Although I'm not happy with this kind of copy protection, I don't understand some of the arguments here.
1. In all cases I know so far, the copy protection of games has been removed by a patch within a year or two. The limit on the number of installs only considers the initial launch time of the game. Later on, the company is not really interested anymore, because sales have gone to numbers where pirating doesn't matter.
2. Copy protection is not really meant to prevent software pirates and habitual game downloaders from doing such things. I'm not sure why most people think that those company guys are stupid. They know this. What they want to prevent is that the school kid gives his own DVD and installation key to all his school friends when the game comes out. If it is very convenient to do so, even people who are not computer savvy will do this. It's these "pirates by chance" that copy protection targets.
1. In all cases I know so far, the copy protection of games has been removed by a patch within a year or two. The limit on the number of installs only considers the initial launch time of the game. Later on, the company is not really interested anymore, because sales have gone to numbers where pirating doesn't matter.
2. Copy protection is not really meant to prevent software pirates and habitual game downloaders from doing such things. I'm not sure why most people think that those company guys are stupid. They know this. What they want to prevent is that the school kid gives his own DVD and installation key to all his school friends when the game comes out. If it is very convenient to do so, even people who are not computer savvy will do this. It's these "pirates by chance" that copy protection targets.