"If my PC blows up", "If lightning strikes my house", etc...

I doubt the authentication process would fail like that, or else EA wouldn't be risking so much on it.

As for your other post, for every Iron Lore there's several small developers that have a success story: CDProjekt with The Witcher selling over 600k for a unadvertised, unhyped, new IP RPG; Telltale Games leading the Adventure genre's salvation of digital distribution with Sam & Max; GSC Game World shooting through the roof with the new IP S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl (which sold 1,65 million); Stardock with Galactic Civilizations; and Iron Tower with Sins of a Solar Empire, etc...

Besides, the demise of Iron Lore doesn't really prove anything.. maybe that piracy might be a problem for some companies, but definitely not the decline of PC gaming. Also its funny that you quoted a dev from Infinity Ward when COD4 is selling like crack on PC, on par with World of Warcraft and The Sims. If this continues, COD4 might even reach 10 millions copies sold on PC alone (more than PS3+360 combined), and the game is selling great in DD services, still being in the top-selling games of Steam 6 months after it's release...

So far you really haven't backed up your statements with facts, so I'll start supporting mine (if you even bothered to read my previous post) :

According to DFC, The online Market Growth: http://www.dfcint.com/game_article/may07article.html

So if the estimated value of 5.8 billions revenue of the online market is true, and since PC probably has atleast 90% of the cake, that would equal to 5.3 billions, which would be around 6 times bigger than the US PC retail market, and 60% of the entire US boxed retail market.

Also, another look at the boom of active subscriptions from MMOs:

http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart4_files/Subscriptions_21524_image001.png

begining of:

1998 - 50 thousand(?) subscriptions

2000 - 1 million

2002 - 3 millions

2004 - 6,5 millions

2006 - 12 millions

2008 - 16 millions

PC has currently 16 million people paying 10/15$ each month, and the numbers will only increase with time. Basically, there's more paying MMO players than there are PS3 owners, and each one of them is spending money every month (unlike the PS3 owners).

DFC also stated (although very briefly) that PC has been increasing game sales in europe and the PC's online market is going strong. I even made a thread about it: http://vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=25390

Its very simple. People equate retail market share with total market share. Unfortunately children, retail isn't the whole market. Consoles are just playing catch up in regards to the digital distribution model. Steam is many times better then xbox live (which is arguably the best console internet service). More people have steam installed then own a ps3. I wonder which one makes more money? Plus since steam is online the games companies make more profit per sale. Its the future and the pc industry is living it.

The thing with Steam is that I can download any of the games that I have registered to any computer that I want and then use it on any of those computers as long as I only use 1 at a time. It is so nice to not have to carry 5 cds for the Half-Life Platinum Pack, 5 cds for Half-Life 2 (originally, now 2 dvds for the Orange Box), and have to reenter codes for all of those games. This copy protection doesn't do this. And I can play any of the single player games offline anytime I want.

I think this is especially ridiculous because this is a single player game. I'm okay with the 1 time authorization but the rest is excessive.

And for those that say: you're online 24/7 anyways, what does it matter? It matters to me when I go home for a month at Christmas and have to suffer on a dialup connection. And this is the one time I hate Steam because it took me hours/days before I was able to finish installing the Orange Box and actually play the game I had gotten for Christmas. This past Christmas was especially bad because my brother had also gotten the Orange Box and wanted to play on his computer.

@shio: You are right about online sales statistics there, and I believe the projections list there are achievable on the PC space. Services like steam are popular. Of course if you buy a single player game online, then yeah online registeration is fair, if you buy a single player game in a store that requires online authentication every 10 days, if I was a buyer and didn't have an internet connection (which I do so for me its moot) I'd be a little annoyed unless there was an offline authentication path like MS has with windows.

MMO subscriptions numbers are interesting. if you take World of Warcraft (which has nearly 69% of that 16 million) out of the mix, the PC MMO growth is slow but steady.

