Screw DRM

Lukasz Kukawski said recently that "DRM drives people to pirate games rather than prevent them from doing that." After the experience I just had with Bioshock 2, I agree completely with him...let me tell you a little story.

So, I bought Bioshock 2 today. It was on sale, I hadn't played it, so I figured what the hell. Got it online, downloaded the zip, got the e-mail with my product key. No big deal. A product key I can deal with. I get to installing and playing. It went a little something like this:

1. Unzip the downloaded game.

2. Run setup and go through the installation process...entering the product key when asked. So far so good.

3. Click Start and see Games for Windows LIVE. Figure I have to log in to that to get updates and such. Get a connection error.

4. Figured I forgot to open the firewall or something...added an exclusion for GFWL to Windows Firewall.

5. Try again...same error.

6. Hell with that, I say. I run Bioshock 2. It opens up. Cool!

7. Games for Windows LIVE drops down in front of Bioshock and asks me for my Windows LIVE logon. No problem, I put it in and tell it to log me in automatically and save my login and password.

8. GFWL asks me for my product key...again. WTF.

8. Spend the next 10 minutes trying to switch back and forth to copy the key into the GFWL box. Ultimately, I end up not being able to switch back to the game.

9. Task Manager - kill the game process.

10. Print out the product key e-mail.

11. Restart the game. Re-enter my login...which was supposed to be saved.

12. Type in the product key.

13. It starts to "download my profile"...but wait, there's an update for Windows LIVE. Exit and restart the game to apply.

14. Click OK and then I'm asked to login or I'm going to lose everything. I click Yes to login.

15. Repeat steps 13 & 14...except this time I'm wise to their game and click No.

16. Game exits, update applied. Sweet.

17. Re-run Bioshock.

18. Re-enter my fucking login. (So much for "save my login and password").

19. Downloading profile...ANOTHER LIVE UPDATE. WTF?

20. Repeat steps 13 & 14...again clicking No.

21. Apply second LIVE update...this time apparently for the LIVE Login Helper. Good...maybe it'll save my login this time.

22. Nope.

23. ANOTHER F&*KING UPDATE. This time for the game itself apparently. Exit the game...again. (That's four times so far in case you're keeping track.)

24. Apply update.

25. Game automatically restarts again. Do you think it saved my login??? Of course not.

26. Login...profile actually finishes downloading this time. Will miracles never cease?

27. Start playing the game.

So...27 steps, about 45 minutes start to finish...to play one fucking game for the first time. There is something seriously wrong with that. Now...I could have gone onto any number of torrent sites or checked on Usenet for maybe 5 minutes and had myself a DRM-free copy of the same game. I didn't. I chose to do the right thing and actually put down the cash for a copy. What was I rewarded with? Forty-five minutes of my life that I'll never get back and God knows what sort of ridiculous crapware now sitting on my machine.

Screw DRM. It's bull and it doesn't stop anyone from doing anything. It just punishes the people that actually pay for your game.