I may not always be right, but as Valve Corporation President Gabe Newell also stated "most DRM strategies are just dumb" and also “Making greater value for customers through service value”. They worked on it with Steam however they will never appease everyone and they also should realize that.
A business does not need everyone on board or to sell to everyone and that is fine. But if they provide a service or product enough people want without a feature and are unwilling to provide it they should either accept that it will be stolen or not make it in the first place.
If you want to get into DMCA we can go there. When we crack our way into a terrorists computer breaking Adobe, or any form of Security measure that may have been used. Yet we do not arrest federal agents. Strange a company knows people will break it yet they make the software anyway.... knowing in fact they will have losses....
The 10 year from now thing is a valid point, people have spent thousands on Steam, and if one day it goes belly up well their rental period is over. Case in point MLB games bought prior to 2006 will not work after 2007. Goodbye Red Sox 2004 World Series Games. Boy wanna talk about pissed off people, Sure I have another copy and now it is a hard copy the fact remains I paid for a product the rights to watch those games and yet they pulled those rights like that.
Zune with plays for sure. There are other examples, quite a few, but why name them all. If I bought a song from MS pre Zune that came with plays for sure (drm) and their own MP3 player will not play it wtf really? I had a library of 10,000 songs that would not work with Zune, so I broke the DRM on those songs so I could load my Mp3 player with MUSIC I PURCHASED.
Kinda funny 300 million people in the US, yet a company expects the rest of the 6.3 Billion people in the world to follow the rules and regulations that are given by the US.
Quite odd indeed a company makes a product people want it, the same people who want it yet cant get it for whatever reason (regional issues, online activation, DRM, to expensive whatever).
As for games that did not get cracked, ok one game made it to the year mark and yet how many games get leaked pre the game going public? As I stare at my copy of FF13 for PS3 wondering if I should wait for the release or go ahead and start playing...
Q Games sent me a disc with all of their games on it because my internet connection was having issues staying connected for more then 10 minutes. I explained to them shit happens here and had I known I would have had this much trouble actually downloading games I bought I would not have bought them, they said they understood and could send me a copy. They sent me a disc with all their games even the ones I didn’t buy, the ones I did not buy were demo copies the full game on the disc but needed me to activate/buy them in order to play them beyond the demo portion. So I bought them, all of them, a company that would support me is a company worth supporting imo.
I sent GoG an Email in 2008 asking if they would sell discs because at the time I did not have internet on my personal computer they replied basically that they were Digital Download only, but sent me a couple links of places I could find disc copies of games they had. Here it is a year and some change later and here I am, buying their games. Their downloader provided does not jack up the download when my internet goes out, they have answered all my questions in a timely manner. They have me as a customer for the simple fact they as a company said “Damn dude that blows, we can not help ya there but here is a couple of options you have, sorry…” (that is not exactly what was sent to me lol but that was the basics of it)
If I want to fly first class somewhere which airline will I use the one who treats me like shit or the one who will bring me upstairs with the masseuse ...? Thank you Virgin Atlantic Air, thank you Qatar Airways, thank you Emirates.
EFF you Delta, Eff you Luftthansa who went on strike that caused me to get rerouted through Syria and Yemen of all freaking places. I mean nothing wrong with Yemen really... But WTF!? Yemen? Syria? They gave me first class after that, and tickets anywhere in the world they fly and yet I sold the tickets letting them know after spending time in a warzone the last thing I wanted to do was go to another country that wanted me dead.
Obviously people who are ignorant about how they should be treated as a consumer will take abuse from the company. Where as people who get out and realize they have options can utilize those said options. Sure the company can come after me, maybe they will send their lawyers to Baghdad and stop the Haji markets, but somehow I doubt this.
No im not calling anyone ignorant on here, im just saying blndly accepting this is the *way* things should be done is silly.
The FTC took this to heart, granted they have yet to do anything serious. Mary Engle, an FTC Acting Deputy Director "If your advertising giveth and your EULA taketh away," she said, "don't be surprised if the FTC comes calling." Back when they held a town hall on the matter.
Yes getting from point A to B is different then entertainment however there is more then one game company out there and so I have more then one option as to which I will use.
AIrlines are finally getting dealt with starting in April, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood said airlines could be fined $27,500 per passenger for every violation of a new requirement that planes must return to the gates and allow passengers to go back into the terminal if the flight has been delayed for three hours
So next time I get shit service I can at least know that the company will be dealt with as they should. 27500 x 200 =5.5 Million bucks and that is not even a full flight..... Sure they could be fined up to that amount, which is like the Music companies wanting the full amount and that whole fiasco with I think it was Canada and the music companies there being sued but not wanting to pay the whole amount....
Anyway obviously you have no problem with DRM/Steam or anything else, and obviously I do. You will not change my opinion of this, nor will anything I said change your opinion and that is fine and dandy. We can agree to disagree.

