Suggestion for a DRM System
Stardock Forums
I have read a piece of news that Stardock is developing a DRM system that would satisfy other publishers yet be acceptable to gamers and that it is looking to the community for suggestions, so here comes a suggestion that would satisfy me with regards to DRM:
My main problem with the new DRM schemes is their impact on the longevity of the game and I think many other gamers also share this worry. Both limited installations and the need for online activation limit game longevity, the latter due to the fact that it relies on servers that can be shut down in the future and indeed we have seen this happen with DRM protected music and several online distributors shutting down their servers, so this is not some imaginary possibility, but a very real thing.
Despite the anti-piracy rhetoric, the chief reason for the new Draconian DRM (DDRM) schemes of major publishers appears to be to avoid the loss of profit associated with the resale of used games with perhaps a nod to slowing down the pirates by a couple of days before the game is inevitably pirated regardless of its DDRM. Still, regardless of whether it is piracy or the resale market that is targeted by DDRM, the fact is that the vast majority of the profits made on a (non-MMO) game are made within at most the first few years of its release.
The solution to satisfy both those of us that care about longevity of games and the companies that care about profits lost to the second-hand market or piracy would be to have a DRM scheme that last for the first X-number of years (let's say 3 years as an example, but perhaps each company could chose a timeframe of its own) and than automatically expires. The key word here is the "automatic" part of the expiry. Publishers can shut down their servers, enter financial difficulties or even go bankrupt 10 or 15 years from now, when we want to play our game again (and yes I do reinstall and play some old games). Nobody will convince me that a failing publisher (unless its a very unique publisher indeed) that has trouble paying for the upkeep of its activation servers and is failing to meet its commercial obligations or obligations to its employees will spend its precious resources on patching its entire backlog library of games with DRM just so that players can enjoy playing them after it goes bankrupt. The DRM, therefore, needs to expiry completely autonomously without a need for a patch from the publisher/developer and without the need to go online to check with some kind of server, because if the game needs to do this than we are back to square one.
Such an auto-expiry function would satisfy my longevity concerns with respect to DRM and unlike now I would then be willing to buy games that have those DDRM schemes, though I stress again that the auto-expiry of the DRM would have to be truly automatic and not reliant on going online or any further actions by the publisher (such as a promised patch to remove it).
it in the end it will force every 1 but die hards 
away from the pc as a game platform. With the way current DRM works all platform consoles are imune
to it, but if the current DRM is like the poster had said to (get rid of resale
) well then all it will do is kill the publisher as consoles are imune to DRM, with the resale/trade that gose on there beyond there control in any way. I feel that a program must be made like an account (like itunes) that locks the buyer to the key and this key can be sold as sofware to some 1 else and must be 3rd party and not part of the publisher(yea they wont like that) as they are payed to keep the cd key as part of this survice from the publisher and will not remove any game they are payed to store, and if the publisher gose bankrupt 
). So the best thing i could see happen to inpulse is to have more games supported from other publishers with Impulse ease! Or if stardock would produce me a CoD6 a Farcry3 and TES5 i could maybe settle without the other publishers