Phew.. I had hoped and hoped that Fallout 3 wouldn't be too harsh on the whole DRM debacle. Possibly just a simple disc check.
I had avoided Mass Effect and Spore due to the funky DRM. Fallout 3 won't be part of that club!
Now where can I pre-order it in my country?
http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=1012
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/10/02/fallout-3-vs-drm-ultimate-battle
http://kotaku.com/5057989/no-drm-issues-for-fallout-3

"Minimal", for me, is still too much.....

Wow, great news. I can't wait. By the way Mass Effect was without that funky DRM in my country. On the other hand I can't install updates and I can't play Bring down the sky DLC. Funny ol' world isn't it?

Yeah, I figured, Bethesda isn't bad with their DRM.
But I'm not entirely sure I care at this point. Really sick of levelled based game play, yeah they say it's supposed to be fixed, I don't buy it. Anyway, to bypass PC DRM I'm going with Xbox 360 DRM.
Which is that you have to have the motherfarkin disc in the motherfarkin tray.

As anti-DRM as I am, I honestly think the whole "disk check" form of DRM is completely reasonable, as long as it does it directly through the game's executable, without installing harmful services or drivers (like Starforce).
I have never understood why people complain about disk checks. The whole "What if I lose, scratch or break my disk?" mentality. Simple, take better care of your disks. I still have original game media from when I was running Windows 95. 10+ year old CDs and they work just as good as the day I bought them. It doesn't take much to keep them in good shape, just keep them in their cases, clean them properly when needed and if they do get scratched, there are commercial products that can fix them perfectly (I actually use a metal polish product that flawlessly fixes scratched CDs and single-layer DVDs).
Anyway, as long as Fallout 3 is using a reasonable CD check, this is good news. If they are implementing something like Starforce or TAGES, they can forget about getting any of my money.

Most Anti-DRM sentiment is utter bullcrap.
The argument "I'm an honest gamer being treated like a criminal" is just plain crap and a bold face LIE. Its the kind of thing a guilty CRIMINAL would say.
(most of the time) When I hear gamers talk about DRM they all sound like inmature 12 year old Counter-Strike players.
"WAAA! I CANT STEAL THIS GAME LIKE THE 1337 H4Z0R THAT I AM! WAAAAAA!!!"
Unless the DRM effects your system outside of you booting the game software then I am all for developers protecting their property. Weekly internet checks for new games like Mass Effect is also fine as far as I'm concerned.

Awesome, I can cross it off my list of games to not even look for. Had to do that with so many games this year thanks to the rental service known as securom and TAGES.

They're still being unclear.
All they said was "same thing as Oblivion."
The original release had a simple CD check (which I'm fine with), but GotY edition had SecuROM CD-check (which I'm not). They're both CD checks, but one installs a third party driver without my explicit consent.
Either way, I actually may not get it anyway because Oblivion was sorta disappointing and I'm getting mixed signals on exactly how Fallout 3 is gonna avoid it's pitfalls.

Well, I don't understand then how you won't take as intrusive the five installation limit actual DRM's in games offer. This is clearly a pressumption that the potential buyer is also a potential pirate.
I think you're looking only to one side of the coin. If you're happy wasting your money for DRMs that control everything you have and install hidden services in your machine, it's up to you.
But for the sake of the people here reading what you've written, please, think CAREFULLY what you've written and then look at the situation from an objective point of view.

Yeah, well DRM is not the best thing in the world all right, and it especially becomes a pain in the ... when it causes oh--so-funny complications, like when I had to spend an hour fixing my right-click menus in Windows because right cliking on executables made explorer.exe freeze (completely...it had to restart itself).
But CD checks? Oh, come on...that is not a bad thing. If even that would be left out, then one could lend the game to any number of people and they could play it at the same time. I'm not saying, that everyone would exploit this, but sometimes it's hard to resist the temptation for most people.
In my opinion, if we (the customers) are going like "ABSOLUTELY NO DRM OR I WON'T BUY YOUR GAME! ARGH!" then we are not much better than those publishers, who implement more and more brutal methods for piacy-protection. Being stubborn is good at times, but in many cases, it will only make things worse.
If a few games like Fallout 3 would become a bestsellers, it would show how good a gem it is, of course, but not only that. It would also be a very convincing message:
"We customers are against DRM, but are not unreasonable. A little is acceptable, and we are supporting anyone, who tries to move in this direction."
Hopefully, this would be an encouragement to other companies as well.

you ever try haggling with someone?
You have to ask for a lower than reasonable price in order to get the seller to slowly but surely move to your reasonable price.
It's called compromise, sure I'm willing to go with SOME DRM but if I don't tell them 'lol I really don't like it and I don't want it at all.' then they'll say 'ok, but what if we do less?' if they say 'oh well then fark you.' then they're not really interested in getting sales to begin with, are they?

In my opinion, extremes are scary. Although maybe this sound a bit strange, it is true:
If we say "none at all", than we really are asking more than the reasonable. Actually, we couldn't ask for more...
I actually never haggled, but I do know the basics. As I am no expert in this, maybe i'm wrong, but I don't think starting the haggle with: "I'll buy it for free!" is considered a good move.
This is just what I was trying to say, actually. The compromise thing, I mean. If we insist on "no DRM" then we aren't really making a compromise, are we? Some very-very old software had CD-checks. Hell, there are some, which needed Floppy check! The older floppy (5¼-inch)! Why make a fuss about it now?

The problem is publishers are saying they need DRM/Copy Protection to protect their software against piracy. But the reality is it does no such thing. Cracks are appearing within hours of a game release (and sometimes even before the launch date). So what it ends up doing is inconveniencing the paying customer. This inconvenience can be as little as being forced to have the CD/DVD in the drive to play to as intrusive as not allowing certain software to function, not being compatible with certain drives, to installing third party drivers with ring0 access to your computer (without your knowledge or permission). In light of that, one has to ask "Why NOT just go with no DRM whatsoever? It does not accomplish its stated goal at all."
Asking for no DRM is not unreasonable. It would be far better to make your product an attractive package for the consumer to legitimately purchase than it is to keep saddling it with more and more DRM that just DOES NOT WORK.
It seems the post by Slybo that Mithrandir0x quoted has disappeared, but I'll say only this about it: if you actually think it's pirates that are complaining about DRM, then you've absolutely no idea of what the issues are. Why would pirates complain about it when they crack it within hours anyway? Do some research before making such an inflammatory and uninformed post.

It's still there, the forum just hides posts with negative ratings by default. Uncheck that box at the bottom of the thread and you will be able to see it.

Cogadh: thanks for the tip. I was unaware of that. :)