Everybody's thinking:

"But the game hasn't even come out! How could you possibly have a reason for not liking it or encouraging others to not purchase it?"

Easy answer: It will have the same stupid DRM that its predecessor has. Here's the problem with DRM that no developer seems to understand:

DRM is fine, right up until you include activation limits. PC gaming is, by its very nature, dynamic in terms of the hardware. Depending on how often you upgrade your hardware and the nature of the upgrade, you may need to reinstall.

DRM doesn't stop pirates. It barely even slows them down. It can be good, if used right; but keep reading to find out how Crytek/EA misuses it, thus making it bad. Very, very bad.

DRM that has activation limits encourages piracy because it limits legitimate customers considerably. This is bad for what should be obvious reasons:

1) Legitimate customers purchase their games to support the developers that make the games they love. If they can't play their games after a few hardware upgrades or changes, this means they will become angry.

2) Pirates aren't stopped by DRM. People who break the law are going to break the law regardless of what you include to keep this from happening. Some people will do this just to prove they can. Nerfing legitimate customers who have no desire to steal gives them a legitimate reason to start: If they have to - or feel like they have to - purchase the same game multiple times just because of some idiotic inclusion of poorly done DRM, they will consider piracy because it gives them an out.

3) Support for games - PC or otherwise - is, historically, horrifying. In point of fact, it is currently horrifying.

4) DRM that has activation limits will increase the need for legitimate customers to require support, meaning the company will require additional money from the company who develops/produces the game. Any increase in production costs are bad for the game company. Yet they continually do stupid stuff anyway. Smart people doing stupid things on a regular basis should give you cause for worry. Gamers shouldn't have to worry.

5) Because support for games is horrible (at best) any customer (all customers are paying customers; only pirates don't pay) will become frustrated with the fruitless search for answers and consider other options to get back what they lawfully paid for.

6) Crytek has made the bad habit of including this DRM with each of their games. EA is notorious too. It is likely the stupidity will continue ad infinitum, regardless of the number of times it has been profusely complained about.

7) EA support only makes the mistake of trying to forward any questions/problems onto the game's retailer who - in turn, rightfully - forwards back the developer/producer. This round and round only makes for an even angrier customer.

8) If support for the game and decisions for the production of a game are this bad now, you can bet it will only get worse. Historically, developers don't get better with time. They get worse. If it's this bad now, can you imagine how much worse it will become? People who habitually make bad decisions are like drug addicts: They're so busy making bad decisions, they can't see the obvious drawbacks of those bad decisions. They don't see the elephant in the room. Everyone else can see it and everyone else is telling them its there, but all they can think is: "Everything in this room was here when I moved in." This, of course, is precisely the problem.


Issues or questions of quality, gameplay/server-support aside, who among you wants to have problems with DRM?

PC gamers being able to digitally download and reinstall our games from the providers (Steam, Origin, Uplay, etc.) without having to worry about the need for repurchase is precisely what gives us an advantage over console players. Without that advantage, no PC gamer is going to come back. A primary example is GFWL (Games for Windows Live). The support and implementation for this is so horrible, no one I know puts up with for long. Now everyone I know checks the games they purchase through their digital providers to make sure there is no GFWL. Which means developers like Rocksteady are definitely out.

I don't want this to become the case with Crytek, but given the road they're headed down, it's going to happen.

I would beg, positively beg, for Crytek to make the change while there is still time... if I thought it would do any good.