Stardock really has things going in the right direction. What we need is games that do not ship or install with DRM in them.

The key to the system is that if you want patches that add content to the game, install expansions to it, or access any multiplayer component, then you need to buy a copy and register it to your identity. Patches that affect stability would be free to use for everyone and would be discontinued after the game is considered "stable" because people who pirate your game and find it buggy are even more likely to never touch your game again.

The logic behind such a system is completetly sound. People who would pirate your game and can't do it won't pay for your game either. People who think they would not enjoy your game won't buy it unless they can try it and find out. Most importantly of all, people who are forced to buy your game to try it and don't like it will regret thier descision and tell all thier friends.

For those people who have invested in your company and its efforts, they are rewarded with coonsistent quality in your services. For those people who don't pay for your service, well they just might find it to thier liking.

Publishers must realize you will never stop piracy and there is no effective DRM that will be tolerated by legitimate consumers.

Publishers must instead build a loyal customer base by offering high quality DRM-free games with additional content available to owners. (See gog.com for a good example.  I've purchased  a dozen games there in the last month.  Impule is a good try if they keep it DRM-free.)

Loyal customers will gladly pay a fair price for good games and will pressure their peers to do so as well.  You can eliminate huge advertising and marketing costs, retail markups, manufacturing, spoilage, and so on by instead offering your games directly to the consumer at a low price.  (The low price is key to discouraging piracy.  Pirating a game just isn't worth the hassle if the price is low enough.)

Maintain a social web site that sells your products, gives your customers a place to meet, and offers add ons for free to owners.  (But ensure that your games, being DRM free, do not need the site or net to function and will "work forever.")  Make sure owners can re-download their games at any time without a lot of hassle. Forget serials and keys.

Treat your customers with respect and they will return the favor.  You will build a large, loyal customer base who will pay for your games.  You will earn a fair profit.  They will support you.  Your competitors will wither.  Forget the pirates, don't be greedy, having taken the 'fun' out of it for the warez crowd, they will focus elsewhere.  Your customers will pay for the convenience of managing their game wares through your site, secure in the knowledge that they actually own what they have purchased from you.  Stop worrying about imaginary 'losses' and focus on good content and service.  You will make a good living and sleep better at night.

If you have any questions about this corporate strategy, hire me and I'll help you set it up. 

Google's situation is hardly an appropriate comparison, give that it is a legal requirement for operating within mainland China.

I think DRM will be the death of PC gaming it in the end it will force every 1 but die hards   away from the pc as a game platform. With the way current DRM works all platform consoles are imune   to it, but if the current DRM is like the poster had said to (get rid of resale ) well then all it will do is kill the publisher as consoles are imune to DRM, with the resale/trade that gose on there beyond there control in any way. I feel that a program must be made like an account (like itunes) that locks the buyer to the key and this key can be sold as sofware to some 1 else and must be 3rd party and not part of the publisher(yea they wont like that) as they are payed to keep the cd key as part of this survice from the publisher and will not remove any game they are payed to store, and if the publisher gose bankrupt they have been payed to store and keep the keys active allready so u dont lose ur game. This is a simple example as it stands impulse and steam are 2 publishers and if one of them go bunkrupt u loose every game u have downloaded from them, scary huh? I will allways chose a disk over a download and x fingers untell some 1 gets it right when I do buy any downloaded content. Personaly im not happy the way things are going with DRM I feel its unfair to the buyer and just makes publishers look bad to the buyer. Dont get the wrong idea i will buy a game first for my PC I rebuild it every 12-18mo's and it can run every thing, but if they dont make it for PC i do have my console's to fall back on. The thing is with all the DRM problems I have noticed some thing else, the lack of games comming to PC and the poorly developed games that have been comming out for console only. Its like they cant get it right for PC so dont bother and just barly get it working for the console they are making it for. Sad to be a gamer these days.

To the original post - an autonomous DRM deactivation would never work. If you gave a pirate a program with a DRM that would automatically dissassemble itself in say 2012 all they would need to do to deactivate it now is move their system clock on to 2012, and to be honest i cant see anyone having a problem with their computer thinking its the year 3000 if it gets rid of invasive DRM on a legal, or illegal program. So no, that type of DRM wouldn't work.

To the guy who said platforms are immune to DRM - the guy who posted right after you was right. The PS3, the Xbox 360 and Wii all have DRM and anti-piracy measures in place on them. I bet you wii gamers didnt know that every time you do a 'system update' it also scans your wii for changes, be it missing Hard drive space or a corrupted game authentication check. And for all those Console gamers that are feeling snug about not having DRM etc. they can start thanking us PC gamers now, and maybe even start marching with us against invasive DRM, coz the PC community is the ONLY thing standing in the way of 'DDRM' at the moment. The PC came first, and as the consoles more versatile and stronger older brother it will protect it, just like any brother would.

