ResumePlay - The Life and Death of Stealth Action. Thanks Ant via Digg.
Stealth needed a change. Not even Agent 47 could stem the tide. Then in 2007, Ubisoft changed the game and delivered a game in which the sneaking part was the fun part. Assassin’s Creed ushered in a new era of stealth action. An era in which the player character was not simply an awful shot with an underpowered gun. In retrospect, I feel that the major reason that stealth action saw the decline that it did was because players were forced into the shadows out of weakness instead of having the shadows (and as with AC, rooftops) be a source of power. Why should it take super mega soldier Sam Fisher five bullets to shoot out one light?

Techgage - The Vicious Cycle of Gaming DRM.
In reality, it seems that some copy protection was actually going forward and providing benefits, such as Valve's Steam platform. The ability and convenience of Steam actually seemed to silence the debate for most products that used it, and even had people happy to trade piracy for a legal copy. DVD backups, instant patch delivery, digital downloads of new titles and DLC - it was like the best features of Xbox Live, without having to be constrained to the console. To this day, it remains (to my knowledge) the least thwarted copy protection system out there. Not because it's largely uncrackable, as Valve often proposes - but because it provided features that make cracking it less valuable. That's right, DRM (Digital Rights Management) provided a real service to consumers - it's a lot better than it used to be.