Yes I have seriously lost faith in PC gaming recently. The DRM and anti-piracy is ruining it, and as I keep saying, the only people they are hurting are the legitimate buyers.
Recently I bought Medieval II Total War. At first my drive couldn't even read it. I took it out and put it back in, and it took it 5 mins to finally recognise the disc after a lot of churning. All my other discs - those with no protection - are recognised in about 2 seconds.
So I try to install, it tells me I'm running emulation software of some kind. No I'm not and I've never had any installed. I spend a day trying to get it to work. And an internet search tells me it's a common problem.
I contact their support. The reply comes the day after. They tell me to run some kind of SecuRom tool to scan my computer and send them the log. I do that. The reply comes the next day. They give me a link to a cracked version of the game hosted by them. And apparently they've had to give it to a lot of people.
After this I had unrelated problems getting it to install and work. In total I had the game for 6 days before I actually got it running. By that time I'd lost interest in playing it. And all the while I was asking myself, why is it that people who bought the game like me are being punished, when the people who pirate it will just be using a copy with the protection removed.
This isn't the only time it's happened to me, but I won't bore you with the rest. The other thing that disillusions me about the state of PC gaming, is all the "you can install this game 3 times only" and "you can only play this single player game if you have an internet connection to verify it with our servers that may or may not be there in 5 years time". ********! I bought it, it's mine to play - in 20 years if I so wish and on a different computer if I've upgraded.