Now my kind of DRM - I like Impulse. I bought GC2 and installed it to my PC, not letting it put in impulse, because i thought it was another one of those programs they try to just throw at you. Two weeks later i was checking online for any updates to my singleplayer offline game. A game that for all stardock knew i could have pirated. I found i had to have inpulse to update, so i downloaded it and updated, brilliant! Errors I had experienced were gone! Now i dont doubt there is some way for pirates to get hold of GC2 2.0, but I doubt these invasive DRM's prevent any more pirates than the need for impulse to update has, and i know from experience invasisve DRM's Will get people to leave a game, but i doubt impulse has ever scared anyone off.

So what i reckion stardock should do? They should check your registration key and your .exe when you register and when your online (say when your next online or once every three weeks, whichever comes last) against a list of bad ones. And when a new way of hacking the program comes about, which will probably be the modification of another file they can check that one. And if they are any good they wont whack them all on to begin with, they should wait untill say an exe crack comes out, then a few days later catch it, and do the same with all the others (apart from keys, which should be caught ASAP) because i can think of no better way to put a hacker off, or make him buy the game than to annoy him, WITHOUT annoying the legal consumer!

Did i mention i like impulse? Just wish more of my games were on it as it is a lot easier to let it download and install everything for me than sit next to it and do it 'manually', i reinstall my games often as everytime i put a new bit of hardware in (3-6 months) or a new OS (currently running Vista, xp, and fedora linux) i will do a complete reinstall (keeps everything nice'n'smooth, also helps keep files organised and gives me a chance to clean the dust out of the case ). So the best thing i could see happen to inpulse is to have more games supported from other publishers with Impulse ease! Or if stardock would produce me a CoD6 a Farcry3 and TES5 i could maybe settle without the other publishers

Amen. It's just like if you want to get hired and the guy in the interview says "Well, one of the rules to get hired here is delivering some special services to your recruiter. So put off your dress now please." The choice is yours, of course, but Google wouldn't have starved after just saying "No, thanks. Your rules are not fitting my conscience." and leaving.

Whenever I go watch a movie, i pay lots of cash to be allowed in. And every single time I'm forced to watch a five minute anti-piracy trailer. I'm not going into the cinema anymore, instead I wait and then rent the DVD where the anti-piracy trailer is played _after_ the movie so I can just switch off.

The same applies to games. You try and force me accepting invasive DRM? "If you wanna play this, this is your way to go." Well thank you, then I don't. If you can't trust my cash then you're not to be helped and deserve to go bankrupt. Just around the corner there are other great games (for me, at the time being, Sins ,-) just waiting for me to spend a buck on. And that's what I do. As soon as there's any low level driver, root kit or the like, I'm out, there's no game in the world worthy enough to have me compromise the security of my system.

Getting back to the original question - for me the ideal DRM system would be none at all. Software piracy cannot be stopped by technology however advanced because it's software - you can take it apart, find out how it works and "fix" it. In every single case. So why bother? Especially, why embarass those people who are willing to pay with "clever" means of piracy suppression? People must learn that software is not goods/wares/merchandise but information -- if I sell you a secret word I'll just have to trust you won't tell it back to someone else. As for the resale "problem" - where does the attitude actually come from that there should be ways to prevent resale? I may resell a used car with no manufacturer frowning on me so why not resell a used game? Most usually you buy second hand wares when you can't affort the same thing new, or you don't see any benefit in spending this much more to have it a little earlier. So, would manufacturers just lower their prices over time there would be no resale market because it would be more convenient to buy a first-hand edition at a lower price. The approach that every license that cannot be resold will be bought originally as soon as it's technically enforced is just a wet dream of some analyst. If I don't get my ware at my price, I wait, and after a while I give up. But I'm not spending high bucks on things I don't deem worth. Besides, the argument that software doesn't "age" like a car does is void. Ever installed Ultima Underworld recently and had a look at this marvel? Software does age, it does lose value over time even though not a single byte of it may change.

So, why not just keep Impulse the way it is? Let it speak for itself. Let it spread, grow. There's no need for other publishers to be reassured and convinced by some technical stuff that by design cannot work the way they want to believe. There's only need for them to be convinced by figures. Join and expect this amount of trade, withhold and expect nothing. Let users try out things before they buy, then sell the full product without any hassle. Publisher trusts user, user trusts publisher, cash flows, both sides prosper, a win-win situation. This will spiral up all by itself, just wait and see. To ensure it actually does, I'm out to buy something now, hoping all of you follow my example.