Quote Originally Posted by Xiahou View Post
I completely reject the "think of the poor developers" argument. Can anyone think of a game that hasn't been pirated? Usually what happens is honest purchasers get saddled with obtrusive DRM and days later, the pirated version comes out without any DRM. The result is that often times, paying customers get an inferior product than the pirates do...
Well, that's you. I personally know developers, so I do think of it. Game devs are just as heavily abused by their industry as musicians. These people are devoting their lives, often upwards of 60-80 hours a week, to creating our entertainment, but they get paid crap and have horrible job security. Certainly the publishers themselves are partially responsible for this, just as in the music industry, but piracy sure doesn't help the situation.

Quote Originally Posted by Xiahou View Post
Publishers waste time and money adding DRM to games that only serve to annoy paying customers. In what world does that make sense?
In a world where they make more money by adding it than by not adding it. I don't understand why gamers have this mental block on the idea that a capitalist economic system doesn't apply to the games industry. It's just one of many options in the entertainment sector. The time you spend playing games is time you cannot spend in other areas of the entertainment sector, such as television, cinema, sporting events, etc. Industry profits depending on being competitive internally amongst other game companies, and also externally against other forms of entertainment. If their profits are rising, then the consumers are saying that they are providing a competitive service. If their profits are falling, then the consumers are saying that they are not providing a competitive service. Why do you expect the games industry to be altruistic in a manner that no other industry is?

In any case, the idea that the DRM "only serve[s] to annoy paying customers" is fundamentally false. There are many great things about a good DRM system that actively add things to the gaming experience. Look at all the extra stuff you get by using Steam as an example. I personally stopped pirating ALL games about 5-6 years ago because I felt that the benefits I got out of using digital distribution outweighed the costs. I actively prefer to pay for a game on Steam than to pirate one, even when you take my game-dev friends out of the picture. I am not the only person who feels this way, so clearly not all of us are annoyed by all DRM. There are plenty of DRM methods that truly DO annoy me. I've actively avoided EA, Ubisoft, and Microsoft products because of their DRM systems before, but the fact that some companies have created crappy DRM systems doesn't prove that all DRM is annoying everyone.