The meaning isn't lost, it's as clear as day.  It means any attempts by a company selling software to enforce the Licensing agreement they are selling for it.

The trouble is the anti DRM cult think DRM means software that is installed on their PCs that isn't the product they bought.  Also the anti DRM cult don't even aknowledge that software companies have a right to try and protect the License of their product, which is a strikingly similar view point as people who support sites such as Pirate Bay.

Somehow most of them don't count Steam as DRM even though it is possibly the most intrusive DRM out there.  Don't get me wrong I love Steam because I don't have some 'DRM is bad' blinkers on but it is the truth when you compare it to other DRM.  The only thing Steam doesn't seem to have that makes it better than other DRM is activation limits but it does check you aren't using it in more than 1 place at a time though.

And you should't trust them sites, they are selling stolen keys.

No it doesn't. You can enforce licenses by suiing the people breaking them (which happens to companies that pirate business software and get caught). That fits no definition of DRM on the planet. It's also not DRM if you need an account to get in, ala World of Warcraft. DRM has a specific meaning.

 

Oh, the cult! How lovely. At this point if I were to reply on your level, I'd ask how much the copyright lobbyist industry is paying you to shill here.

Software companies do not have the right to break computers (which Starforce did). They also don't have the right to install random crap on my computer, because I refuse to give them that right. If they could only manage to get the pirates to install their DRM they might be okay, except all the pirated versions just strip it out.

DRM like what they're doing here is a proven failure, only affecting paying customers. Any company run by people with a clue would quickly realize that pissing off your customers in exchange for no real change in piracy rates is a really poor trade.

I mean, even EA figured it out and dropped this limited authorization nonsense.

Your major problem is that you see everybody who dislikes DRM as one group, which is wrong. Steam fits my father in law's critera just fine: buy the game and it works. He doesn't care about DRM. He wants the product he buys to work. DRM has caused games he bought to not work, repeatidly (but downloading a pirate version solves the problem). Steam doesn't have that problem.

Therefore, he has no problem with Steam.

Any DRM where the solution is to just go grab the pirate version and not install the retail one is beyond idiotic. At that point you're actually advocating piracy because the retail copy is defective. Which is the whole reason I have a problem with it in the first place.

I fully understand and agree with the bolded part. Stardock have said something along those lines as well.

I would like to make a distinction between:

1. Conservative measures, measures that will prevent gaming only when it is sure that there is a case of piracy.
2. Optimistic measures, measures that will prevent gaming if a situation is encountered that may be related with piracy

Checking wether 2 copies are being used at the same time is a form of (1), checking how many times a serial is installed is a form of (2). I consider (1) as perfectly okay to protect your copyright., while I can't think of any acceptable protection in category (2).

Just finished messing around a bit with some of the missions in the Demo...very nice! The graphics have definitely received a coat of polish. And I like the time period, too. I amy have to pull the trigger on this after all.

I've played all three earlier Anno games, and Dawn of Discovery is the best since the original 1602 (which I still play from time to time). It gets a little complicated later on but it's an excellent game, well worth the price. One word of caution is that you'll need a pretty robust system; it's a resource hog.

I liked 1602 a lot but I thought 1701 was essentially the same game with improved graphics.  Is there anything new or different about DoD?

You're arguing over semantics, my point is that DRM isn't just the Securom/Starfoce type protection, it has different levels of protection, you're ignoring my point.

I work in software myself, we sell to customers who have a history of reverse engineering products to make their own at cheaper cost.  Luckily we work in a vertical market so we are able to protect our software and make it not economically viable for them to reverse engineer/copy/reproduce it instead of buying another copy off us, after all we paid for the development cost of the product.

Fortunately for us our customers are professional adults who can understand why we would protect our IP, if we delivered something that was broken because of our software protection they would be angry for sure, but we would fix it ourselves.  With a commercial market, with way more customers, they have to weigh up how many people is this actually going to break the software for, a small minority, and how much this is going to save them on pirating.  I think most companies are bright enough to realise they are protecting themselves from students/friends passing games round to each other, not people downloading.

Tages in Dawn of Discovery Demo? Seems to be.

In the top directory of the demo there is a file called TagesClient.exe. Perhaps Tages is so integrated that even the demo has to have it along, or maybe Tages is what sets the playtime limit with the demo. Not hurting anything, since it is just a demo, but maybe there should have been a DRM warning with the demo too.

If that were the case, it would have had to ask you for an exception to your firewall to let it communicate with the server. Seeing as it never did that for me (And I own a few games that use Tages, and that is how it always works), I would suspect it's basically 'dormant' in the demo.

Haree, students and friends pass *cracked* games to each other. That's how it works. In some countries in Asia, you can actually buy cracked games very cheaply on a news stand! So, again, DRM is not protecting anything.

Look, the decision to include DRM is not made by technically savvy people. Its made by people who are savvy at managing companies, but usually know jack about the real digital world they're working with. That's the only explanation I can come up with that makes sense.

And business software is not the same. You're dealing with specific customers and often in a niche environment. If your software was popular worldwide, it would get cracked, and no amount of DRM coding would prevent that.

I can't remember a single game that hasn't been cracked, isn't that proof enough that DRM doesn't work and never has worked? There are only two groups that deal with DRM, paying customers and crackers. Pirates never have to deal with it because some groups crack the games (for kicks & e-peen), so that really leaves only paying customers who are in any way affected by DRM. And I've never heard anyone say that DRM did something good for them and I highly doubt anyone else has either (but if you have, then please do tell). Seeing as only paying customers have to deal with this stuff, and all it does is generate complaints and anger, I can't see why it's still being used. It's pointless, and if you can't see, well, then I think you should quite frankly open your eyes and look again.

(Now I don't really mind cd-checks (they are annoying though) or CD-keys since I can't remember ever running into problems with them, but any specific software that's designed to stop piracy I count as DRM)

They are more than annoying if you travel. IMO the best moments to play games is while waiting on a delayed airplane or if you have to spend the evenings in a hotel, best in a country where you don't understand the foreign language on the television. Games are even more valuable entertainment if the hotel has no internet (luckily that is increasingly less common). Carrying CD's in your laptop bag simply doesn't work.

At home, I have a much better machine for gaming, but at home there are always 1000s of things to do.

That's normal, rather then the exception. If you release a demo without the DRM, it makes it easier for the crackers to compare that .exe to the defective retail .exe and find the DRM.

Not that it's really causing them much difficulty right now, but that's the reason.

The thing is, DRm software is integrated into games using specific methods. If you have reverse-engineered the DRM software, its more than easy to also find the "hooks" and simply unplug them. That's why the DRM folks came up with solutions such as F.A.D.E., which was notorious for "pretending" it was stripped by allowing the game to launch, but would render it unplayable by subtle or not so subtle methods later on during gameplay.

Of course, even that didn't last long. DRM software is a waste of money. There are better methods of combating piracy, methods which work.