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[Shook]

Steam is actually among the less draconian DRMs out there. For the most part, the games run fine (been quite a while since i had problems actually), and you can download them as much as you want, whenever you want (if the servers aren't being dumbshits) and wherever you want (until SteamGuard popped up, which i disapprove of, but can sort of see the idea), as long as you're staying on the same account. Plus they provide easy access to many games and sales, which is pretty awesome. My biggest beef with it is that you can basically never get to LAN with ANYONE without buying two copies, even though that anyone is your own brother who is barely sitting two meters away from you in the same room. Although i buy games despite their sometimes tremendous 50€ price tag (dammit developers i am a student not a millionaire), i very rarely love any game enough to pay for that twice. Exclusions are either much cheaper and/or incredibly awesome.

Wasn't it Spore that had that ridiculous "YOU CAN INSTALL THIS GAME 5 TIMES" DRM? Because that is horrible. Likewise was Assassins Creed 2 being horrid by requiring constant online connection to play an exclusively singleplayer game, which is a damn shame. At least it's getting SLIGHTLY better nowadays, probably because they've noticed how such ludicrous DRMs are actually promoting piracy (which often involves removing the DRM entirely) by hurting the legit customers (who have to deal with the DRM).

[Levi]

Steam still works fine for me.  I've had very little technical troubles with it and I like quite a few of its features.  As far as DRM goes, it feels fairly tame to me.

That said, I do sometimes feel nervous that one company has the ability to completely lock me out of all of my games at a whim, and the ability to label me as a cheater(with a VAC BAN) without telling me why.  Neither has ever happened to me, but I don't particularly like the idea of Valve having that much power over my stuff.   

[Mictlantecuhtli]

I raised the jolly roger against the video game industry nearly a decade ago. I'm glad I did, too. Otherwise I wouldn't know how to avoid these obnoxious DRM issues that every-single-game has now.

I hate securom. I hate starforce. I hate in-house DRM.

Anything which is designed, from the drawing board to the programming, to restrict access to a customer's paid product should be illegal.

Update:

EA Origin bans people from games, sometimes even in single player, for actions on forums.

EA remains tight lipped, cop-out excuses.

Sensei remains bitter and biased, glad he didn't get any origin games.

I. Hate. EA.

I don't know if it's my French blood, but this infuriates me. I didn't think EA would have the balls to be this evil.

[Shinotsa]

Responding to you thing about assassin's creed, that's something I don't quite get about the complaints on diablo 3. Sure a good portion of the original game was singleplayer, and I'm sure there will still be ways to play single player, but with the new auction house system being online is going to benefit just about everyone since they won't have to toss on magic find gear and kill the same boss 50 times for one drop. Not to mention the difference between open and closed battlenet on D2. They're basically making the whole game closed battlenet which both serves as piracy protection and makes sure everyone who plays the game will have access to the various (money sapping) features they decide to implement. Also, singleplayer D2 held my attention for about a month. Multiplayer has me break out the disc every so often even all this time later. I consider D2 a primarily multiplayer game, just like I consider WC3 and SC(I and II). So despite the downside of excluding people with no internet connection from playing the game I guess I see the point of catering to the people who will be spending the most time on the game, getting more money out of the dedicated players, and preventing piracy all in one swoop. Not that the whole piracy prevention thing matters, it'll be a matter of weeks before someone comes up with a workaround.

Tldr: Opinions. Also spore was incredible until I realized that was it.

[Sensei]

Valve has worked hard to earn consumer loyalty for Steam; hard enough that a lot of people like it even though they were grumpy when it first installed itself on their computer. Despite all my complaining, yeah, I like Steam too.

EA Origin is a good example of everything people feared might go wrong with Steam. Most auspiciously of course, not being able to access games they paid for.

[Sunkwell]

snip.

I can't see any reason whatsoever to limit singleplayer in such a way. People without constant internet should still be able to test and perfect builds during downtime, search hidden stuff and other info gathering activities.
Personally, I'm mostly afraid of a servers failure and if the master plan is to get more money, I say, rob the WoW players even more!

[Shinotsa]

snip.

