Securom is annoying, but at least it isn't an optical drive-destroying monstrosity like Starforce was. Anybody remember Starforce? It was just as bad as that malware crap that Sony forced down everyone's throat early last year.
Fortunately, publishers such as Stardock are leading the way with DRM-lite games (e.g. Sins of a Solar Empire) that require little more than a DVD serial check with with little or no limit on installs. With good customer service techniques, they have proved that you do NOT have to use draconian DRM to make a good profit on a game. Sure, SoaSE was pirated, but not anywhere nearly as much as other big titles with big DRM. Stardock, and a growing handful of publishers like them, have learned that there is NO point in pissing off the paying customer with DRM that does absolutely nothing to stop piracy anyway. It is my hope that other publishers will look to Stardock's business model and realize that they can make more money NOT using intrusive DRM schemes.
Concerning Steam and similar download/verify systems (such as Impulse.) I hated Steam when it first came out. It wasn't the crashes or data loss that bugged me so much. It was the fact that I couldn't just pop in the disc and play without first going online to get "permission" (as I saw it.) Several years later and now it seems perfectly normal to me. Weird, huh? I must confess that online confirmation and cheat checks (like VAC) are a great way to combat piracy (not perfect, but good) without torqueing off paying customers.
Another form of DRM that I don't mind is the "clever cripple" type. Instead of making players jump through obnoxious DRM hoops, a "crippled" game that has been pirated will seem to work fine at first, but gradually degrade over time, making online and/or single-player play excruciatingly annoying to the pirate. An example of this was a tank game from 2004 (sorry, can't remember the name) that if you pirated, seemed to work fine. But the longer you played it, the slower your tank would go compared to "legal" players online. This would make pirate players sitting ducks for the playing players. Oh, sure, the really experienced pirates would figure it out and get around it, but most hacker-babies wouldn't know how (or were too lazy to try.)
