DRM is very restrictive. It encourages piracy because piracy allows you to completely circumvent the DRM structure.

that's why I like GoG. Because it's DRM free. Sure the GoG games are easily found and pirate-able on the internet, but on the otherhand. I would imagine people are less likely to pirate GoG because they give you what pirates have been asking for for a long time, cheap drm free games.

I figure more people are likely to buy the same game at GoG than from steam BECAUSE of the DRM free and optimized games.

Just my 2cents on it.

I don't buy any Steam games (or indeed any digital downloads other than GOG), and online activation\streaming DRM is a no as well.

The most I'll put up with is the CD key\disc check algorithm and if I want to preserve the disc I'll crack the exe.

It was particularly welcome that THQ\Gas Powered Games removed the Supreme Commander disc check in a patch, and I spent around $40 on SC\Forged Alliance as a result. Normally I'm stingy and wait for the price to drop below $15 or so.

False - I had my Steam account in Offline mode for over 4 months last year on my notebook without any problem. I know several people (mostly in US armed forces) who had Steam in offline mode for over half a year.

That's great, but there's posters on this very board who've had the opposite experience. And there's people in the US military (mostly in craphole nowhere) who can't keep it in offline mode.

Shit, I was on vacation for a week without internet and Steam stopped me from playing several games towards the end of the week.

If you're taking exception to the time period, you're likely right, but the rest of it stands, it's not dependable and if Steam decides that it needs to validate good luck doing so without a connection.

I believe Damuna has had a similar experience, though maybe not in quite as short as a week's time.

It was odd because some games worked and some games did not. The ones that did not said very plainly "this game will no longer work in offline mode." I know Portal was a game that did not run but I can't remember the others.

It's possible they have different tolerances available for games.

I thought it was games that weren't "up to date" that wouldn't work in Offline Mode?

If it's offline how does it know if they're up to date? Is there a signing cert that expires?

I don't know, that's just the way I read it.

Most of the time its because iether Steam of game file(s) was corrupted and have to be redownloaded -

I've loosened my stance against drm over the last year since it's been reasonable but I shall never buy a Wii since they have the harshest drm of all consoles and PC. Your dlc is tied to your system, not your account. According to Nintendo, the only current solution is to contact them, have them send you mailing labels and you ship out both the new and old Wii to them and they do the transfer at the shop. That's the dumbest drm by far.

They do, that's why no one likes Wiiware or the DSi download crap. However, you can have a great DS experience without that and if you like disc Wii games (I don't, generally) there's no reason to worry about it, you won't ever need DLC.