The thing I don't get about WB is that they have Monolith - a company with a record of making many of the best singleplayer FPS games - making cheap F2P online games based on recent popular movies. We could have NOLF3, but noooo... Monolith has to make Guardians of Middle Earth.

The market hasn't accepted Xbox One's initial draconian DRM scheme, which is why they changed it later. Simcity was panned by the market as well thanks to all the issues with servers on launch. The same happened to Ubisoft and it's always-online games. But yeah, Steam was largely accepted.

Draconian DRM methos such as always-online are not easily accepted by the market. Unless you're Blizzard (since Blizzard gets a free pass to fuck up PC gamers for some reason).

Sorry if I wasn't clear. That's the console market, I'm talking PC.

As far as simcity is concerned it actually has a LOT more wrong with it than just always-on DRM, whenever I see complaints about it, it's less DRM and more that the mechanics under the hood aren't what was advertised or are broken.

Yeah, many complaints are targeted at the design of the game itself, but i really believe that most complaints were directed at the server issues (most people couldn't play the game on the launch week becase of the servers getting overloaded, amazon even removed the game from the store).

What i want to say is that some DRM methods are harder to accept than others. SecuROM, for example, gets a lot of hate (remember the Spore launch fiasco?), even though it's usually accepted. Starforce was dropped completely because of how criticized it was. Same goes for Ubisoft's always-online. Steam, however, has been almost universally accepted. Even some people here who are against DRM do buy games there when they're extremely cheap.

But yeah, i agree with you on that point. The PC and the console markets are different. The second-hand market is still really big on consoles, which is one of the reasons why DRM hasn't been accepted and online passes have been heavily criticized. On the PC the second-hand market is pretty much dead already (except for old games, of course).

I threw my Arkham Asylum and Arkham City worth 40 usd out yesterday because the e-mail service that is connected to my Games for Windows Live account doesn't exist anymore and I can't recover the password. Skidrow here I come :-P

Bigger the fool you then. Arkham Asylum can be played without an online GFWL account. You don't ever need to attach your account to the game to play it. It runs perfectly well with an offline profile. Arkham City, less so.

Sim City did ok actually. It has to date sold over 2 million copies, (it sold about 1 million at launch so half of the sales are after) and the only thing that changed was that the servers became stable, not that DRM was removed. It have already made a nice profit, and I expect it to sell in this years Christmas sale as well.

O I see, but I wasn't going to ever play it again anyway because I've converted and only play triple A games on PS3 now. Also Asylum was cheaply made dvd case without game booklet, I hated it and was reminded on wasting 20 usd each time I saw it in my bookshelf :-D

As soon as you stop trying to ridicule people who want DRM-free gaming ("ideology"? Do you have a "no always-online DRM"-ideology?). The OP has a valid question, and you seem overly annoyed that he is suggesting there should be a DRM-free version of games which are alredy sold next to nothing. As if he shouldn't be asking what he does.

You asked "Why should they?". The answer is pretty much the same whether you are asking them to drop e.g. always-online DRM, SecuROM, or all DRM. To please many of their (would-be) customers, duh.

No, I am saying that there's nothing wrong with people voicing their opinion what they expect from game publishers, regardless of whether it is:

1. No always-online DRM (the Ubisoft case)
2. No online DRM authentication at all (= DRM-free)
3. No GFWL
4. No SecuROM
5. No streaming games.

etc. For some odd reason, you seem to have a big chip on your shoulder only if someone wants DRM-free (#2).

Your obvious double-standards, that's all. See above.

As I've said numerous times before: it is fully up to them. Apparently they don't seem to feel it to make sense at this point, as the market is already full of Steam key sellers who only compete who can sell it with the lowest margins.

Yet, I don't feel people shouldn't voice their opinion on the matter, and discuss whether it would make sense or not.

edit - oh, just go ahead. I am not the one with double standards here, I am always been clear on where I stand (as in I stand on my convictions, they may change but I am clear on them. They are not for sale for the best price - which I call double standards indeed). You have annoyed me enough. Consider yourself ignored from now.

Or like in the case of Arkham Asylum, just use a "-nosteam" option to run it without any Steam crap? Yeah, very hard and costly indeedy. And "castrated" because it lacks cloud saves and achievements? The people who care about that fully optional crap can still buy the game from Steam, so...

I agree with OP, makes no sense... bundles are like "legal piracy", you get stuff so dirt cheap it feels wrong but good at the same time :P

Please, not talking against DRM-free? Like in "Why should they?". You argued against having DRM-free versions of the WB games.

Again, replace "DRM-free" with "not having always-online DRM". So, when the debates over Ubisoft having always-online DRM were on, or Dark Souls and others having SecuROM and/or GFWL, was your reply then "You just need to accept that. Not everyone believes in always-online DRM-free, or GFWL-free, or SecuROM-free. That may be their company policy, so deal with it and stop demanding the removal of them.".

Calling "DRM-free" an ideology, in a clearly derogatory manner. After all, you don't want to call your own preferences (like no to always-online DRM) an "ideology".

Another one, when I had pointed out your obvious double-standards when discussing about different forms of DRM: You really seem to have some big chip on your shoulder about DRM-free, if only I could figure out why.

And similarly, the DRM-free crowd quite often accept e.g. multiplayer-only games like World of Warcraft having DRM. So at that point "DRM-free" stops being an ideology, right?

Yeah, until the next time you decide to troll in these forums.