10 Trends That Are Killing Video Games

9. Digital Rights Management

Here's a trend that has already become pretty damn troublesome, at least as far as PC gaming goes, the idea that you have to be connected to the Internet in order to play a game that you've plonked down cold, hard cash for. It all began when Half-Life 2 required players to be signed into Steam way back in 2004, and it's only gotten worse since; it's a lazy way of developers keeping tabs on players by ensuring that they can't tamper with the system files offline. If they try that while online, they'll simply be locked out of the game. The point is that this sort of copyright protection method seeks to punish those who actually pay for the game rather than attempt to incentivise paying for it; the irony is that this sort of method probably provokes a number of players to actually download a cracked copy of the game, which will have the DRM removed (of course), and as such will allow the player to play the game in the Internet-free outer-regions of Siberia if they so wish. And while most of us are connected to the Internet 24/7 these days, it's not something we should be required to rely on; what if our broadband exchange goes down for the day? It'll just make us extra miserable; not only will we not be able to browse the net, but we can't even play a great game to pass the time. Furthermore, if their servers go down, we can't play either, and knowing how infamously unreliable these sorts of services are - especially on launch day - it's not something we're particularly pleased about, inevitable as it is. Ludicrous.