What pros?

So it's happened to them twice =)
Or both are ways to politely explain the situation without fear of pissing someone off. There also appears to be a lot of "miscommunication" between various developers and Valve.

There was also, for what it's worth, a post by a dev on the forums for one of the F2P games on Steam stating that the game had regional restrictions applied to it on Steam by Valve. Not by the developer/publisher.

That post however, was either deleted or purged a month or so later.

That depends on the game. Need for Speed The Run, even for single player requires the Origin client to be running in the background. And just like Steam based games, will launch Origin first if you attempt to play it while Origin isn't running.

If someone would make some kind of unified client that allows me to access all of those services through just one client I would be fine with this, but until that happens it's just an inconvenience I'd rather be without. I'll wait for it to go on sale for 5$ sometime before I buy it, at that price it might be worth the inconvenience.

I believe they already have CAPCOM titles too.

There are so many Steam only titles that also annoy me. I neither like Steam nor Origin. But for the customers of Steam the installation of Origin should not be such a big hurdle. After all only one programm more, that's not a big difference. And Origin cannot be so bad compared to Steam.

wait, this is still a problem? i thought we had gotten over that when BF3 came out and everybody bought it despite the Origin requirement?

Origin is no problem. it works and doesn't get in the way. it's useless as a digital retail store but that's a different matter altogether.

ME3 C.E. is pre-ordered. my body is ready.

the accounts locked due to inactivity and you have to email/call to re-enable it's scary... at least with steam i can not log in for a year and i know i can install and go :)

I haven't tried on my own computer since I have no interest in battlefield 3 or any other games on Origin, but the program certainly didn't work on my brothers computer.

Steam used to have the same piece in their EULA at one point and not logging in for 2 years is quite a bit of time since even logging onto say the bioware site is counted as a login...

I think its because so many Steam 'fanboi's ' are miffed about EA putting future stuff onto Origina only lol. They think Steam is the one and only...

Online features like automatic updates, cloud saving, multiplayer, pop-up ads etc. can be implemented easily without making it a DRM feature, ie. requiring you to be connected even if you are not going to use any of those online features.

E.g., cloud saving can be implemented easily so that if no connection is available, it saves the games locally, and later if the connection becomes available, the client can synchronize the save files to the cloud based on e.g. timestamps or whatever, or even ask for the user permission if he wants to sync the current save files to the cloud. In fact I think some cloud saving systems work this way already.

Rubbish, in so many levels. One simple example: I'm online now over an enormously fast broadband connection, yet on this machine Steam client refuses to connect to Valve servers, even as much as download a game in the background, let alone play it connected online. Apparently the reason is this:

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7549-MURQ-4431

So, being online does not automatically mean that these online-DRM schemes necessarily work. Maybe the reason is that Valve does not want you to be able to fake your location with a proxy server (so that you could get a better deal than your region should allow, e.g. us filthy rich Europeons paying the same price as the poor Americans), so too bad if you can't connect without a proxy from your network, or can't administer the proxy server.

Also, maybe it doesn't affect a desktop PC gamer as much as a laptop gamer, especially if trying to stay connected over a flaky wifi connection. Heck, even the single-player games on Android tablets or phones do not usually seem to require constant online connection (even though smart phones are usually expected to have a data connection available whenever necessary), so why should single-player PC games?

I won't even start the discussion of the fallacy that all online services will remain online for the timespan anyone would want to play any of their older games, especially with the arrival of Windows Store which will slowly but surely eat the market from other Windows game delivery systems... (ok, I guess I started it after all, just a reminder).

I'm 99% sure that a mere crack will not enable you to play e.g. Diablo 3 single-player offline, because the game is supposed to stream new content online as you play. The very least you'd have to download the pirated version of the game, if such beast will be available (and if you have access to one due to SOPA or whatever).

But the funny thing is that also then there were heaps of DRM apologists: "I've never had any issue with Starforce, and I don't believe 99.9% of others have either. People are just bitching too much, mere scaremongering.". Who knows, maybe they were absolutely right. The only people who would have any problems would be the silly few people who would try to play Starforce WinXP games on Windows Vista or 7, or own a DVD-RW drive.

Of course I had my fair share of connection problems with Steam/Ubi, etc. But it's still a con I would rather take than a lot of other things. They don't even come close to the problems I had with disc based copy protection. Btw, I use vpns frequently and Steam only ever complained when I tried to make a purchase. Steam even has an offline mode that's working better with each update (at least my opinion, but I'm hardly offline anymore).

I'm just glad that I don't have to switch disks every fucking time I want to play a different game.

And that MMO require a constant server connection isn't really an issue (Diablo is close enough to an MMO) They could, of course handle it like dungeon defenders (offline chars that you can't use online), but why bother, the vast majority don't use that feature anyway.

And of course the world would be better if all games were free and we would all be shitting rainbows, but I'm content with what we have now. I can go wherever I want in the world, download any game in my collection and play it on my laptop (like I did often enough). And I never played less for gaming (per game, in total it's more than ever :-) ).

I have to say that Steams offline is working better... still not perfect, still needs you to be online to set offline mode but.... it doesn't force connect after a month now it seems..