"The best in-game piracy punishments"

I used to be amused by this sort of thing, but no more. This is just DRM, same as SecuROM and same as always online, no matter how cutesy they try to be when they implement it. And, just like any other DRM, if this crap ends up adversely affecting even one legitimate customer (and in at least some of those cases, it definitely already has), then it has failed, as far as I am concerned.

And, wouldn't you know it, the comments have filled up with pirates vs anti-pirates. How utterly shocking. *yawn* I read down into that morass a little ways, but I just couldn't stomach it.

"Elite: Dangerous refund policy being reconsidered"

As they fucking well should. Of course, the way Braben is talking, he makes it seem more like he's magnanimously extending a bothersome and unnecessary boon to the peasants rallying at his castle gates with torches and pitchforks, rather than admitting that it was a thing they should have been doing in the goddamn first place. Oh well, better late than never, I suppose.

(EDIT)

On an semi-related note, and speaking more in general than about Elite: Dangerous in particular, I've never understood this relatively recent concern that game devs have with "splitting the fanbase" of their game. This was something that came up with Diablo 3 as well. All these game devs lately are claiming that the game is online-only because they don't want to "split the community." (It's a bullshit reason, of course, since the real reason it is online-only is for DRM reasons, but let's ignore that for the moment.) Here are my questions about this. Let's say you have 100 people who want to buy your game. Out of that 100, 25 want offline singleplayer, and 25 want online multiplayer and 50 want both (the actual split may be different in one direction or another in reality, obviously, but let's go with this for now, just to simplify things). Tell me how, exactly, alienating the 25-75 that want offline singleplayer by removing offline singleplayer altogether is somehow "uniting the community," huh? Tell me how, exactly, including an offline option is somehow "splitting the community." The ones that wanted offline only would have never been a part of the multiplayer "community" anyway. Or are you truly saying that you're fine with 25-75 customers total, when you would have had 100 customers had you included an offline option? More money is better than less money, right?

But, okay, now back to reality. First of all, many of those who wanted offline only are likely going to buckle under and still cravenly buy the damn game anyway, even without it, no matter how much they might complain about it, so there's that bit out of the way. Second of all, what these game devs are really saying is that they don't care that they're fucking over the people that wanted offline singleplayer, just so long as they stick it to those damn, dirty apes who pirate their game or, worse, sell their game in a used game store. I guess the real question is do they think that the money they'll lose by people not buying their game because it doesn't have an offline option (such as myself) is less than the money they'll lose by people pirating their game (assuming that the pirates don't find a way to hack around the DRM anyway, which is not inconceivable) or selling their game used? Looks like the answer so far is that these game devs really don't care that they're angering and alienating legit potential customers by removing features just to inconvenience pirates and used game buyers/sellers (who, in the eyes of these devs, are probably indistinguishable, anyway).

(/EDIT)