Is it even legal to do that?? If its not its very unethical to just kill a game after 3 years and expect no one to complain.

I sincerely doubt it's legal.  Stopping support, yes, causing it to no longer work, no.

*whistles The X-Files theme*

I thought DRM was supposed to stop pirates... but uhh, this seems to be encouragement to use pirated software. Hint hint, to game producers/developers/whomever likes putting DRM into games, it's all being pirated anyway, stop making your legal customers suffer.

right now DRM is preventing me from watching my Blu-Ray movies.   I just got a Blu Ray player for my PC and I bought some Blu-ray movies to celebrate.     Now I'm home with this awesome HD movies... and they don't work!    I have the codecs used by Blu ray Movies, but apparently I need to either use Power DVD (which keeps telling me I need to update and/or crashes) or to use pirating software to rip the Blu ray out of its BD DRM.

If the "licensed not sold" tactic has failed, which is the case in 99% of software sales, consumer laws apply. The exact laws are too different between countries under .nl laws I would send a nice letter:

"Dear Epic Megagames, your product is covered with a hindrance that should not be on it. Taking the civil law, book 7, article 20, into account I demand the you immedeately remove this hindrance. I await your decision about this within two weeks, and within the same two weeks, I expect the product with the hindrance removed, or, a planning by you for removing the hindrance. I you fail to comply I will invoke my legal right to reduce the price of the product and get part of my money back, as it has become completely non-functional and I believe a game is interresting to play for much longer than 3 years I think a reduction of the price by 50% or more is reasonable".

If the "licensed not sold" has succeeded you cannot invoke consumer rights since there has legally been no sale between a merchant and a consumer. Your only defense can be the license itself, if it has no time limit, you can try to defend you with a "breach of contract". If the license has the time limit there is little you can do. This is why consumers should always strongly resist EULA's, the mere fact of a "licensed not sold procedure" means your rights are completely gone.

Can you imagine what would have happened if Epic games had gone under and was now defunct?  Everyone would be SOL... and THAT is why I stringently oppose DRM of this sort.

I wonder how this was suppose to stop people from downloading the game??

DRM needs to burn in the deep fiery pits of the Earth. I already fell for buying Dead Space and that is the last and only game with limited installs I will ever buy. It cracks me up to hear companies who put these kinds of DRM on their games say that it is to stop pirates, and then hearing that there is a pirated version a week before the game is supposed to come out. It's hilarious!

Supposedly pirates can't get updates to the game, but that is still no excuse for limiting the amount of times I can install my property. Now we PC gamers are pretty much renting our games with a price tag of $50-60. I really hope these companies finally see through the cloud of stupidity they are in and deal with this problem.

Thanks Stardock for making sure you have the consumer in mind. Know that we are looking at you to set the example of what PC gaming security should be.   

All drm is about the company makeing money. Greedy ******* trying to make more sells by limting installs.

Well, you have to remember that for the "efficient business" companies (hello EA!) bringing out games that people keep playing for years is actually counterproductive. What you're supposed to do is: buy a game, play it for about a month, get tired of it, chuck it in a corner and buy a new game. Playing a game for years on end (or at least spending part of your gaming time on it) means you're not buying a new game to fill that that "slot" in your gaming time. 

You can easily see this kind of philosophy in the amount of time companies like EA support a product with patches after publishing it. If there's no expansion pack in the works (or similar) you get one or two patches, and that's it. (regardless of the final state of the game)

Personally, (being a naturally cynical and untrusting person, at least as far as big companies are concerned) I believe the publisher also makes the more pliable programming teams (ie. not the famous/bestseller guys) design their games to keep your attention for only a limitid amount of time. Infinite replayability means no need to pay more money to the publisher, after all.

You won't get a good reputation as a publisher for these kinds of "meh" games and "RAAAAAGGGHHHH!!!!" DDRM tactics, but their reputation is already in the pits, so they may as well roll with it.

As a side note: the actual case of self-terminating licences here is more likely a sin of incompetence and uncaring laxity than actual malitious intent though. I guess it was only a matter of time till a critical bug turned up in the ever more complex DRM programming. Make it more and more complex to make things a bit harder for the pirates (And, incidentally, more fun and interesting for real hackers. Remember folks, it only takes one successful attempt at breaking the DRM to plaster it all over the internet) and the more complex things get the bigger the chance of something getting messed up in the mass of programming.

Of course, regardless wether the intent was good or bad, the customer pays the programmer's food, car & house is hurt by the programmer that is scared, not of his customer, but of people that will never be his customer. Quod erat demonstrandum?

Actually, the customer does not pay the programmer's wages. The development company does and by extension the publisher, in most developer/publisher relationships. It is the policy of publisher that sets the programmers priorities. And since policy decisions are made by management rather than technical people, "good enough for now" tends to outweigh perfectionism by a rather significant margin.

I once read a rather interesting booklet for head maintenance technicians, designed to aid them in dealing with corporate management. Management has a tendency to want to cut back on costs, they see this hugely expensive entry on the balance sheet (the maintainance budget) that does not immediately contribute to making a profit. They will then try to axe that budget as much as possible in order to make gains in the short term. The maintainance directors normally warn them that there will problems in the long run, and management ignores them because money now is worth more than money later. This is a technically sound accounting principle based, for instance, on the fact that making lots of money on a large investment in a few years time is irrelevant if the company goes bust six months from now, never getting to the profits. (the solution suggested for the maintanance heads is making an accounting calculation using the standard multipliers used by accountants showing that the costs of repairs/back maintenance later do, in fact, outweigh the immediate gains even if taking into account the now/later multiplier)

The above "quality control investment costs" problem would be even worse in the gaming industry, with the big publishers simply liquidating subordinate development studios when their reputation/profitabilty is irretrievably damaged. All the publisher has to do is reassign the development staff and resources to other teams and the bad reputation problem is "solved".

My only hope in this is that publishers like EA will eventually find out that "goodwill" is also a very real and very valuable entry on the balance sheet. (and thus a gain for the top guy's bonus arrangements and the shareholders stock listings) Even for publishers. Perhaps Brad Wardell can introduce some management teams to his accounting priciples? (He seems to have a commendably high regard for customer goodwill)

Whats interesting is that they put a timebomb in an original retail copy of the game.  Apparently microsoft thought no one was gonna keep playing gow1 after jan. 2009?

I loved the last comment though. If this whole shebang does not show the DRMing game developers/publishers that their so beleoved DRM only hinders their paying customers, then nothing will.

To me, this is the best argument as to why DRM encourages piracy, not prevents it.