There've been some discussions about DRM recently (in particular with the new Hitman release), and it inevitably comes up that people disagree with what is DRM and what isn't.

So, I have a hypothetical situation to look at, and the question is, do you consider it to be DRM?

* At boot, the game checks for an internet connection. If there's no internet connection, the game refuses to start.
* Periodically, the game does an internet connection check again. If that fails, the player is kicked out of the game, without giving the player a chance to save progress.
* The game is entirely single player, so there isn't any technical need for the internet coonection.
* The game doesn't actually do anything with the internet connection other than make sure it's present. In particular, the game doesn't actually check to make sure the copy of the game is legal (so copying the game files, without modification, will allow the game to be played on another system, provided that system has an internet connection). There's also no account system or login, and all save data is stored locally.

Now, I assume that everyone would agree that the internet connection requirement for this game is unnecessary, and getting kicked out because of a loss of internet could be extremely annoying (to the point of being potentially rage-inducing), but would you consider this to be DRM?

It's a managed [i.e., out of your control] digital restriction.

I absolutely would. They might not actively be using it for a purpose now, but it's in the way. It prevents an air-gapped computer from using the product. It's very parallel to games in the 00s [and even continues to today] that refused to run if certain other software was on the computer [in the 00s, it was CD emulation software]. Or earlier refused to load if you didn't have a serial port available (even if they didn't currently have it set to check for a dongle). Et cetera.

Denuvo's "anti-tampering" is in the same family. "Technically" (in the absolute narrowest definitions) not DRM, but "anti-tamper" in that it prevents you from snooping in the program's address space, tracing it, etc. Typically used to 'protect' the DRM that is also in it alongside it.

Your construction might not be used now, but it's an artificial restriction, and also clearly shows an intent in the creator. (Future use/updates may come in. Maybe it only connects out in certain atypical uses that then changes how the application works, for instance).

And many bits of malware work this way to stop their detection/cleaning in a situation where they can't spread if there isn't Internet. So even if one weren't to consider it "DRM", it's absolutely malicious.

In the case of the new Hitman release, the problem with your idea is that if IO interactive servers go down at some point, the game just loses, in a blink of an eye, the capacity to unlock about 80% of its content (gear unlocks, new starting points, etc), even if the online check is "just" checking if there's an internet connection, not related to technical needs. It's true that you can play this game in some limited, distorted type of DRM-free, but if the servers, for some reason, shuts down, the game is going to suffer A LOT. So.. yeah, I consider this to be DRM.

Internet requirements are about specific server requirements, not just a random "does the internet exist" check. So I don't really think this question has any practical purpose, no offense.

This hypothetical situation I constructed is not the same as the Hitman situation. Specifically, my hypothetical game will still run if the servers are down, as long as there's still an internet connection, whereas the Hitman game has issues if most of the internet is accessible, but the specific server happens to be down. The point of this question is to try and get people to think about the nature of DRM, what counts as DRM, and what doesn't.

If it checks for a third party server, yes. If it is a multiplayer game where players need to create their own servers, then no. Same situation as above, although I find it less likely to behave like that in a multiplayer game. Then yes, DRM. Sounds like a beta feature/bug that was left in the final build by accident, or some sort of really poorly implemented telemetry (Deus Ex: Human Revolution comes to mind). If it doesn't even check if you have a license for the game, as mentioned before, sounds more like a bug, beta feature or poorly implemented telemetry.

Really?... playing the devil's advocate with lame ,,situations,,?
Why don't you take the bull by the horns and approach any of the real case scenarios and express your own point of view?
Some really like to get lost from reality theorizing the most meaningless cases but considering themselves ,,so smart,,...
But hey! Thanks for the session doc and let me know when you decide to have a serious talk...

No, that's obviously not DRM since you could have pirated the game and it would still work fine so long as you have an active internet connection. That's not managing or enforcing anything.

However, a game that did that would still be hard pass for me because of the sheer idiocy of requiring an internet connection that's not actually used for anything.

Depending on how it's implemented, you could probably spoof an "active" internet connection fairly easily. But I shouldn't have to jump through hoops like that for no good reason. I'd also be incredibly suspicious: while it doesn't do anything with that internet connection NOW, what are they planning to do with it at some point in the future?

Stop pretending that DRM has anything to do with piracy/copy protection. It may have grown out of that, but it's not. It's about arbitrary control. And this scenario is absolutely one where they maker is arbitrarily controlling the circumstances in which you can use it.

Yes but I don't think your example has merit. There is no generic internet check, like there would be a disc check. It's not a thing that exists. You need to contact a server, even when you search Google or whatever that's what you are doing.

Guys, please, this is is a decoy to divert attention and split. Don't get engaged on moronic ,,hypothetical situations,,

Depends on criteria, subjectively chosen. It's 2 AM here, too late for ontological discussion.

Yes.

If a game's campaign cannot be played in full offline (all the content), no install/copy off the grid to a different machine, requires GOG Galaxy, Steam, etc and an account to run itself, I count that DRM. A separate non-essentual Multiplayer mode of a game does not count.

Yes, this would be DRM. I didn't need to read the rest of your post, because this first point alone would categorize the hypothetical game as DRMed. Building in an unnecessary dependency that renders a game unplayable without an internet connection would absolutely be DRM. Because it is taking control away from the user to decide how and where they can play the game they have bought.