I read an interesting article today about the developers of Witcher 2 deciding not to use DRM for any future games they make, because it costs them extra money and they feel it doesn't truly protect against piracy. Usually if one gaming company does something like this, others will follow. How do you feel about this?
The said article can be found here: http://www.gamespot.com/news/witcher-2-dev-will-never-use-any-drm-6365165
It's been well known that DRM doesn't stop pirates. However, it usually takes them about a week to crack it; long enough that the initial wave of sales are unaffected by piracy, which was pretty much the whole point.
Apparently they got cracked in 2 hours. That's impressive on the pirate's part.
Big time publishers are going to be using DRM and trying new methods for quite some time, though. Executives are stupid.
I heard that one game - a western FPS, maybe Red Dead Revolver 5 or something - inserted an invincible enemy that follows you everywhere and can kill you in one hit, that only activates if you have a pirated version.
Earthbound did something similar, crashing your game and deleting all your saved right before the end boss.
Not any more difficult to bypass than other DRM, but amusing.
http://gamerant.com/serious-sam-bfe-piracy-scorpion-tao-120204/
Batman: Arkham Asylum had something like that. If you had a pirated copy, the cape glide wouldn't work properly and you could get past some central parts of the game without it. I think these are clever ways to do anti-piracy, because it takes awhile for pirates to catch on.
Back to Et's question, I like the no DRM, because as others have mentioned, it usually just gets cracked a little later. but continues to to annoy legal gamers (especially the ones where you must be online even for single player).
The forced-online DRM is the most obnoxious thing I've ever heard of. Whoever decided that should be implemented on ANYTHING with a single-player mode should be dragged out into the street, doused in gasoline and lit on fire as an example to others.