If Civ5 had significantly lower sales than 4 though would they take that as a lesson on DRM? Or would they assume it was pirated more, or that the PC audience has shrunk? I'm not so sure lower sales of PC games sends a message to improve the DRM situation of PC games... in fact, it might do the opposite. I would even go so far as to say that a disgruntled customer who paid for your game and then had DRM trouble is a LOT more effective than a bunch of people who didn't pay for your game at all.

What stopped EA from using SecuROM, bad sales or bad press and customer irritation about install limits? I would bet my life savings on the latter, not the former.

Tell that to sony ;) Most consoles require 2+ games for a profit I think the PS3 originally needed 5 games. The Xbox required 2 and the 360 required 2

People on Amazon will post 1-star reviews of anything when there's a controversy over DRM. There's 1 star reviews of Civ 4 Colonization, because of SecuROM, for example.

fixed

The fact that Civ V came 4th in the UK charts the week after Halo Reach launched and the week in F1 2010 launched says enough about the effects of DRM on sales (i.e. none.) And, frankly, the amount of negative publicity on Steamworks is insignificant compared to (for example) GfWL, which is why the GfWL is withering and Steamworks is hoovering up the developers that used GfWL.
(Incidentally, AFAIK EA still use SecuROM, just larger activation limits)

To be fair, you can argue that any game with internet activation (which is pretty much every major PC game these days) is a "rental service".

Honestly? The difference between the swing towards Steamworks and the swings towards GfWL, SecuROM and StarForce is the lack of bad publicity about the DRM, although the misconceptions about what a VAC ban does may be the exception. (For your information: VAC bans only ban you from some multiplayer servers)

I don't think DRM effects sales to any real degree across the board, that is kind of my point. I don't think 95% of people pay any attention to it, or enough attention to care. Ubisoft might have changed that with their terrible DRM, but for the most part it is invisible. I know my father in law plays shooters and such and he didn't even notice that Modern Warfare 2 activated online, he just installed, put the code in and played.

This is why I say only customer dissatisfaction changes DRM policy. Only when they have a bunch of paying customers upset about the DRM will they pay attention. This happened with Starforce, with SecuROM limits and GFWL, and those were all slowly dropped by most publishers. Steam is not hated by customers, and in fact loved by most of them, so it has been adopted by most publishers now.

Either way the point is that a sales boycott does nothing, it only lowers PC game sales even lower and companies don't assume it is a DRM issue. It harms PC gaming revenue without sending a message and you don't get to play the game either. Buying the games and sending a kind note to the publisher that it upsets you that you had to wait 12 hours to play for them to turn on the servers, or that you could not play on the airplane because you forgot to activate before you left, or whatever else... that stuff matters. Less sales is just less sales.

And on an open platform like the PC it's not like you can't find a way to play the game if the DRM is ever non-functional anyway.

I didn't mean to say they removed it from older titles, only that they no longer use it for new titles. They haven't in about a year or more... Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age, Bad Company 2, The Sims 3 and expansions, etc. etc... all are just a disc check when you buy retail.

Huh. I realise that the recent Bioware games had a disc check, but I thought that was a Bioware decision. Bad Company 2 had a hybrid system, where you can have yer disc check or you can replace it with a 15 limit activation system, although I thought that to get to multiplayer, you had to sign up to the activations. Didn't realise Sims 3 used a disc check, although most of the Sims games had a disc check anyway.

If there's a more recent EA game with activations than The Saboteur I don't know about it. I'm sure I might have missed one though.

Battlefield Bad Company 2 has 15 activations.

If you're wanting to sift the good reviews out of the dross, look for the " Amazon Verified Purchase" line at the top of the review--these people actually bought the product and aren't just arbitrarily complaining about something they may not even own.

I can understand Amazon hate on Spore for SecuROM, but seriously? IT'S JUST STEAM.

Don't give me that bullshit about how Steam leases your games and everything, because in the grand scheme of things at least Steam is still financially sound.

Except the complaint about lease something is a valid one. It's a benefit that's aimed exclusively at the publisher or retailer and not at the customer.

No, you can choose to use a disc check instead. And yes, you can play online using just the disc check. Sierra was financially sound a decade ago. Atari was two decades ago. The fact of the matter is that Steam ties my game purchases to an account Valve control, not me. I dislike that.

In this industry, something can come out of nowhere and catch everyone by surprise and become the new "it". Hence why I don't like Steam. Look at what Facebook did to MySpace.

really? i love steam i finally get to install all of my games with only a few mouse clicks instead of many hours disc swapping and key entering.... and i can tell you it gets old having to re-buy a game for the fourth time from losing the cd-key.....