Fed up with companies pissing all over their paying customers in the pretence of 'fighting piracy', when that has nothing to do with it. It's far more about making sure no-one can sell on their game when they are finished with it.
*cough*cough* Steam *cough*
I bought Half Life anthology off a store shelf, I get home, install it to play it and the disk installs 98% of the game. The other 2% I have to download from Steam, because APPARENTLY I didn't actually buy a finished product to play out of the box, I bought an incomplete and (without an internet connection) useless coaster.
Then a few nights ago, I wanted to waste some time, so I clicked on "Sin Episodes" which I had picked up for 10 bucks from Future Shop. And what did it say "Launching Steam" well thankyou very much, but I didn't open up Steam, I opened up my friggin game. I don't need some middle man every time I want to play a friggin game that I paid money for.
Not buying anything from Valve again, that's for sure.
Meanwhile people are throwing probably hundreds of dollars and thousands of dollars at Steam, buying stuff online that they have no hard copy for and that Valve and the other companies can save money on because they don't have to package and distribute the game all over the world. It's a win win scenario for the company and the customers need their hand held everytime they play a game, and they pay for basically data that they have no backup for. Screw that. Hmmn, just thought of something . . I wonder if the products on Steam go for MSRP or are they cheaper . . because really, without the cost of packaging, etcetera, they should be cheaper.