Gundato is really Darth Persuader stamping out the last pocket of DRM resistance before moving the DeathStar to another website system . . . =) . . . Resistance is futile . . . Oh, wait . . . that is the Borg . . .=)

And I fully support you in not buying games you don't want. I do the same, and I have actually avoided certain games (even though I am really interested) because I too fear the headaches involved. Hell, I still irrationally fear MMORPGs (although, The Old Republic might convert me) and most MP-oriented games with no bots.
But, at the same time, it is important to always revise the definition of what will cause headaches. Steam might have been potentially problematic in the first few years, but now? Now, it is actually one of the first models to get cracked for very popular games. So it really isn't going to be any more headache to run a Steam-crack than it will be to dig out your old cd-rom drive (because we will obviously all be using Zip Disks :p) and probably crack that anyway.
As for the "DRM is just one of many things to prove problematic". Agreed, but I question the relevance of that argument. A game like ArmA might have very minimal DRM, but do we really expect it to work without headaches a year down the road (let alone ten)? Whereas, a game like Modern Warfare 2 uses integrated Steam, but I think we can all agree that that game will probably have minimal headaches to get working ten years down the road (at least, by the time it is finished being patched). And GTA4 used at least two models of DRM (three, if you got it from Steam), and we all know that isn't going to run in five years :p
All I was trying to go for was that, in the grand scheme of things, I doubt any DRM models (except maybe Starforce...) will be too problematic down the line. It might involve a few more headaches (download the DLC pack when you are grabbing the patches and cracks), but they will still be the kind that you can solve by just popping some acetaminophen, rather than having to drill a hole to release the pressure.

A key point, however, is that I don't want to spend my time dealing with cracks. That's one of the reasons why I buy games instead of acquiring them through other avenues. Also, as I mentioned earlier, it's not just a question of there being problems 10 years down the line, but the potential for Steam to cause me trouble each and every time I go to play the game. I don't want to be unable to play my games because the folks at Steam decided that the activity on my account looked suspicious, or because everyone trying to play the latest hot release just turned Steam's servers into smoking piles of scrap. I don't want to be told to wait to play my game because an update needs to be downloaded and installed (yes, I know that can be disabled on a per-game basis, no, I don't want to have to take the time to do it), I don't want to have to take the time to put a game into offline mode (and hope it works) because my ISP decided to crap out for a few hours. And Steam offers me nothing I'm interested in in exchange for these potential problems. So when comparing offerings on Steam to other options available to me (of which there are many) the analysis is pretty straight-forward every time I run it.
That's why DRM is only one of the factors I consider when looking to purchase a game. I didn't pass on Fallout 3 because of any objection to its DRM, but because of the large number of bug reports. To reiterate, I try to avoid things that could prevent me from being able to play the game I bought (as that would mean I'd have to spend some of my valuable time working around that problem, something I prefer not to have to do). And as I mentioned in my previous post my policies have worked quite well for me to date. In addition to that, pretty much every time I see a post complaining about some problem that prevented another person from playing one of their games my first thought is usually "Yep, saw that one coming", so I definitely feel that I'm not just tilting at windmills. As part of this, I feel that having to rely on someone else's server always introduces a place for problems to occur, as EA [url=http://www.ea.com/2/service-updates]demonstrated. This is something I'm willing to risk when I only have to rely on those servers for initial game activation, although only for games I don't really see myself wanted to replay a couple years down the line (thus games I'm usually not willing to pay more than $20 for), but if I have to rely on someone else's server every time I want to play the game that's just providing too many opportunities for the situation to arise that I'll go to play the game but will be prevented (or rather, delayed) from doing so due to factors outside of my control.

