4. Internet Connection Required
Piracy and the second-hand market have become two of the biggest concerns for developers, and one of the ways they are working to eliminate these growing trends is by forcing players to be permanently connected to the internet, even when playing single-player. The problem with online-only DRM, as hordes of Diablo III players discovered, is two-fold. Firstly, if your internet connection is poor, if you are travelling, or if you are generally without internet then you won't be able to play, even the single-player. Secondly, as was the problem for gamers eager to play Diablo III, if the servers at the developer (in this case Blizzard) are down, then again you won't be able to play. The other downside to online-only DRM is that the games cannot be resold, as they need to be registered online, although I firmly believe that this will not be an issue beyond 2014, as online distribution becomes the pre-eminent way we buy games. Given how far the Internet has come in a relatively short period time and that most consoles and PCs are permanently connected to the internet anyway, this trend isn't going to disappear anytime soon, but it will become less of an issue for most gamers over the coming years, especially if developers can ensure that the servers are only ever offline during a widely advertised maintenance period.