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oedipus

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DRM Complainers are the Vegans of the PC World.

Well, this post will require you to possess quite a few of my biases to appreciate it, but the title still bears repeating: If you are complaining about DRM on Amazon.com, you're likening yourself to a vegan because you're loud, obnoxious, self-righteous, and ultimately not going to make any impact.

Akin to vegans, many people who are complaining about it think that DRM is the worst possible thing ever to happen. DRM is taking something that person loves, PC games, and thrashing it. If PC gaming dies (who knows!) then both sides of the camp, pro-DRM and anti-DRM are going to think they've won. The DRM proponent saying that piracy killed the medium and the anti-DRM camp claiming that all the DRM made everyone refuse to use the medium. Correlation equals causation only when it's convenient for you.

Just like vegans, not many people care about whether or not DRM is in a game. For full disclosure's sake, I only own one PC and buy all the games I install, so I'm biased. I thought Spore was a pretty sub-standard game for many reasons that don't include DRM. I most certainly wouldn't self-righteously head on over to Amazon.com and thrash it for that reason alone.

Also like vegans, you're wasting a lot of time you could be spending on other, more productive ventures. Piracy isn't going away and neither is DRM. Is DRM the best way of combating it? We don't know, the medium of games is rapidly evolving. There's a right way and a wrong way to go about employing DRM. I, certainly, don't want every game that comes out on the PC to be an MMO 'cause that's the only way the publisher can make money. Giving games that include DRM poor reviews on Amazon.com just disservices your cause by making you look whiny and self-righteous and also disservices all the hard game designers who put their heart, soul, and time into these games just 'cause you need to step up on a nerd-podium.

Some developers (e.g. Stardock) will give you games without DRM and there's nothing wrong with that (those games are like vegan scones). However, some won't. And most people won't care and will probably just roll their eyes when you come a-preachin'.

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