Posted July 05, 2014
To me, DRM is any system that requires contact with an outside party after the sale of a game or digital content, other than an initial download or redownload of the product itself, in order to be able to use the game or content. All forms of activation, be they once, once a week, once a month, or constantly-on, constitute DRM. I generally wouldn't consider a system that requires a CD in a drive to be DRM - assuming, of course, the game was originally distributed on CD and an imaged version can be substituted - to be DRM, though I certainly understand why some might.
Main thing for me is I want to be able to use what I paid for on a non-networked machine, or be able to run it 20 years from now, when the publisher is long out of business or has stopped supporting the product. 95% of the games or content I have are at least that old.
I ask, one, because I'm seeing a few titles here which don't appear to be DRM-free at all. Wing Commander IV isn't, according to what I'm reading in the EULA on the product description page - it requires some kind of client running in the background, much like Steam, in order to use the game. Second, and this is the WORST part, I've encountered quite a few "DRM-free" publishers that, for some reason, seem to think that anything short of an always-on tether constitutes "DRM-free". Even worse is that I've become so tired of playing the game of having to ask about just about EVERY TITLE, addon or DLC, that I've pretty much given up on trying to buy new games.