It is not small i just posted one link as an example and yes when it acts like a pimp in your PC telling you what programs you can use and what you can not it is malware.
I think JDR's and danutz' point was that it doesn't and I can 100% confirm that as well. I've had Daemon Tools installed for a long time and was playing SecuROM protected games all the time (no StarForce games though). Never ever had a single issue or SecuROM telling me to uninstall Daemon Tools. Not once. Ever.
Doesn't mean that I don't believe that it does happen to some people but I have a hard time believing that it is a really common issue.
No idea about very long time , the longest to my knowledge is Sacred 2 (~10 days -the cracking team made some comments here and there ) .
Well, I'm sure that there is quite a long list of games where it took longer than the 10 days you mentioned but for starters German Wikipedia's entry on StarForce
mentions 400 days for Splinter Cell: CT).
DRM was all the rage for MP3s (from a business POV, not according to users), now the business-world is finally realizing they were probably mistaken. They had been told so from the beginning, but weren't listening. If not stupid, maybe short-sighted?
I don't know about that, Arhu. The music industry has suffered a decrease of 29% (~ US$4 billion) since its peak in 1999 (
source). Again: We're talking about F-O-U-R B-I-L-L-I-O-N dollars gone up in smoke.
This is despite the fact that the install base has increased like crazy since gazillions of CD players, DVD players, and especially devices capable of playing back mp3s (iPod et al) have been sold in the last decade. There is absolutely no doubt that the relatively easy availability of "free" music has played a major role in the decline of the sales of music.
The article I linked to is from April 2008 and I don't remember when the major record labels announced a retreat from their strict DRM schemes but I'm just as curious as the next guy whether the removal of DRM is going to do the music industry any good. I severely doubt it given the trend since 1999.
Of course the music industry is in the lucky position to have quite a few alternative sources of revenue like concert ticket sales, merchandise, licensing music for movies etc. but the game industry just doesn't have any significant alternative revenue streams.
So I think it's a lot easier for the music industry to pull out of DRM (which certainly was a customer service nightmare as well when you had crying 12 year old teenagers calling up the support hotline and bitching about some song not playing back on their iPod
).
Therefore, I think that game publishers (rightfully) have a much harder time to drop DRM entirely.
If they do (like EA who seem to be pulling out of DRM) then I believe it is only to cut down on said support costs. Spore as a pretty casual game must have been a nightmare for EA's customer support when millions of John Does rang up the EA hotline to complain about limited installs after dad and the kids installed the game and no installs remained for mom or uncle Bob or neighbor Frank or whoever...
