Originally Posted by Martian

Yeah, all Valve products have DRM through Steam.

I'm not against Steam entirely. As a content delivery system it's pretty damned convenient. As a front-end for my games it's the same deal. It's nice that my games will auto-update as long as Steam is open. It's also great that I never have to worry about losing or damaging the CDs for the game, or upgrading my computer. I can simply log into my Steam account and so long as I've got sufficient bandwidth I can re-download that sucker anywhere I want. The DRM aspect is pretty non-intrusive. It does worry me that all Steam-enabled games become unusable if I can't connect to the Steam servers, but I'd like to think the Valve folks will be forward looking enough that if they ever take the Steam servers down they'll offer some sort of patch or work-around.

The key part is this:



When you walk into your favourite game store and buy a copy of the latest game, you're not really buying the CDs (or DVDs, as the case may be). The physical media provide the content delivery, but what your hard earned cash is really getting you is a license. EULAs are more or less restrictive depending on the company and the product, but there has not been one to date that has stated that you may only use the product for x amount of years, and rightly so. There'd be an outcry at that sort of restriction. What these online DRM models do is effectively the same thing. These companies are deciding that you get to use their game only so long as it's profitable for them. And that, frankly, is not what I pay for.