if they've had too many experiences with CD keys not working right that they want no part of it anyone, then as far as that person is concerned I can see their aversion to CD keys as being perfectly reasonable. Likewise, I can see how people who have younger kids might not be huge fans of disc checks, and thus might choose not to buy any games requiring discs when there are plenty of download options available.

I guess I'm just not enough of an asshole to assume to assume that the factors applicable to my decisions are the only factors applicable to the decisions of everyone else.

Adokat: To be clear, I'm offering the CD key example mostly to show how, in my view, both are reliable, though both in rare occasions may fail, so refusing to use CD keys for the extremely rare risk of failure seems as silly as refusing to use game activation. That's my main point-all the business about what could happen with Steam seems no more likely than what could happen with a CD key.

In my own experience, I've never had a physical CD key fail, nor have I had any problem with my 75 Steam games over the years. That's a pretty good track record, and I've no reason to distrust either. If DRM is unobtrusive and reliable, then I have no problem using it. There are more options than just Steam for DRM that meets these standards. Steam would have to be truly awful to prevent me from playing the games that are only available through it,

Valve's philosophy of viewing Steam as a service leads me to believe that if errors do occur, they will do their best to make it right. I respect that. The numbers strongly suggest that Steam's success owes something to the service they provide for their customers.

Gersen: I have started being annoyed by copy protection very early in my gaming life but ironically things started to get much worse as soon as I started to actually buy all my games (this was around 15 years ago). As the time I had a SCSI CD-ROM and as a result I had tons of games refusing to start because they were unable to detect the original CD as a result I had to crack 99% of my original games.

But I accepted it, just wishing for companies to remove the CD-Check via patch. (Which they rarely did)

But then DRM arrived and that's where I decided to drew the line, I can live with entering a serial, I can live with coding wheel/manual check, I can even live with annoying CD-check.... but having to ask for permission online to play the games I bought that was too much.

My main issue with DRM is not the limited activation, it's not that I don't like Securom or even Steam name, what I don't like is the absolute power it gives to the publisher, it's basically a blank check you sign, you give your money and you "hope" that maybe you will be able to play the game you pay for, and especially hope that you will continue to be able to play it in the upcoming years.

The EULAs where always pretty ridiculous but at least before they were mostly inapplicable, but it's not longer the case thanks to DRMs; if a company want's to limit in which country you can play a game you bought : they can, if they want to forbid you from playing a game yo own : they can, if they want to forces you to update a game before you can play it : they can, and even better thanks to some paragraph in the EULA they can change their mind whenever they want and add any new restriction they could ever come up with.

(Also for peoples not living in the US there are some country that are seriously thinking about video games banning law, I happen to live in one of them, so I don't really like the idea of having all my Steam games deactivated or no longer activable because of some stupid law.)


Anyway, as a result DRM have greatly changed my buying habit, I don't boycott "all" DRM using games (Heck I bought Portal 2 and plan on buying Deus Ex and Batman even though they all use Steam) but I definitely avoid them like plague, I "try" to limit to maximum 2 DRM using games per year, the only exception to this rule concern games for which a DRM removal patch is announced or released (e.g Alpha Protocol). I rather buy an average DRM-free game than buying an AAA game with DRM.

But that doesn't means that I stopped playing recent games, for most games I simply borrow them and play them on console or buy them dirt cheap on console. I know some will say that this doesn't "help" PC gaming market, maybe, but in the end today's PC market is mostly the console market backyard anyway so I am not 100% convinced that buying console port really help that much PCs in the first place.

Concerning the fact that DRM are irrelevant because they are easy to circumvent, I agree to an extent and like I said before I have used no-cd crack for years with my original game, but imho things are different today to what they were before.

Some years ago, downloading a crack was perfectly legal (i.e. there was no law forbidding it), nowadays newer/stricter laws are bought by media companies to make sure that soon creating or downloading a crack will be riskier than smuggling cocaine.

Also I am sadly 99% convinced that we are living the last years of PC and/or Internet "openness", with all the "cloud", controlled software ecosystem, or other similar "monstrosity" that are being prepared for us for the future, downloading a crack will soon no longer be an option, so if nobody actually fight against DRM today, even if they just now a bypass-able nuisance, there is a huge risk that when they will no longer be circumventable it will be way too late to do anything.


I have no illusion, I know that it's most probably an already lost cause, the big issue with DRM is that, like with most others things, peoples refuses see a problem before it starts biting their butt, and even then they wait to have a septicemia before considering that as being a potential issue. I might be kind of extreme but I often compare what happens with DRM to what happened with cigarettes, it took a certain numbers of peoples (especially celebrities) to start dying from smoke related sickness for the majority to start accepting the facts that maybe, only maybe, smoking might be bad for health.

NOTE: Just to be clear I am not saying that there aren't peoples who are perfectly aware of the risks of DRM but decided to accept them anyway, but I am convince that they are a minority (and most probably member of this forum :) )

orcishgamer: It's interesting you mention both Bioshock and DoW2, both of those would have been instant buys for me. I actually would have bought multiple copies of DoW2 (I loved DoW and it was a regular feature at LAN parties). I didn't buy either due to DRM. I even avoided the Bioshock 360 release. If you read their forums they handled the whole thing piss-poorly and treated the very large number of people who had actual problems with derision (remember, this was before they got all the SecuROM stuff ironed out, they launched with 2 activations and no revocation tool).

StingingVelvet: It's weird to me to see people who had actual problems with getting DRM to work. I buy a TON of games and have never had one issue activating a game and playing. Never. Not once.

Maybe that's because I'm in the US? I don't know.

Adokat: Do you object to all forms of activation?

I don't find it that inconvenient to have to be only for a moment to activate my game. After that, can't I just play my game offline? And can't I make a backup on a hard drive? Unless my hard drive melts, what stops me from being able to play the game forever?

StingingVelvet: You're going to use the same exact Windows installation forever? Really? I don't think you're looking too far ahead there.

StingingVelvet: You're going to use the same exact Windows installation forever? Really? I don't think you're looking too far ahead there.

That said I agree with most of your point. Steam will be around for a long time and when they go under eventually if they don't patch out the DRM then the community will take care of it. It's a non-issue.

I think people like Orcish are more focused on a principle than an actual inconvenience. We should not have to ask Valve's permission to play our games bought elsewhere, and I agree with him completely on that. I just don't care enough to boycott games because of it, since the DRM is completely pointless anyway. If Valve say no I will just play the game some other way.

StingingVelvet: You're going to use the same exact Windows installation forever? Really? I don't think you're looking too far ahead there.

That said I agree with most of your point. Steam will be around for a long time and when they go under eventually if they don't patch out the DRM then the community will take care of it. It's a non-issue.

I think people like Orcish are more focused on a principle than an actual inconvenience. We should not have to ask Valve's permission to play our games bought elsewhere, and I agree with him completely on that. I just don't care enough to boycott games because of it, since the DRM is completely pointless anyway. If Valve say no I will just play the game some other way.