This comment became way too long to let it get lost. ;-) So here I have postidized it. :-)
It helped to understand #DRM in real life when I first met #steam: it lets you buy gam… no, take it back, it lets you play ga… no, what I mean is that it actually lets you to pay for a revocable permission to possibly play #games under arbitrary rules.
In theory DRM would mean someone want to protect its justified business income, so try to enforce valid usage rules, like you cannot (illegally) share a software (so they can get money for every piece sold). Sounds like, um, this could be undrestandable, right?
But of course reality kicks in. You cannot use it on more than $arbitrary_number machines, because, well, okay, you bought it but, well, buy it more times if you have too many machines, or a family maybe. That's… a bit harder to justify, fair-business-wise.
But I thought I was there, I got the point, I understand DRM. And then I met Steam Family Sharing, when one can legally share the paid stuff with the kids. Oh, nice, same family, you don't have to buy 4 times for 3 kids and you! This is really nice, DRM don't have to be evil. See?
Well, apart from when you want to play the same time, since $arbitrary number equals one, so no parallel use. Uh, that's stupid, okay, I see what's the problem with DRM. Do I?
Oh noes. It goes on. The small print contains that, actually, the whole collection of an account cannot be used at once, so if someone owns, say, 10000 games, shared with his beloved family, then as soon as he start to play with one game all the 10000 games are locked. No more play.
If this wasn't enough, more DRMfun is hidden in the small prints! Most people don't realise until they try to say, oay, I try to "sell" the game, no, I mean, I try to sell the permit to use the game ("license")… hell you will. DRM actually forbids you to sell or transfer the game. You destroy it (or may put up into Uranus or wherever you please) and others buy it again. Fair? Not at all, it's already been paid.
DRM here did not just "protect the justified business interest" of the publisher, it actually used to extort more money from the same person not just for "more licenses" but kind of "account tax", or make people pay for the "same" license more times.
And the rules are changing. And you can do absolfsckingly about it, and if you do something "unpleasing" to DRM owner they can, and surely will, discontinue your account, and you may lose a few thousand USD worth of timewasters.
Apart from this boring story I have briefly met the game called "Grand Theft Auto", it is absolutely DRM and online and everything protected, but the most interesting part is their user agreement. I have rarely seen such an outrageous assault on privacy and self control: the people playing that game totally have to give permission for everything, and they drop their rights to even play the game for any possible and non-prewritten reasons the DRM owner may come up with, with absolutely no legal ways to enforce anything, including future usage. Not even a notification about denial is required, it may just stop working. And while this is one really ugly piece of trash, I have seen (and actually read) more and more outrageously unjust #ToS in various DRM protected games recently, and it seems to be a trend in some circles that people actually pay for the chance to use something while dropping any rights to do it.
And I didn't even got started on "free-to-play" stuff and selling themes and skins.
(Disclaimer: I rarely play, and most of my games are from #HumbleBundle and #GoG - DRM free.)