Ok, look, I now have a nice new-high-end gameing laptop. I am a truck driver, and internet, isnt exactly... my high point. I can sometimes, go for weeks without seeing the internet. What this article is telling me, I can no-longer game on my laptop... At least not games from EA, and Take-Two... Unless I put the 'hacks' on it for the downloaded copy, which is, JUST AS ILLEGAL AS DOWNLOADING THE WHOLE THING. Sure, you can say. "Hey, I bought the game legally." However if you read the EULA in the INSTALL file, you will realise that any modifactions, or anything, break useage rights, just as much as 'stealing' the game. Because if you break EULA, your copy of the game is null, and thus if you are using it, you are using it as a stolen copy. So go RIGHT ahead, and pay 50$, hack your own game, and be just as criminal as downloading it, and playing it for free.

i'm not too fond on copy protection for 2 reasons.

1. Those who will download the game illegally, will do it anyways... Copy protection or not. A good example is Bioshock... If you buy a copy of the disc, you should be able to play it, without hasle. if you Wanna download it illegally... Your going to anyways.
2.  I have played many games with copy-protection systems, and I have actually had my 'account' stolen, and because of that, I had to either, resort to the hacking systems, and 'steal' numbers to play the game. or BUY IT AGIAN. The company basically laughed at me when I told them my situation.

I hate steam, for one reason only. It is run by VALVE.

Also, I have another thing to say about Steam, and this is a current fear I have on, *ANY* download site, as I've gotten screwed by this twice so far. The place you 'buy' stuff from, goes bust, and closes their doors. You might think... 'Hey they cant do that!'. Ok, look, as above, read that EULA. They basically say. "We will give you 30 days prior notice to the close of our servers, and after that, your screwed. HA, HA, HA." That means, any games that require steam, that you have, will NEVER work agian, and you will NEVER be able to download that game agian either... As their service is gone.

For me to spend that much money, and not be able to keep it... that's a rip-off... And that's why I dont buy games online, and I dont buy downloadable PC games... or music, or movies.

And I also support small devolopers. A whole LOT. I buy almost every one I like. 

I have hughesnet satellite internet. The signal is often intermittent and I have trouble authenticating often with WoW and Nintendo Wifi/XBL.

In fact, I can't even run the messenger in XBL it never works.

I guarntee you out of 20 attempts, my internet would fail 3 times. So, basically I'd be renting the game for an undisclosed amount of time, for 50 or 60 bucks. So would anyone unlucky enough to have hughesnet.

Assuming your damage control is any indication, then the fact that it can brick your software permanently is true, and I believe that no one should buy this game on sheer princible. 

Also, you said I didn't back up my statements with facts. I didn't make any statements. I'm apparently ignorant, because I threatened your blindly held beliefs. I simply quoted statements from huge developers who happen to write blogs titled:

They wonder why people don't make PC games any more.

I'm sick of being the victim of everyones insecurities in this post. Just don't respond to me anymore, you'll be doing me a favor.

Its highly unlikely that steam will shut down anytime soon but have ever heard of backing-up files?   

And Steam being run by Valve is a bad thing because...?

I'm not sure what history you've had with Valve but the vast majority of PC gamers love steam and Valve.

 Even if the authentication process fails, you only need to keep trying until it succeeds. Mass Effect can activated up to 3 different machines, and when it's activated, it will still activated until the authentication goes null. You only need to successfully authenticate the game once every 10 days, you don't lose anything in either the activation or the authentication processes if it fails.

And again, that article you shown was based about guy who doesn't even know the sales of COD4 PC, and NPD's numbers of the decreasing PC boxed retail market. It completely ignores the fact that online revenue is booming and that European and Asian (which have bigger PC markets) are increasing every year.

No matter how many times you repeat this useless argument, it won't become any more valid. Everyone expects to need a PC and electricity to play a PC game, the very laws of physics dictate that. However, nothing dictates the need of internet access for a single player game (except for EA's whim).