You actually raise a point that I always find interesting. Even now, getting a crack is fifteen minutes of work (if you get a crappy mirror. Considerably less if you don't). If you honestly don't have fifteen minutes of spare time when you are going to replay an old game that you suddenly felt nostalgic for, you might want to get a new hobby :p. And, if you are like me, you just keep a folder full of patches and mods so that you can get any game up and running five minutes after the install (and then pop a no-cd on because I hate swapping discs :p).
Beyond that, up to you, but I don't really see a problem with needing to patch a game (unless it is one I heavily mod). Generally, these days at least, if a patch is actually released, we pretty much need it (and the next five...). Beyond that, the only problem that Steam causes (that you mentioned) is the need to authenticate if you are playing in Online mode. That can be problematic during the holidays and a Free TF2 weekend, but it can generally be fixed by just restarting Steam to get a better server. A minor hassle, but again, if you don't have two minutes...
And one final thing to consider: You say that you haven't seen any games that you care about that need a service you don't want. That very well might be true. But a friend of mine says the same crap all the time. He said that he hated Steam and thought the HLs were overrated, and he constantly said that he didn't care about MEPC (so he wouldn't bother dealing with Securom). A few years back he finally played HL1, then immediately bought HL2 (and now actually tolerates Steam :p), and just last month he finally played MEPC (and is probably going to buy ME2 at release). Just saying, sometimes people trick themselves into thinking they don't care about something. Might not be the case, but food for thought.
And as for avoiding things that could prevent you from playing: If anything, digital distribution models will be less likely to be problematic. Like I said, we are all going to switch back to those 5.25 floppies, and then nobody will have a CD drive :p. You are boned no matter what you do, and that is why I find all of this hilarious. We scream about how much we hate limited activation models, and how they might cause problems ten years down the line, but we don't seem to draw the same connection to our media (even if I AM in the process of the slow and painful task of archiving all my floppies).

It's not that I don't have 15 minutes to deal with a DRM problem, it's just that I'd much rather use that time for something else. I like my life a lot right now because aside from a few unavoidable things (e.g. taxes and jury duty) I just about never have to spend any of my time doing things I don't want to do. You can call me spoiled if you want, I probably am, but I still really like not having to spend my time doing things I don't want to do, and see little reason to change that by changing my decision-making process for buying games when it has worked so well.
When I patch my games I prefer to do it on my time. If I want to play the game I want to play it, not be told I need to wait while it is updated. I'll download the patch and let it update while I'm doing something else, at a time of my choosing. And despite how minor some problem may or may not be, it is still a problem that I have no need to deal with. I could buy a game through Steam and have to occasionally deal with these problems, or buy a game retail (or even through D2D, Impulse, or Gamersgate) and not have those particular problems even be a possibility.
Yeaaah... that's just kind of insulting right there. When it comes to what I want and don't want I think I'm the premiere authority here, so let's leave it at that.
I'm rather disappointed you don't think I've already done my homework on this matter. The short lifespan of floppies was well known even back when they were first being used, so no one should have been caught off guard by that. Lifespan estimates for CD-Rs and DVD-Rs range from 2 years to 300 years, depending on the dyes used and whether the reflective surface uses silver or gold (silver degrades faster). CDs and DVDs mass produced through pressing are expected to last significantly longer ("expected" because there isn't much in the way of data on failure due to age with these, which definitely says something about their longevity). And when it comes to the ability to read optical media, considering I can still easily get 3.5" floppy drives (which were already being phased out in the mid 90s) without any difficulty, while CD/DVD drives are still the in full use, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be able to use my optical media for at least a couple of decades. Tell you what, though, in another 10 years let's compare notes on our experiences with our preferred methods of distribution and see what kinds of problems we've run into.
For now, though, we seem to be in a bit of a holding pattern, so I'm going to call it quits on this one.

I am just saying, if someone doesn't want to like something, they won't. Maybe you really don't like any games that are exclusively digital distribution. It is quite possible, and maybe even likely. But, at the same time, it is also quite possible that the reason you don't like them is because you don't want to like them.
I know for a fact that most of my annoyance with the Mac OS is that I don't want to like it. And I know that my sister hates Windows7 because she doesn't want to like Windows :p
Considering that all I will have to do (if I am forced to pirate it to play) is just double-click an installer, sure :p
And here is the thing: You value those two or three minutes of your time. I value those ten bucks of my money. Why should I have to buy another drive just to play a game?
Hell, why should I have to buy another monitor. I mean, we are all going to be using 3d glasses by then. Or we'll all have started using headsets that interact directly with our minds :p
All I am trying to say is: Thinking of the "Ten years down the road" case is all good and fine, but there are so many other variables. So why penalize yourself now? I am counting on being able to crack things (or just download a rip). You are counting on potentially buying extra drives and hunting all over the super-duper-3d-internety thing (where we all will watch as the remains of Wintermute transcend to godhood :p) for patches and compatibility tricks. We are all going to be boned and hoping that the inevitable successor to GoG puts the game we want to play up, if only to minimize the headaches involved.