I have noticed a lot of confusion on this forum about what exactly DRM is and why it is so bad.
First of all DRM stands for Digital Rights Management, it's pretty much anything that controls your rights to a digital file. When used in the context of video games, DRM often limits the amount of times you can install a file or the number of places you can install a file. It is not some sort of bug or something that screws up your computer, it is an intentionally put in device to limit our rights to the game we purchased.
The main intention game devlopers and publishers have had in putting in DRM was some crazy guys idea to prevent piracy. The thing they forgot to take into account was the fact that pirates are pirates and there was copy protection before, and if you increase it they will still find ways to get around it.
The only thing DRM accomplishes is hurting the actual paying customers. Paying customers are the only ones truly affected, because a pirate is a pirate no matter what.
It's the same as anti-gun laws, someone who was planning on doing a shooting isn't going to go and say "Oh darn! Those tricky feds made that law that says I can't bring a gun into that building and shoot that person, I guess I'll have to just not do it then!" Hell no! In fact did you know that every school shooting that has happened in the United States has happened in a school where bringing guns into the building was illegal?
So the problem pretty much is, DRM doesn't stop people who used to pirate games from pirating them, but it causes a whole bunch of other people who normally buy their games to pirate the game as well, either because they want to stick it to the publisher or they don't want to have to deal with DRM altogether.
One of the big problems is the fact that many publishers have come to the conclusion that if their game sells poorly on the PC the one and only reason is piracy. If you want a game to sell well on the PC. Just make a high quality game. If it's good and the gamers respect you, they will buy your game. Yes people are going to pirate your game, but no matter what you do they always will. So developers and publishers, just respect your customers and they will respect you.
Well I hope that clears some things up for people that didn't understand before, and hopefully now you will see why publishers and developers have made a huge mistake in adopting DRM as an anti-piracy measure.
