[b]Unethically expensive[/b] to reactivate a game. Even if it only takes 10minutes that is still way over the top. Imho it should be a free call.

Link to evidence
http://www.electronicarts.com.au/en-au/support/
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QUOTE
For Technical Support in Australia: please call 1902 261 600. Calls are charged at $2.48 (inc GST) per minute. For email support, please email easupport@sirius.com.au. For international web supports please visit http://support.ea.com.
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Also I have a legal right to sell my property. EA need to respect our rights or we won’t respect theirs.

Building customer loyalty is the best way to protect sales.

Another way is via inducements that come in the game packaging. Eg a code to enter a competition in your region would be successful. Buy game get chance to win a gaming PC.

Rather than focus on the negatives publishers should see an opportunity to grow their market share through customer loyalty programs.

The RA3 beta was a successful example of this approach. I won’t be buying the full game due to activation limit. Or any EA game for that matter.

I have pirated sins of a solar empire.

I then went and bought the delux edition of Sins all the way from the US (before it was release in the UK) because i wanted to give them my money.

My flat mate has shared the orange box with me (when hes not using it i can play it) as soon as my next cheque comes in guess what i’m buying? the orange box.

There is a simple reason for this – i like the game i know that i can go back and reinstall it later if i want. I expect I’ll play it several times through the odds are on several later computers.

why won’t I be buying spore? because I don’t want to be limited – i wont be pirating it because then I’ll probably feel compelled to buy it and I’m not going to give EA my money for a product that is worse than the pirated version.

similarly with DVDs i much prefer to rip them and reburn them so that i don’t have to watch the stupid copyright notice.

DRM itself is not a problem. using it to make a bought product worse is.

the games industry could learn a reasonable amount from the expensive utilities industry (see anything by adobe, programs like the music software reacktor or the maths suite mathematica) these, while specialist, are industry standards in their field. i wouldn’t be surprised if 50% of the copies that are used of these are pirated – but people then learn to use them and take them to work and buy them there etc.

try before you buy generates sales

a Demo is *not* try before you buy – it may encourage you but most people are used to the ‘best bits’ demo.

if the games industry lets people share and enjoy games then a) if its a good game a good number of people will buy it – not all but those that are genuinely supportive of their hobby will. and b) developers will be forced to generate better games to allow a) to happen.

one final point

a downloaded copy of anything is *not* a lost sale.

a lost sale is when you convince your consumer that your product isn’t worth buying – and that normally means they are a lost sale for a long time.

Can you provide evidence? This is an extremely broad statement; we have data from a couple of *downloaded* (not boxed) titles with online components that suggests they were heavily thieved, but I’m not aware of any public-domain data that would support your statement any better.

“The fact is that DRM is essential to the industry. Without it you have no sales.”

That quote right there made me lost all respect for you. Allow me to shed some light on that assessment. As has been pointed out dozens of times already in comments prior, DRM is cracked within days of its arrival to the market. So, in a sense, DRM really does not exist. Any product you have put out made money because customers with money wanted it. The DRM did nothing to secure that revenue. All DRM does is make life miserable for the customers WHO HANDED OVER MONEY FOR THE GAME; meanwhile, the pirates enjoy a superior experience at no cost.

Now, here is what sickens me the pro-DRM mentality. Game companies have this mystical assumption that one person will visit the store, purchase the game, go home, copy/rip the discs, share it with all his/her friends, post it online, and do everything to ensure that everyone can obtain it for free. Well, Mr. Everiss, did you know that I prefer the store-bought product over a pirated one? My mentality changes when DRM enters the equation; I prefer pirating any day over putting up with DRM-infested products.

overall winner are publishers who adhere to gamers bill of rights, bring out a good product and listen to their customers.

Just so happens I rented bioshock (brilliant for those who weren’t aware that it was really a nerfed steampunk clone of the previous PC shock/s – i digress) for my 360 and so was unawares.

on topic – perhaps another scapegoat for the SUPPOSED decline of pc gaming, is that the first DX10 (not that we needed it) generation of gpu’s had (until the 8800gt) appalling mid-range offerings, and the 360 until recently was producing better performance for roughly the cost of an adequate high-end card alone. This had the effect of turning many upgrade hungry, die-hard pc gamers like myself into potential 360 owners.

Hmmmmm… now there’s a thought… most dx10 cards were adequate dx9 performers… but dx10 was vista only… the only dx10 card’s worth having roughly same price as 360… common link is microsoft… coincidence? (probably, lol)

In all seriousness, I think the perception that seems to exist that PC gaming is in decline is more likely due to a combination of the absurd success of WOW (a nerfed mmo for anyone that played UO) and the fact that we’ve just had the beginning of a new console generation. It’s tradition for PC hardware to take a year or two to close the gap and then exceed the ability of the consoles – we’re just coming over that hill now.

I think it’s all to easy to blame things on johnny Depp and Co.

“Welcome to the end of the computer age” – DJ DP 1992
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Xfqkdh5Js4

Not sure where the plus is.

Stardock finds great success publishing games without DRM with regular updates to create customer loyalty, rewarding people to buy the game, not guilting them into it.

Saying DRM is essential to the industry ignores the changing economy. The market is demanding a change in how games are sold and distributed. Game publishers need to feed that market, not try to control the market.

Often developers walk a tightrope with the tradeoff between protection strength and the degree of impact on legitimate users but this was a failure on both dimensions! Is this really what the publisher wants to ‘accomplish’? Why not use a solution which is friendly to honest users, has no impact on development time and the strongest available protection against crackers – see the whitepaper “Is Anti-Piracy/DRM the Cure or the Disease for PC Games?” which can be downloaded here http://www.byteshield.net/byteshield_whitepaper_0005.pdf.