With Digital Rights Management becoming more intricate and invasive, at some point a line needs to be drawn.

Supporters of DRM often claim that the owners of the media, be it video games, music or movies, are simply doing what’s necessary to protect their company from a high-tech form of shoplifting. One example commonly cited to justify this stance is the “World of Goo,” a puzzle game made by independent game developer 2D-Boy. Though it received critical acclaim, 2D Boy later said that the game had a piracy rate nearing 90%, and the company filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy on January 28.

With such a staggering figure, it’s easy to try and draw the conclusion that piracy is killing the PC gaming industry, but the reality of the situation isn’t as simple as that. Brad Wardell, president and CEO of Stardock games, claimed that developers these days go for glamor instead of making products that will actually be purchased by the consumer base, and that by looking at making games as an actual business rather than for the “cool factor,” piracy would cease to be as much of a problem.

Rockstar Games, after the success of Grand Theft Auto IV on consoles, decided that for the PC release they would include DRM software that requires two separate external programs to be running and have internet access, spending money developing the technology instead of actually making the game work correctly. The result was a poorly optimized mess, running slowly on the fastest machines for no legitimate reason, provided it worked at all. In this case, even people that pay to play the game suffer drawbacks they shouldn’t have to.

With such programs required to make a game work, and requiring online validation from the company that made it, this also means that the second a company goes out of business, you end up having spent $50 on something you can’t even use anymore. It’s paranoia in the face of shifting digital trends, and ineffective anyway. The people actually buying games suffer as a result, and new games are usually cracked and available for download online the day they’re released anyway.