[game_preservation] Problematic installation DRM; thoughts?

[Alan Au]

This has been talked about quite a bit among my game industry friends lately, and the general consensus that I'm hearing is that DRM seems to help (publishers) the most in the first few weeks following a title's release, when hype is at its peak and newer games haven't yet eclipsed its popularity.  The pirate community will almost certainly crack the DRM within weeks, and EA is hoping that the window between release and crack will discourage casual piracy and result in more sales.  

The complaints about the DRM system being used here (activate, tied to hardware) is that it causes problems in the long-term, after people have had the game for a while and want to activate the game on a new/upgraded machine two years later.  This also causes problems for preservation.

BioWare has hinted that they would patch out the DRM if activation and/or the installation-limit become problematic later, but naturally they can't make a commitment to do so yet.  We're all secretly hoping this will happen, because we understand the desire to put near-term DRM into place, but realize that long-term it's just a hassle for everybody, including EA who has a poor record of supporting "old" games.

- Alan