"Rail Game Fans." They have made 2 computer games from 2 railroad boardgames I enjoy playing: Rail Empires and Rail Baron. I originally bought their download copies for $29 each. Not a bad price. However, this guy is so scared of pirating, that he allows only 3 installations per game.

Well, I have reinstalled Windows 7 (same machine) 3 times, deleting my games. He now wants me to pay him MORE money to play the games I paid for already.

I will give him all the blame, as I did not process the difference between "license" and "game." So, just like Steam, I bought licenses, not games. I have been corresponding with him and let me tell you, customer service is NOT his strong suit. In our correspondence, he suggested I get his "service plan" that comes to $999/year. I was floored, to say the least. You get a bunch of other services for that cash, but nothing worth $999/year. Otherwise, I can just keep buying his games @ $29 each for 3 installations each. I just can not justify that as 100% of my other games (excluding MMOs) I have ever bought I can install anytime I want at no additional cost.

So I have written these 2 games off as a "learning experience." Sorry for the rant. This is the first time I have encountered this kind of gouging from a small developer.

No different to what bigger publishers and developers were going years ago. I remember the crap that popped up with limited installations with games like Crysis Warhead and Spore.

This is why, for all it's flaws, Steam is often simply the better service to use a lot of the time. It may be horribly flawed, have virtually no quality control and Valve will do everything in their power to avoid giving you refunds if they can avoid it, but ultimately, it's a simple, mostly effective service. And that's why its popular.

We already have a thread about Steam and DRM. You don't need make a whole new thread to keep waving the Steam svcks banner. You're obsessed with hatting Steam. You've actively gone out of your way to push how much you hate Steam, which goes beyond simply not liking a product and dips right into obsession.

This happened once before with a topic of mine. This NOT about Steam and this DRM does not really "fit" with that particular topic.