Foreword: I do not condone piracy.

Ubisoft has been making the news lately over their use of horrible DRM in their ports of console games. Assassin's Creed and several others have had always on DRM for even the single-player portions of the games. Lose your internet connection for any reason, and your game kicks you out. A developer of a Ubisoft published game recently said that they aren't making a PC version of the game because it won't sell. They assume it is because the game gets pirated, but it is more than likely that it is because they have some of the worst DRM in the world. He later back tracked saying that it was a translation error, but who honestly believes that. Every time an always on DRM, or SECUROM, with its install limits, is used in a PC game, it is basically spitting in the face of anyone that actually buys the game. But this brings me to my main point, if piracy is really the reason why developers and publishers don't make games for the PC, then why do they make games at all.

Gamestop is legal piracy.

The defenders of pirating a game say that, "Downloading a game isn't stealing, because it is not guaranteed that the downloader would have bought the game." or "It isn't stealing, it is copyright infringement." Buying a used game isn't copyright infringement, but it is as close to stealing money from a publish as you can get without actually stealing from them. One game DVD is one sale, but that one game can be sold multiple times through Gamestop all while they are making a profit off of them. More times than I can remember, I have gone to buy a game from Gamestop a week or so after release, and they already have used copies up for $54.99. They would have bought the game back for $25 to $35, so they are making about 50% profit from that game while denying the publisher another sale. I am sure that publisher work with Gamestop. Pre-order bonuses, those stupid DLC season pass things, and what not, but why don't they do the same with PC games but not have the shitty DRM attached to it.

Steam is a form of DRM that a lot of people are perfectly willing to deal with. There are steam haters out there, but I would guess that more people like or tolerate it than hate it. 5 million users online at peak times and 2.3 million online right now. Skyrim has 170,000 people today concurrently, and they had 250,000 playing at the same time on launch day. Steam provides a platform for all the games you own while using it as DRM. Steam sales provide sales of the games that would have no otherwise happened. Publishers work with Gamespot, who actively steals sales from them, but they tack on additional DRM to games that already appear on steam anyway causing people to not want to buy them legitimately.