Remember the days of the NES, SNES, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, and pretty much every other game console that has previous been released? You just pop your game into the console, power it up, and play it. Those days are sadly dead and buried as companies try to find ways to inconvenience paying customers while doing nothing to stop the piracy of their products. It seems Capcom is going to require you be connected to the Internet in order to play their upcoming released, Bionic Commando: Rearmed 2.
What’s most annoying is the simple fact that the game is mostly a single-player endeavor so there is no actual need to be connected to the Internet in order to play it. It also means at some future point when Capcom shuts down their servers you will no longer be able to play this game. So in the end at some future point you will have to pirate the game in order to play it.
What many software companies don’t seem to understand is the simple fact that pirating is easy. Digital “Rights” Management (DRM) makes life complicated and difficult for the user. It’s actually less of a headache to find and download a title illegally than it is to legitimately use some software. How is making the customer’s life more difficult supposed to prevent piracy? The simple answer is it won’t. DRM simply causes further loss of sales since potential customers (such as myself as I was previously planning to buy Bionic Commando: Rearmed 2) are willing to put up with the headaches.
Companies seem to believe an Internet connection is a constant and stable item. For most people this isn’t the case as their Internet connection dies with enough frequency to warrant a lot of complaining. Tying a piece of software to an Internet connection when there is no need only makes your software worthless when said Internet connection dies.