Yeah, backing up to two external drives (or your internal drive and external) means never really having to worry. The only way you could lose your stuff is if both drives die at the same time, which is pretty unlikely.

You can back them up as much as you want, but you still cannot account for events beyond your control rendering all of those backups useless. The simple point is, this really isn't anything worth worrying about.

No, but you're not dependent on some external force (activation servers). Surely the difference is obvious?

It's like saying it's useless to have an health insurance because it would be useless in case you are stroked tomorrow by a meteorite.

Yes you can't prevent everything and there are events beyond your control... but is it a reason for not trying to prevent those who might be ?

That is arguable.

Intentionally setting things up so as to force people to buy a game multiple times where they would otherwise buy it once, which is part of why multiplatforming is attractive. So no more of that lending it to a friend/family member business.

Steam's better in that you have assurances you won't lose access to the game, but at the price associated with only being able to log in on a single computer at a time and thus still fulfills DRM's design prerogatives of encouraging multiple purchases where there would otherwise be only one.

I would actually consider Steam's DRM to be slightly more volatile than others. Not in the sense of the company just up and disappearing overnight, but that all games are dependent on that single account. A security issue, billing issue, a simple company mistake, or any other number of factors could result in a disabled account and everything gone at once. I personally know people who have run into billing issues between the bank and Global Collect (Valve's merchant service) that resulted in disabled accounts for months on end.

Obviously, most of us see the likelihood of such things as small. I've had an account since 2004 with no issue other than overloaded servers preventing my games from playing, but I imagine those who have run into more serious issues felt the same way.

In comparison with SecuROM, while activation servers going down could result in losing access as well, it is also the easiest method to overcome and patches are plenty. Having to accept DRM as a necessary evil, I still feel SecuROM is the safer choice for consumers.

Not to be rude, but this is one of the most stupid posts I've ever read on this forum!

If you can decrease the risk of something that you think is quite bad for to happen from say 8% per year to 2% per year (the numbers are just for the example) with just a minimal time investment, isn't that a good idea?

I don't really understand your logic at all.

If you have something that you don't really want to lose on your computer you should use some kind of backup. Burned discs will get too old. I have only had a few of my late nineties\early 2000 burned discs ruined but they can degrade much faster. External drives will eventually fail (and much faster if they are used daily). What you must do is to have several backups in at least two types of storage. Ideally they should not all be at the same physical place. If you have backups of your files in your own home in addition to an (unplugged) external drive stored in the house of some of your family\friends you are very safe and have not lost much time or money. For even more safety you can use some kind of internet backup solution too. There are scenarios where all this can fail, but they are quite unlikely in say twenty years. Drive failure however is not.

I've seen statements like this bandied about fairly often in DRM discussions. Can you give some examples? I know of only two SecuROM games that had it patched out and that was NWN and NWN2. The Witcher had its DRM patched out, but that was TAGES, and Alpha Protocol had its DRM patched out, but that was Uniloc.

Can you list a few SecuROM protected games that had it patched out? I honestly don't know of many, but as noted I've seen a number of people claiming that publishers are patching out the DRM more and more. I'd love to get a good idea of who is doing this and what games this applies to.

I have over half the catalog and I think I could still get them on a small external drive in safe deposit box. Flash media is getting insanely cheap, within 5 years a thumb drive will likely hold 500 GB or more. There will be no limit to backing up your GOG games in myriad places. As well, since there's no DRM, everyone who bought GOG games and backed them up has the same thing you have.

I can't offer anything complete, but I am lead to believe Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, BioShock and BioShock 2 have all had it removed...

To me, it isn't important that SecuRom be removed during a product's life cycle. It is important that any DRM scheme that imposes an activation limit, whether it is SecuRom or something else, be removed... and that does seem to be a trend, at least to some degree.

I can't speak to the other games (don't own them), but I can tell you that BioShock's is not removed. A lot of people seem to be under that misunderstanding. All they did was remove the activation limit. You still have to activate the game when you install it. SecuROM's still alive and well on that game.

Well... I appear to stand corrected. I guess I was misinformed.

And I totally agree with your last sentence, though honestly, I don't complain about it much now... except UbiSoft's... which has actually caused me to not buy any UbiSoft game on any platform for a few years now.

Sure thing. A few off the top of my mind are Far Cry 2, Red Alert 3, Bioshock, and BFBC2 (on Steam). I know there are others, but they escape my memory at the moment. Personally I fee this is the better path of DRM. To release a game with it, and while that is a pain in the ass for legitimate consumers, the eventual removal of it makes sense and then provides users with limitless access to their games for years to come.

Edit: Oops, HoneyBakedHam beat me to it. That'll teach me to type slowly while watching tv :)
Patch 1.05 removed the DRM completely I believe, which has been pretty nice.