I must say, I'm not opposed to DRM per-se. After all, if I buy a DVD I don't demand to be able to watch it on two different mediums at once, tho being able to carry a game on my hard drive without changing disks or worrying about firewalls is a nice perk.
Likewise, I can't imagine even activation limits being a huge issue most of the time, though God help you if you one of the unlucky ones.
No, my bugbear is simply that DRM as practised by EA and their ilk is BLOODY STUPID. It consistently pisses off their costumer base, costs money than results,and does less than nothing is solving the problem it is supposed to solve! No, no, the only purpose such a thing could serve is to cripple the second hand market, but they refuse to admit that.
Well if publishers wish to treat me like A: a criminal and B: an idiot then screw it, y'know? No game is unmissable.Why not reward the companies that treat customers like valid human beings?

Actually software will generally continue to function forever as long as you provide or simulate all of the requirements. Use or emulate the correct os, storage type, etc. No problem. Only actived/DRM'd and similar software becomes unusable. That's the difference.
The reason I buy games games from gog is because they are actually willing to sell me the game (at a reasonable price without booby traps). I have never had a problem finding someone with an ancient copy of a game or getting it to work, but I have had trouble buying a copy for myself.

Yeah, that is true. But it doesn't really change anything. I believe most of the people won't keep their 10 years old rig just to be able to play games they bought in the past. You can emulate only the really old ones. As for the newer ones. A lot of them can't be played on new hardware or os. So after some time, you won't be able to play games you bought one way or the other. I know it is not the case of every game. What I'm trying to say is that I don't mind buying a game again for 10 buck or so if I want to play it ten years from original release. In that light activation limit does't bother me.
To be completely honest I don't like activation limits or activation servers shot down. I don't like the sound of it. But as I stated before it is only psychological thing to me. I'm fain with the idea that I won't be able to play the game I bought ten years ago. Activation or not I wouldn't be able to play it anyway.

I can't really recall too many games like that, actually. Not even one, right now. Almost everything can be made to work, it just takes a varying amount of effort.
Also, there's a difference between having to work around hardware compatibility issues and activation schemes: the latter is illegal.

Fable for example. And I don't want to spent few days looking for same workaround. I rather buy new working copy. My point is that I didn't mind drm 15 years ago and I don't mind it now. That's my point of view. And if activation is the cost I have to pay so I don't have to keep dvd in drive all the time then I call it success.

Not if you live outside the US :)
edit: I concur with pkt-zer0: I have yet to find a game that I can't run by virtue of it being too old.

if youre going to pedantically nitpick away at things, then the same thing applied to commodore amiga games with disk protections on them.
noone cared if elite 2 frontier had a disk protection. they just wanted to shove the disk in the drive and play the game.
gamers versus whiners = gamers win all the time. we get to play the game and enjoy it, whiners can sit and rant over the internet about it making themselves increasingly frustrated in the process. ;)

Thanks for agreeing. Ya boo sucks for poorly attempting to be spiteful at my lack of caring about how i type on my new netbook and its small keyboard. ;)

You must really enjoy trolling...
Actually - NO, we don't, and that's the whole point of the DRM discussion.
Those whiners, as you politely call them, are now in court, suing EA for their use of DRM. Guess what - they have every chance possible of winning that one.

If Steam ever goes bankrupt or something, I'm sure they'll let us save all our games onto DVDs, and remove the DRM so we can keep them forever.

Sound like there is a huge misunderstanding on your side on how Securom and Steam works.
First you don't just need to "decrypt" you game with Steam, you need to decrypt and activate it and once it's activated you can play it offline... but only as long as you don't change anything significant in your computer hardware, because if you do the offline mode will no longer work and will require you to reactivate your game. And if at that time the server is down then too bad for you.
And also the protection scheme used on Steam is up to the game editor to decide, it's him who decide which level protection he want to use, the editor not Steam or Valve, if the editor want the games to be activated every day they can can, Steam provide them all the facility to do so. (read the Steam SDK documentation or posts about it on Steam forum)
Next about Securom, you don't need to be always online to play a Securom protected game (and I mean one with online activation). You only need to activate it the first time and, exactly like Steam, as long as you don't change something on you PC you can play offline if you want to.

Its not a misunderstanding at all, I understand completely how Steam and SecuROM work.
I have been using Steam since it launched and have never had an issue with a hardware upgrade. Over the years I have replaced video cards, sound cards, hard drives, motherboard, processor and RAM on the main machine I run Steam on and never once has it asked me to reactivate anything (unlike Windows). True, if it did need a re-activation and the Steam servers were offline you would be screwed, but you would be no less screwed if the same happened with any other activation-based DRM when its servers go down. The difference is, Steam is far less likely to be suddenly shut down as it is not just a business expense associated with a particular game (like the SecuROM activation servers), it is a business unto itself. It is simply in Valve's best interest to keep their money-making machines running.
True, publishers (not editors) can select a protection level and can add additional DRM (like SecuROM) if they want, but the fact is, the overwhelming majority of games available on Steam don't require you to be online to play them at all (except for the online multiplayer ones, of course). What Steam is capable of doing and what it actually does in practice are two completely different things. That may change at some point in the future, but it is not the case right now.
You do need to remain online to play a game that uses SecuROM 7, if the publisher has chosen to enable its "call home" feature, which makes the game check in with the activation server on a periodic basis. EA has tried to use this feature on their last few games, did not meet with much success (but did incur customer ire) and ended up turning off the "call home" feature, instead opting for the "installation validation" method, which validates the game any time you try to patch it or install additional official content. If they ever manage to work the bugs out of the "call home" method, you can bet it will become a standard, at least with EA, if not other major publishers. Additionally, if changing hardware necessitates an activation with SecuROM as you say (also never encountered that myself), then Steam still has the advantage, as the vast majority of games on Steam don't have activation limits, whereas nearly all of the SecuROM 7 protected games do.

And during all this time you were always offline and never ever let Steam reconnect ? kind of hard to believe.
I use Steam for Valve games since Half Life 2 and nearly every time I changed my graphic cards or motherboard I had to let Steam because it didn't allowed to play in offline mode. (I notice it easily as my "game" Windows has it's network connection deactivated 99% of the time)
Just because you don't have a huge popup asking you to re-activate your game doesn't means it isn't, if you are connected to the net all your Steam games will re-activate them when needed without needing any intervention from you.
Less likely to be shut down, but a lot more likely of someday losing rights for some of their third party games.
Euh... no. Don't get me wrong I hate with a passion and boycott every games needing Securom online activation (even Bioshock and it's unlimited activation), but it's not the truth.
You don't need at all to be online to play any EA's Ubi's or any other Securom protected games, not a single one... yet at least.
What you call the "call home" feature, I guess you mean the "reactivate every 10 days" feature, never was "turned off" because if never was released on any games, it was changed to the limited activation scheme before Mass Effect was released.
And even if it was used you wouldn't have needed to be always online, just to be online once every ten days.
Well try to install patch or additional official content with Steam without being online... I which good luck, you also need to be online do to that.
But all the SecuROM 7 protected games with online activation (Fallout 3 or Tomb Raider Underworld are protected with Securom 7 but doesn't need any activation) having limited number of activations still retains their activation limit when you buy them on Steam, so this point is kind of moot.

Ugh 2.