A lesson to games companies.

So as you all know. I am a gamer. I consider gaming a large part of my life and my personality. Always have done. Be it board games, card games, handheld videogames, consoles, PCs. I love 'em. Now, videogames specifically is what I want to talk to you about. See, videogame companies don't like people downloading their games illegally so they go through all kinds of efforts to ensure that people will buy the games rather than download them from torrents. One of the methods some of them choose is DRM, usually a program like Securom that ensures that when you buy a game, you can only install it so many times then it's worthless.
Obviously... do not want.
See, as a gamer I have a choice. I can buy my games legally on disc and accept that the disc may one day break or otherwise become unusable. I can buy my games digitally through steam where I can own them for life. Or I can download them illegally, for free.
You'd think the best choice was to download them illegally for free right? But it isn't! Not only is there inherent risk (both of being virused or being caught by the authorities) there's also the chance the game won't work properly and no one's gonna give you support for an unpatched illegal download. The simple truth is. We don't mind paying for games!

So I buy a lot of games from Steam. Especially when they have offers on to save me a little cash. Today I saw two such offers. Overlord I and II for only £7! :O Needless to say, I just stumped up the cash and that game is now mine. But there was also another deal. Crysis and Crysis: warhead for £10 each. I was interested. Crysis after all is one of those games that has an amazing word of mouth review. I've often thought, if I see it cheap, I'll get that. So seeing it on offer was exciting! I could pick up both Crysis games for £20! But then I looked at the games specs and saw this.
Securom: 5 machine activation limit.

Well fuck that then. See the irony? Your over the top security just put me off buying your game. Now make the logical leap. I certainly don't wanna buy your game with securom on it. What's my alternative? That's right. Now I'm not saying I'm gonna go download Crysis illegally. I'm too lazy for one and I have Overlord to play now. But this is my point. YOU, the videogame companies, are the ones driving piracy with foolish maneuvres like this. If I can own all my steam games for life why would I waste my money on a game that can only be installed 5 times? (I know it says 5 machines, but for example, my desktop computer had a motherboard meltdown last year. After replacing that component, securom would see it as a new machine. So getting through 5 activations isn't that hard).

So there you go. You introduced an anti-piracy measure that has guaranteed that if I ever want to play Crysis, I'll be doing so by illegally downloading a pirated copy.
Do the words "Epic fail" mean anything to you?

As for me. I'm happy. That £20 stays in my bank account and I have Overlord I and II to play! Hurrah! I don't even know if they're any good. They don't have the word of mouth advertising that Crysis does. But they don't have any silly over the top intrusive security measures to limit my fun.



Oh one final thing. I realise some of you are not gamers and either didn't read that, or didn't get it.

Essentially. DRM is like being sold a car, that will stop working once it's done 5'000 miles. Now imagine your local dodgy garage down the road will sell you the same car for next to nothing, with that feature disabled.

Yeah exactly.