So, have you heard about the level of piracy protection that publishers are going to now? Both Mass Effect and Spore will be required to be activated before single-player can be used. Also, after you activate, it will recheck every 10 days to see if your cd key is still legit and hasn't been banned for activating it somewhere else or posting it on the web.

That means that when you pay $50 for this game and play it for a few weeks and some hacker makes a cd key generator, you could easily be screwed with no refund if the lucky persons land on your cd key. It's always the gimp games that lead the way...

future ownage approaches

That's why I like the way Sins of a Solar Empire strategy game is going. They aren't requiring any kind of hack protection (key, etc) and believe that it is better to not bug paying customers with such things because its going to be hacked anyways even if there is a key.

So Spore's DRM really backfired and I couldn't be happier. The game is a bust from review standpoints, having thousands of reviews on sites like Amazon with very low ratings due to the DRM.

EA already annouced they would scale back the DRM on Red Alert 3, only requring you to activate it before playing like you would Windows. Thus, I do not intend on buying it until teh DRM disappears. I would pirate and counter the DRM just to stick it to them before encouraging them to increase more DRM usage.

Definitely, I haven't downloaded Spore yet but intend to do it that way before I buy it with DRM enabled.

I put my pirate hat on for Crysis Warhead...I had every intention of paying full sticker until I found out about the activations and what not.

so you have pulled back on buying legit?

If they release a version with less DRM, I'm all for it. I will not activate or perform health checks for the little eye in the sky. If I want to reinstall my copy 50 times a year, I don't expect to bend over backwards. Imagine having to call tech support lines each time you reformat becuase you are over the 3 activation attempts...

For the record, I thought they we're only putting in new content but they actually expanded the engine a little and the game now even more badass than it was before. Full DX10 water and lighting is awesome.

FarCry 2 is out now too with the same DRM so, again, my hat is firmly affixed to my head. Watch out if you put your hat on too though because there are mad viruses out there for FC2.