Whats your worst DRM experience?

Mine was with the retail release of Heroes of Annihilated Empires, i can't remember what the DRM was called but on several different pcs i couldnt get that game to play even after installing and doing everything correct, the one and only one time i got it to work the fmvs wouldn't play nor would the sound.

Umm... Probably 'StarCraft 2'. I managed to install it fine (took a while, but it was fine). But I was left unable to play it for a few days because I was having internet trouble and couldn't get the offline mode to work. The experience certainly hasn't altered my view of DRM, but it has made me 100% less likely to ever give Blizzard any of my money again.

Assassins Creed 2 was just a total kick in the balls. Bought the game, and was told I couldn't play it for 2 days because the servers were overloaded, then was occassionally kicked out of it for the same reason (which was more annoying as I was really getting into it).

Really pissed me off.

Crysis, it didn't want to authenticate, and I wasn't able to play it few days in a row... as a result, I removed Origin from my system, and am never again installing it.

I remember buying The retail Special Edition of Dreamfall and my game wouldn't start at all because of the DRM

boy was I angry that day...

Never really had one, honestly. My dislike of DRM is much more about game preservation than any issues with it working.

I guess Steam not allowing you to revert to previous patches irritates me a lot.

Not DRM, but the copy protection on Ultima Ascension destroyed the CD-ROM drive in one of my laptops. One second thought, that might be a good experience. ;)

Battlefield 1942/Vietnam

Way too many cd checks. Check on startup, then loop check when entering mulitplayer lobby, check when joining, check when returning to lobby from a game.

I managed to install punkbuster and crack that nonsense out. Never got banned for it. I probably won't install the game anymore as I've had more than my fill on online gaming but that was annoying for a while.

Since I tend to avoid buying games with DRM I know are bad, my worst experience is actually recent, and relatively soft compare to others.
I bought Section 8 - Prejudice, a Game For Windows Live game. Launched the game, it ask me if I got a Live account. Hmmm, Live account, that's the thing used for msn, so I enter my connexion info. It then asked for serial, then try to connect. Connexion failed. About 50 times in row.
Finally managed to connect, to learn that my live account isn't a live account, so I need to make it one. Ended up on a xbox related site (wtf? I play on windows!). ok. Back to the game. Connection failed. again, and again, and again...
Finally managed to get the game running. Got a message telling me that some features are disabled due to parental control. Back to the xbox site. Between the ads for xbox related stuff, can't find anything. Tried the game again, and it finally worked.
Oh, well, first and last game for windows live I buy.

I could write a 5000 word essay about bad DRM experiences (especially after today), but I'll spare you all the details. Steam was the worst.

On a more positive note, Batman from GG worked, it won't let me sign into Windows Live, but at least it will let me play offline and doesn't seem to be eating my computer or anything. :)

Edit: I actually had a similar story to dksone with window's live, but it wasn't required to activate the game (that was seperate and worked first time in a matter of seconds).

I'd say Steam because SecuROM and GFWL have never given me any problem and I avoid Tages and Starforce at all costs. Steam is the only one that didn't let me play when I wanted because of their crappy servers.

Since I'm pretty sure people consider GFWL DRM, I'll say my worst experience was with Bioshock 2. When I first got the game, it took me a while to be able to play it because GFWL was acting weird. Luckily, it didn't actually take me long to get everything worked out, and I really enjoyed the game. Other than that, I can't think of any other problems I've ever had.

BioShock, which is the reason I began loathing activation DRM schemes. Game wouldn't authenticate (IIRC, it was because of overloaded servers when I first bought it), then after I got it installed, I added some RAM and another hard drive to my system (not both at the same time). That burned my activations off (the game only gave you two originally), and I was locked out of the game. Got no help to get it to activate from the devs/publisher. Then when they finally came out with a revoke tool... it didn't work for me (and many others).

I was locked out of the game for months. After that experience, I swore that activation DRM was an evil I would never put up with unless the game was given to me, or it was below a threshold of 5 bucks.

1. Starforce - I forget the name of the game (broke and binned the disc, so no evidence remains of it), but this shit killed Windows necessitating a reinstall.

2. Tages - slows the crap out of my DVD drive until its removed.

3. GFWL - forced through an update as I was creating an account, destroying the account in the process. Failed in game updates, meaning I had to force close the game and patch manually. Deliberately destroyed save games. Mouse cursor not synced up properly making using the damn thing even more awful than it already is.

4. GTA 4 - allegedly there's a game under all that DRM. Can't say I ever found it.

I never had major problems with drm, but some annoyances, biggest would be steam, my problem is that if steam client is running for a hour or so, games wouldn't load, it would get stuck at the steam loading the game screen, but it is easily fixed by restarting steam