Hmm...again a poll with a yes/no answer where my answer (and IMO the correct answer) lies in the middle.
I've read in this thread already that DRM is okay if it doesn't put too much restrictions on the end user, and I agree to that wholeheartedly. What I don't read as much, though, is that DRM had their share of evolution as well, just as well as other parts of the gameplay.
I had a few of those games with wheels (monkey island), codes you had to look up (early D&D games, SSF2T) or starforce-based games. They worked, all right...to motivate everyone to start pirating. Honestly...when I bought super street fighter 2 turbo, it came on 8 disks, and the 2nd had a reading error. I took it back to the store, but because the disk worked on their station (must've been something with my drive not being 100% quality) I didn't get my money back. Result: I just copied that one disk from someone else. Moreover, the game started with asking a question from the manual. This page, this line, this word. Since the font wasn't that big and there was no indication whether topic titles where included, I was thrown out of my own game more than once...until I discovered that it only asked 20 words in total. I'm fucking sure that EVERYONE who bought that game legitimately quickly created their own list (with just the page number and the word) so they didn't had to look through different pages anymore.
The thing developers really couldn't grasp at first was that these "don't pirate games!!!" messages directly give the opposite impression ("hey! you can pirate this? COOL!!!
").
Serial keys came later. And while they weren't very successful to stop anyone wanting to pirate, they had the advantage of not being too intrusive and gave you a sense of entitlement. For example: I've used quite some key generators in my time (well...if they weren't ridden with virusses, that is), but when I bought a game, I NEVER lended my serial to anyone. And this was before I even had internet.
I remember the online controversy when bioshock required to you have an internet connection, even though it was a single player game. Okay, I could see why the "only this many installs" part was perceived annoying, but I never bothered with that (as with SSF2T earlier: if the game would nag to me that I had used the key too many times, I'd just shrug and illegally download it from the internet).
When we look at evolution of games over the years, I think the thread of pirates is what also caused some trends. Games (even console games) are now subpar if they DON'T have multiplayer. And patches, expansions and DLC...I doubt they're just invented to counter pirates, but I'm sure it was one of the things that must've come up on every powerpointpresentation on a game-in-progress as to "why to further work on a game after it's finished".
I also remember reading an article with a creator of sins of a solar empire, an RTS game that was popular yet had little to no DRM in it (which was VERY controversial at that time...almost to the point where it was like selling corn flakes without a box). The interviewee pointed out that "pirates don't count". For one thing, people are going to pirate it no matter what you do, and most of these guys are never going to purchase the game in the first place. So why bother spending time and effort on something that mostly just harasses the far larger amount of people that DID bought your game legitimately.
(note: if anyone can find that article, I'd be gratefull...but I couldn't find it in an earlier discussion where it was brought up, so...
).
And then steam...I must admit I was put off by the first reactions to it ("a STEAMing pile of ..."). And why would I buy something online when I could just get it for free online anyway? An online friend once said that online games where like sex:
you can pay for it if you're in a hurry, but if you look around a bit and know what you're doing, it's not that hard to get it for free.
Steam proved us wrong, though. For one thing, it's easy accessible, not intrusive, often updated and pretty reliable (though it can be embarrassing if you want to play a game that has DRM from itself, so that you have to start steam to start the game and then have to join windows for live or uplay).
As for online availability...hmm...There really should be a law that when you release a (singleplayer) game that relies on your own servers to play at all, you aren't allowed to stop hosting those servers before you release a patch that lets people play said game offline without issues. But other than that...I can't blame them.
But what I DO can blame them for is taking a concept that works perfectly offline and then comes up with reasons why it should be online ("but diablo 3 NEEDS always multiplayer because otherwise rare items would simply be hacked". "but simcity NEEDS always online because...<whatever the reason>"*). Those are bullshit reasons and flat out bad marketing. Sorry, but either a game is an MMO or it isn't. There is no middle ground.
*I think starcraft 2 has sort of a LAN option now, but it still requires an internet connection to start, so when hosting a LAN this is one of the things to really keep in mind.
But all in all...I voted "yes" on this poll. The thing with piracy is that it is so common now that I fear it's undermining the entire industry (though admitted, the AAA-industry needs to think a bit if they REALLY want to keep pumping millions of dollars into realistic graphics). Not so much the actual piracy of newer releases but more the idea of "I can get it cheaper if I want to" that's been going around. We've been so spoiled with price reductions, humble bundles, old games we have missed, decent freeware and so on that everyone has so much of a backlog that I'm sometimes amazed that there are still people who buy games on release day. The industry needs THOSE sales to stay in business and we as a group are less and less inclined to buy it from them (we're too busy drowning in games we already have).
It's impossible to pirate Diablo III, unless you mean the PS3 version. And honestly, aside from game and expansion launches, I've rarely ever had a problem with Blizzard's servers, and I've been playing their games for almost 8 years now.
Try playing a game on launch day.
EDIT: sorry...didn't read your post close enough.
