Pretty sure Beamer already mentioned some of these debacles have hit those avenues. I'm not digging through news sites that require logins to find them. Needless to say you're trying to draw a silly line as if it matters. The news circulated wider than it usually does, better?
Where did he say that? Certainly not in this thread. If you have any facts to back up any of that, feel free to share. DRM has had lots of negative reception in the gaming community (including gaming magazines and websites), as I said. But to think that the average joe who shops at WalMart or Best Buy knows or cares about any of these is fairly unlikely, as you yourself have said.
Most publishers are publicly held companies with a legally defined responsibility to their shareholders, some form of protection will always be required regardless of what the vocal minority wants.
Then why did Ubisoft put no copy-protection whatsoever on Prince of Persia, EndWar, Hawx and Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood? Ubisoft is one of the biggest publishers out there. Surely their shareholders would demand at least minimal protection..?
You made a pretty big leap from "Publishers are backing off from DRM in general" to "BUT IF THAT WERE TRUE THERE WOULD BE NO DRM!"
Sigh. Okay. Let's walk through your argument:
1) Publishers are only backing off of activations and install limits because they are useless.
2) Publishers are only using copy-protection at all because of shareholders.
3) Publishers don't care about the vocal minority.
Alright. So, if the only reason to use copy-protection is to please shareholders, wouldn't it make more sense to stick with activations and install limits? After all, those are still harder to crack than rudimentary disc-checks and CD-keys. Bioshock, Mass Effect and Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Athena took 2-3 weeks to crack after all. If I was a paranoid shareholder and I saw these facts, I'd definitely want publishers to keep using DRM... unless I actually cared about the vocal minority. But hey, that's ridiculous, right? I mean, nobody cares about the vocal minority.
It was the only tangible thing you posted.
So you disagree that DRM (primarily activations and install limits) is poorly received by the gaming community and by the gaming media in general? Alright. Aside from the poor Amazon ratings of DRM-infected games, go ahead and search for "DRM" on Kotaku, Shacknews, VE3D, Joystiq or any other gaming news site. Hell, look it up on Google. If the results you find aren't tangible enough proof, I'm not sure what else I can offer.
I've already broken it down many times. I am not restarting the entire debate so you can save face.
So those aren't your actual points? If I'm misunderstanding your argument, please clarify.
Explain about the titles where the DRM never got changed.
Lack of vocal minority outrage, obviously. If nobody really cares about a game, they don't complain and if they don't complain, nothing changes. Converely, if a game is big and heavily hyped, there are naturally a lot more complaints. Examples: Bioshock's install limits were removed. Mass Effect and Spore's planned regular validations were removed and EA released a tool to revoke activations. With Red Alert 3, EA extended the install limit to 5 which then became standard for the rest of EA's games. Sims 3 had no activations or install limits and Dragon Age won't either. Ubisoft stopped using DRM after Far Cry 2 (though they broke this trend and added DRM to Anno 1404 for some reason).
Explain the current forms of DRM that are not yet going away but taking time for publishers to move away from.
By "current forms" of DRM, I assume you mean disc-checks and CD-keys? Like I've said a million times, nobody complains about those so publishers have no real incentive to remove them. Steam is another form of DRM, but very few people complain about that because Steam also offers benefits to the users, like the ability to install and play a game on any computer, automatic patching, achievements, etc. No vocal minority, no change.
Explain how your argument is based entirely on a stringent definition of DRM.
My argument is based on the most commonly accepted definition of DRM: Activations and install limits. Any reference to DRM on a gaming site will be specifically referring to those things. For some reason, though, you insist on arguing semantics as if it somehow helps your fleeting argument.