A few months ago, I was feeling particularly annoyed about DRM in PC games.  I still am.  I was chatting about it with the manager at the game shop I use a lot.  They mentioned that they had a game in from Stardock.  I'd read a lot about Stardock, the PC game company that had become famous by taking a stance against DRM, issuing a gamer's bill of rights and putting their money where their mouth is by selling games without DRM.  They were all over the web for that.  Just the day before, I'd seen them mentioned in an article at Extreme Tech about winners and losers in 2008, listed as a winner for not using DRM.  A bold stance that I approved of, so I was happy to spend £30 to support it.  The game looked good too, a massive space strategy thing.  Even the name was good - Sins of a Solar Empire.  So I bought it.

Reading the manual back at work, I was surprised to find that the game was DRM'd.  I know I shouldn't have been, but I was.  I'd actually believed the hype about Stardock not using DRM.  Silly me.  I was annoyed about being misled and annoyed at myself for falling for it, and that ruined the game for me.  I installed the demo, but never played it.  It was just too annoying to be reminded that I had been suckered.

So the game went on my shelf.

I'm still just as annoyed about it and I still don't want to be reminded of being taken in, so the game is still there.

Time to be rid of it.

I will give it away to the first person to email me at [email protected] saying they want it and that they have a mainland UK address for me to send it to.  Mainland UK because of the postage cost.  I'm paying to post a free copy of the game to someone, so I'm not going to pay extra for island or overseas post.

To clarify:  This is a legal, boxed copy of Sins of a Solar Empire, as bought in a high street shop in the UK.  It has NOT been activated.  I want to be rid of the damned thing because it's just reminding me I was misled and gullible enough to fall for it, and that annoys me.

A shame, because it looks like a good game, but it's just annoying me.  Yes, I know Stardock isn't the only company that uses DRM.  Yes, I am aware of the arguments about various forms of DRM, both for and against.  What annoys me is being misled.

To head off the inevitable "You must be a pirate, lololol" babble:  I currently have 51 games on my shelf, all legit.  The last time I had a pirate game was in the early 1980s, when I swapped some audio cassettes with ZX Spectrum games on them with some friends at school and I didn't really know what software piracy was anyway.  And I still spent my pocket money on Spectrum games.  I was 11 at the time and didn't know any better.