I can't see any reason whatsoever to limit singleplayer in such a way. People without constant internet should still be able to test and perfect builds during downtime, search hidden stuff and other info gathering activities.
Personally, I'm mostly afraid of a servers failure and if the master plan is to get more money, I say, rob the WoW players even more!

Eh, personally I have complete faith in Blizzard as they've never let me down before. The worst they've done is had server crashes for at most three days after a major patch on WoW (which I used to play. I remember whole continents would crash because too many people were looking at the same spot when they released one event) so I feel their track record is sound. New developers or EA I wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole until they give years and years of stability and quality service. And WoW players already shell out ridiculous sums for vanity items, I think blizzard's gonna try and get so much money they'll just buy a small country to base their operations out of and save on taxes.

[Bdthemag]

The fact that Diablo 3 forces people to have an internet connection really screws over a lot of people, not just a small group of people. Many, many people don't exactly have access to a stable internet connection so they're pretty much screwed.

The Auction House on the other hand, just seems like a way for Blizzard to make more money off of people after they already bought the game. I guess it's not that bad, but it sort of shows to me that Blizzard will be doing more stuff like this to make money. Hell, they might even bring in some kind of virtual store where you buy stupid things for $20 just like WoW.

Blizzard to me seems like they're focusing more on how they can make more money at this point, rather than how can we keep the player base happy and still make money.

[Cthulhu]

I'll say the same thing I've been saying about all of this.  If you're playing a game made by a company whose practices you don't like, you're part of the problem.  Even if you pirate it.  If you don't like the things Origin does, stop playing EA games.  They can't tell the difference between protest pirating and I just want to play the game pirating.  They're going to say "Look, 90% of the people who play our game stole it" and get more aggressive about DRM to please the shareholders.  The companies don't care about the anti-DRM crowd because half of that crowd will play the game anyway and they still have millions of people who don't know or care to buy it.

[Sensei]

Another potential reason someone could want to play Diablo 3 in single player, is that they might have an internet plan that charges if you go over a certain amount of bandwidth a month... wouldn't it suck if that prevented you from playing single player games?

If you're playing a game made by a company whose practices you don't like, you're part of the problem. Even if you pirate it. ...stop playing EA games.

Now this is what gets my goat. Suppose you wanted to play BF3? You were a huge fan of BF2? Either you're gnashing your teeth about the DRM affecting your gameplay experience, or the DRM is affecting you by basically preventing you from buying a game you want.

No matter what you do, your goat is no longer in your possession when a company release a great/good/decent game and straps a godawful DRM to it.

[Cthulhu]

Yes, it's hard to abstain from a game you really like.  If you don't have the willpower to say "no" to your instant gratification then you can't expect them to stop screwing you over.

[Haschel]

I miss being able to let my buddy borrow a game.

I'm not a fan of DRM in any form, but my love of all things gaming tends to overcome that. I was one of those people that was required to install steam before I had ever heard of it, on a valve game I had been playing ages before it existed. I've come to terms with it, and steam has evolved into a pretty reasonable compromise between consumer and publisher wishes. It's not quite perfect- but I think it's about as close as we could hope to get in the given situation.

I agree with Cthulhu on that particular aspect of piracy- I wouldn't blame you for giving in to a game you're dying to play, but there's only one way to send a clear message to people on this issue: If you don't like what they do, don't indulge them. At all. Avoiding EA games is actually easier than you'd think.

[klingon13524]

The only games I'd ever pirate are games with ludicrous DRM, or from EA or Activision. I wish there was some way to let a company know exactly why I choose not to fuel their greed.

[Levi]

I haven't pirated in years.  Convenience of steam + Huge number of great games gives me no reason to even bother.

I don't buy anything with GFWL or published by ubisoft, simply because even if I do want a game, I could just buy some other publishers game that looks just as fun.

Heck even if all publishers stopped making games, I could survive for probably 1 or 2 years on my queue alone. 

[10ebbor10]

Just a remark for anyone who has the steam offline mode couldn't not connect to server error.
Even though your starting in offline mode it will try to connect if there is a network availble(ak hamachi, nonfunctional network) . Deactivating those fixed the problem for me.

I might be wrong though, I haven't really tested it.