http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/6978-SimShitty Nathan Boyes DRM and its encouragement to piracy.

Digital Rights Management, A justifiable thing to want. It's nice to know that the people playing the game you've spent so much effort in creating have put some money down for it. However, some companies have been taking this concept a little too far inconveniencing the paying customer to enforce this control. When pirates are offering better services by... not really offering any service at all, do you feel a little ripped off?

One form of DRM is "Always Online DRM." With this type of DRM you have no access to the game if your internet goes down or the server you are connected to to play the game goes down.  This form of DRM is primarily used to keep users from cheating in MMO's. Single Player Games and small scale multiplayer games have been taking lessons from this model, and it's leaving a bad taste. Diablo 3 is a game that can range from 1 to 4 players. This game also has "Always Online DRM." If your connection to the Diablo 3 server is weak, you will be unable to play the game in a lag free environment, not even single player. That is unacceptable to someone who has just paid the ridiculous price of 60 dollars for a game that they expect to be able to play without problems. All in all this just seems like terrible service.

If I were a consumer and had the choice of playing the new Sim City by receiving a free copy from EA, or pirating it, I would honestly choose piracy (For the record I have no intension of ever playing this game). Pirated versions do not have that mess of DRM to deal with, while yes I may have to do some extra steps in setting it up, it would be worth it to me in the end. Pirates are currently delivering a better service then EA is, and you don't even have to purchase what they are giving away. Big business's counter this by increasing the amount of DRM they have witch inconveniences the player even more, and deals little damage to the pirates, if anything it makes them stronger. If crackers see a game inconveniencing players that is the game they target first, as that is the game people want to pirate the most to get around the inconveniences. Now if someone wants to keep their product from being pirated and keep user satisfaction there are possibilities.

While you may not think of it as one, Steam is a form of DRM. Steam catalogues games to make them easy to access by its users, as well as provides community services for its users. Players can't use steams services without purchasing their game through steam, however purchasing a game through steam does not inconvenience the user in anyway. Their games are still playable offline; you just loose access to steams services. If a company provides more service then the pirates, users will flock to it and be willing to pay.

Hopefully producers of games will realize that the way they are dealing with DRM is inconveniencing the user soon, and that user satisfaction should be their priority. There are undoubtedly companies that exist who view the user satisfaction first, and if the other companies don't pick this up, they will die, leaving user satisfaction in the hands of the existing companies.