Where you can ♥♥♥♥♥ and moan to your black heart's content

"Online Passes and DRM suck! They're like Nazis trying to restrict when and where we can play our games. HEIL UBISOFT!"

OK, this may be the one thing on this list I'm kinda with. Online passes for consoles and restrictive DRM for PC can be pretty unfair sometimes. But take the "Arr" from piracy out of "pretty" and it becomes "petty" (how contrived was that?!). But more on that in a moment, I'm gonna talk about online passes first. This issue hits closer to home for me as I am primarily a 360 gamer, and most of my PC games are from DRM-free Humble Bundles. Although most major publishers for console are guilty of this nowadays, the general consensus seems to be that Ubisoft is the king of restrictive DRM, with its Uplay passport system and notorious DLC that makes PC users be online at all times. The Uplay passport system, to me, seems to be a weak attempt to hide its purpose as DRM as a meta-game with achievements, cheap avatar rewards and dashboards, etc. Plus, Driver San Fransisco's passes were misprinted, and it ended up being just as it should be: free online for everyone. But I can see why companies are going for this: used game stores like Gamestop sell their product but keep 100% of the profit, so the only way the publishers and developers can get $ from used game sales is through selling passes to buyers of used games. And as much as I hate to be an apologist, I'd have have to say the online pass system is the best way to solve this: It rewards people who buy the game new (and give $ to the company) while letting the people who want a bargain buy it used, but restrict certain portions until they give them at least some money. While it's far from perfect (you don't have DVD manufacturers charging you for bonus content and subtitles, after all), I'd be willing to go as far as challenge you in the comments to tell everyone your plan to keep used game sales available while allowing the companies to make enough $ with or despite them to stay afloat in this economy.

As for DRM, it's even more murky. On one hand, if a DVD manufacturer restricted you from bringing a DVD to watch at a friend's house, or a record label sued you for millions for getting some music free online (oh, right...), people would me mad as hell. And they have every right to be when game companies demand you only play their games connected to the internet, or register with a special code. However, there are 2 things that let them get away with this. The first is the hypocrisy I mentioned earlier: if you want the game that badly, you'll bow to their demands to play it. We consumers hold all the power in this equation, but most seem to be content with accepting it, but being kinda jerkish about it. The people who take action are the second thing: piracy. Now, before I got an iPod and blew all my allowance on itunes, I pirated songs to fill my primitive MP3 player. I wasn't about to buy a CD for $20 just because I kinda liked a few songs on there, and I'm not about to now. But while a large record company can handle a few singles being pirated, you can't just pirate a level or 2 from a game (that's why they have free demos). I can understand why people could pirate (they want the game but don't have the $, they feel it's not worth the asking price), but the worst part is when companies try to keep them from doing so via DRM so they can earn back some of their investment (game development is expensive!) and are called greedy draconian fasicts. If you went to a supermarket to shoplift, and so did many other people, you wouldn't raise hell when they stepped up security and put tags on their inventory to alert them when someone tries to steal them. How is piracy of games (and to another extent, music and movies) any different? They're trying to keep you from doing something illegal, and you're complaining that they're doing so hard enough you can't do it any more. Isn't that the point?! The only people here who I see have a right to complain are the innocent, honest buyers who get suckered by these tactics, but I'll save that for my piracy rant later.