I'm OK with certain DRM. Steam is fine. It's something that you have to be logged into, or have logged into in the somewhat recent past, in order to play. It's totally unobtrusive and doesn't put up roadblocks every step of the way.

But like you and everyone else has said, if it's good enough, it's going to be broken and spread all over the net. They aren't punishing pirates in any way, they're punishing paying customers.

If I download a movie I open it and it starts playing. If I buy one it takes at least a minute or so to get through all the crap to get to my movie.

If piracy is providing a better product than you are, you're doing something wrong and need to change your model.

No, Steam is DRM because you have to sign into Steam in order to play most of the games you have purchased. There's a significant difference between always online DRM and Steam, I wasn't trying to equate the two, but Steam *is* a kind of DRM. Or I guess more correctly, DRM is a part of Steamworks. It isn't just a download manager for your games, it provides its own DRM for publishers to use. This is most notable in (for me) its only downside-- If you've signed out incorrectly or if you've failed to install an update and sign in once afterwards, you can't use Steam offline and you are locked out of your games.

The relevant bits from the FAQ:

"Steam's DRM solution (called "CEG" by Valve) is just one of many Steamworks components game developers may use, alongside achievements, cloud saving, the workshop, matchmaking network code etc.; just like with all the others, implementing it is not required to distribute a game on Steam. A game can use the other Steamworks features and still remain DRM-free."

But in effect, the list of games that choose not to use it is very small.

Yeah I've played offline a bunch, in fact I may have once or twice... heard about... a friend... sharing accounts with people to and after signing in blocking Steam via the Windows firewall to force it offline so two people could play single player games on the same account. But it requires that sign-in, and if Steam ends abruptly or thinks it needs to do something you're screwed until you sign back in.

I think you have to sign in once every 60 or 90 days for offline mode to continue to work as well. Can't remember the cutoff.

BUT! I think it speaks volumes about Steam's DRM implementation that it was so unobtrusive you were unaware that there was any DRM there. It's DRM done right. At this point DRM is still a necessary evil if we want games from most publishers, and Steam has a way to do it almost transparently and without being detrimental to the customer.

For some reason it just now, more than a day later, occurred to me that my previous comment could be taken like "haha you didn't know Steam had drm you stupid head." That wasn't my intention at all- just pointing out how well that Steam had implemented it, so that it's almost entirely transparent to the user.

To the point about the physical release, Wizard of the Coast already did a series of WoW cards. I haven't seen any info about whether this is based at all on that card game, but if not I do wonder why. From what I heard it was a good game.

Hang on a sec, how does the WoL guest pass differ from the SC2 starter edition? I thought Starter Edition replaced the need for guest passes.

You had me at Supergiant Games.