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- 4 Jun 2021
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In short, it's all down to when the company implementing it stops supporting it, especially with online activation and there's precious little that one can do about it.
For example, many games on Steam can run on old computers from 20 years ago as they're from that era, yet it's no longer possible since they're tied to the Steam client which no longer supports those old PCs which are often running something like XP or Vista. This will force an expensive hardware upgrade just to be back at square one, so they might just get abandoned instead. This situation isn't as bad as where the game can't be run at all since the online activation servers no longer exist, eg Games for Windows Live. Got one of those games? Forget it.
It's for these reasons and more that I detest DRM in all its forms. Unfortunately, one must accept it in many cases, or one can't have access to any content. I only accept it with my Sky subscription for example, because once I've seen a program, I'm not interested in watching it again most of the time. On the other hand, with music, I listen to tracks all the time, so refuse to have something like a Spotify subscription where I can only access the music while I keep paying the tithe. I'd much rather rip it off CDs where I can (best sound quality, too) or free YouTube videos that I can link to on NZ and, ahem, rip the soundtrack using certain tools.
This video has many examples of games that are now stuck in this limbo.
For example, many games on Steam can run on old computers from 20 years ago as they're from that era, yet it's no longer possible since they're tied to the Steam client which no longer supports those old PCs which are often running something like XP or Vista. This will force an expensive hardware upgrade just to be back at square one, so they might just get abandoned instead. This situation isn't as bad as where the game can't be run at all since the online activation servers no longer exist, eg Games for Windows Live. Got one of those games? Forget it.
It's for these reasons and more that I detest DRM in all its forms. Unfortunately, one must accept it in many cases, or one can't have access to any content. I only accept it with my Sky subscription for example, because once I've seen a program, I'm not interested in watching it again most of the time. On the other hand, with music, I listen to tracks all the time, so refuse to have something like a Spotify subscription where I can only access the music while I keep paying the tithe. I'd much rather rip it off CDs where I can (best sound quality, too) or free YouTube videos that I can link to on NZ and, ahem, rip the soundtrack using certain tools.
This video has many examples of games that are now stuck in this limbo.