[EFG]

The only really obscenely bad copy protection I've seen is Starforce. In all honesty, we can ***** and moan about DRMs and copy protection all we want, but they actually help the companies that use them, in a few ways.

1. Computer-illiterate people. These are the people that call you and ask how to add a torrent to BT, and they are stymied by copy protection, so if they want the game, they will probbaly just buy it. (I'm looking at most of EA's customers... Sims, Spore, Sports games, etc.)

2. With good enough protection, you can hold off the cracking of it for maybe a week, or a month, and this will help greatly for release sales, which, for hypd titles, are higher than average. Not to mention that a good protection system will instill confidence in your product and make stores more willing to stock it. (a good follow up is to get employees to register at torrent sites and downvote the torrents, or even report them as viruses and such)

3. Lazy people. Would you rather download 4 different files, risk a bad torrent and maybe get a virus, or just go and buy the game? If you answer the second, you are lazy (or ethical) and the copy protection has succeeded on you. (Unfortuneately, most lazy people just have consoles)

Stardock succeeded without any protection because the game was more of a cult hit than a real huge hit. If they had mainstream appeal, they probably wouldn;t make that many more sales compared to now, because it is just so easy to pirate that game, only the cult fanbase/ethical supporters would actually buy it. (btw, GalCiv is wa-hey-hey-hay better than SoaSE)

Iron Lore failed because of the way in which the implemented their copy protection. It isn't a fault of copy protection in general, it is a fault of the mysterious and infuriating copy protection that THQ slapped onto Titan Quest, coupled with pre-release leaks that gauranteed practically everyone would at least try to pirate it.

whew.... /rant