 MooJohn
join:2005-12-18
Milledgeville, GA | It has nothing to do with piracy Sure, it's a great thing to claim up front that they're fighting software piracy. It's all a front for the real reason DRM like this exists: to collect user data.
What better way to know how often you play the game and where you're located than to have the software phone home at each use. Even games that just "check for updates" before playing are giving them pretty precise statistical data. They know every time the game with that s/n is started and where the player is located. As we all know, information is the most valuable commodity these days.
Systems like Steam and EA's online delivery system do the exact same thing. Your downloaded games have to be "verified" each time you want to play the game you paid for. Meanwhile they get to build profiles for everyone who plays the game -- forever.
They never address what happens if you want to play this game 5 or 10 years from now when those authorization servers are long offline. Are you SOL?
I'm not a true gamer but I do own a few titles here and there. They're all legally-purchased games yet I still have to jump through hoops to play them. The more inconvenient this gets, the more I root for the crackers removing the DRM.
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John M - Cranky network guy |
