To villify a game studio for protecting their business is just plain stupid. Would you prefer they stop making games for the PC? I know I sure wouldn't.
I'd completely agree with you if you could name for me anything else, withing reason, that one cannot split the cost of what they buy with their friends and then share amongst friends. I have a brother who also likes to play games, and like everything else in the commercial world, when two people like the same thing, if they don't mind sharing it, they can split the bill, buy it together, and share it equally. Even console games allow for this, although one must lend their friend the disk and they can even play multi-player if one friend is willing to come and share the console with two controllers. You think board game makers have the right to insist that only you and one other specific person can play that game. If any other person wants to play it too, they have to buy their own copy. No, that's absurd!!!
It's like that one guy said, they don't regard what the consumer market wants when they install these DRM's. Most don't, but some do. Mount and Blade did, as far as I can tell. So did Egosoft's X3TC. They use Tages, but don't set up stupid install limits, and don't require a disk check or even an online check. I borrowed that gem from my brother just like the one I mentioned below, but I ended up buying my own copy later on anyway.
Also, another person up there brought up a great point, it's not about protecting their investment at all, it's about stopping the very legal practice of selling one's used games. By stopping this from happening, people are forced to buy them new if they want them.
I'll tell you something I did that was on the borderline. I borrowed Oblivion from my brother and installed it. I borrowed the game disk from him when he wasn't playing it. They never saw a dime of my money for Oblivion. But if I had not done that, they also would never have seen the $80 I later spent to buy Fallout 3 GOTY and Morrowind GOTY, and the $100 to $110 I still plan to spend buying Fallout New Vegas GOTY and Skyrim GOTY. If I had not borrowed that Oblivion game from my brother, I would never have bought it anyway, and they would only ever have seen the $50 my brother spent on the game. And they know this happens. Borrowing games is free advertisement that is more likely to cause people who can afford it to buy more of their later and earlier titles, if they don't suck, that is.
They know as well as anyone that DRM's do not stop pirates. And honestly, it doesn't stop friends from sharing game disks either. A 5 install limit is 3 to 5 friends in a college dorm, barracks, or family members in a house plus however many others will just share their computer during recreation. People share computers for recreational purposes because most aren't that stingy with their roommates. They share about as easily as they share CD's and DVD's.
DRM's are about control over the consumer to maximize their buying potential to increase profits. It has nothing to do with piracy.
If I owned a game company, we'd make all of our games with basic DRM's that had a limited shelf life. In other words, after a number of years, probably like 3 to 5, our DRM controls would expire either through a patch made available online or by a specific code. And guess what, it wouldn't even hurt us because we'd of likely have stopped even selling the game by then, and if not, borrowing amongst friends would only help in the final sales of the game when they saw them at bargain prices both used and new across the U.S in various gaming stores. I'd tell this to consumers as well so that they'd know that if they only wait 3 to 5 years, they can make as many working copies as they want, and do with them whatever they want except illegally sell personally made copies of them. And those that do, I'll leave it to the FBI to handle it because that's part of their job.
I don't think my profits would suffer either because pirates will always get past the DRM's, and legitimate consumers will buy my stuff when they see that it's good enough. My dream would be that my games were so good that people would play tem 10, even 20 years later on their dirt old XP, Vista, 7, and apple systems. And in order to make that a possibility, my DRM's would have to expire eventually.
