Actually, recent legislation has made "anti-piracy" lawsuits, like the ones CDP was using, de facto impossible. This happened right around the time CDP stopped using that tactic (man, what weird coincidences...).

The problem is, that Germany is a "innovation country". We need technical innovations to stay competetive with other nations. This has lead to very strong "IP protection/anti piracy laws (the word "piracy" is used in Germany for "copyright infringement" or "steal of ideas", you know, those Rolexx watches or Playstation Wees you can buy in China). They were meant to be used against people actually profiting from from this, (like, say Kim Dotcom) not your usual users. But, as so often, law enforcement is not as successfull as they might have hoped. There even stronger legislation was passed. This has then enabled sneaky fucky lawyers to use such laws against "so called pirates", as in "end-users", simply because the laws weren't precise enough and allowed that action. Sometime they even tryed to use legal construction that didn't even make sense on internet related actions.

That all was aided by old judges who think the internet is "magic". And because those cases usually only had a "small" cost attached to them (usually not bigger than 5.000€), nobody bothered to go to the next level of jurisdiction, if they let this matter come to the courts in the first place. I would make the guess that 95% of those cases were settled out of court for around 500€. Therefore higher courts hardly saw such cases.

Now it has finally made the rounds in the german legal community what actually is happening. Judges are no longer playing along and also lawmakers are trying to move further away from "criminalizing kids" and to go after the "big fishes", as in people actually earning money from piracy.

Funny enough, next to Sweden, we are the only country that hasn't made the "Telecommunications data retention" into a national law. Because we actually recognized the privacy of data stored on computers as constitutional right. So, while we might be to diligent in the wrong directions, we are also very diligent in the right direction when it comes to the digital age.

I don't disagree one bit with that on principle. But, unfortunately games aren't created for art, they are created to generate profits, and business aren't under any legal pressure or responsibility to do anything.

Which means its up to us to create pressure and demand they act in accordance with the values we think are just. I'm not real sure how you do that here since there really isn't an leverage we have in this instance. They have already made all the money they think they are going to and thats really the only place to effect an institution that only values money.

To be as clear as I can be, I don't want any content to go missing ever. Most certainly not because the money guys just don't care. I would also like to see more content be given away freely, but my comment was in response to this all being a non-viable business strategy, which isn't really true. It may not be ideal or even ethical, but I see nothing non-viable about it in regards to the bottom line. There are many things that are good for the one that are bad for the whole.

If that starts becoming a practice then I think we will have to break out the pitch forks and shovels.

hmmm, single player generally is on the ropes. David Braben was making comments recently about it. They don't want it around. They've seen what multiplayer can bring in terms of cash cow benefits, and want rid of your old funding model. If you think it will be a supply demand thing, remember how MS used to crush things they didn't like. Are not you seeing the EEE philosophy here? Then it's just a matter of sitting on the little boys till they stop trying these silly old fashioned concepts.

Well, maybe. If I was in their position, I'd do that. It makes business sense.

Read about it yesterday, and it has disturbed me quite a bit. Completed Saboteur sometime ago and I really like it. Can I replay it in the near future?

Wait, if the DLC is for the console version, wouldn't it come down from XBox Live or PSN?
Since the guts of the XBox 360 probably costs between 50-75 bucks by now, yeah this is a strong possibility.
Perhaps they have to pony up to MS yearly to do so? Or they just want to pull it off of XBox Live as well so people don't shout "no fair!"
It's a good, first step, but it's usually not enough.
This is what I suspect is actually happening here. Just like Bioware's DA:O will auth DLC with servers online (the base game does this). Now you can hack around this on PC, but only because their implementation isn't sound, there's no guarantee you'll always be able to do so any reasonable manner. The copy of the DLC may actually exist already on Live, but it may require a one time key to be generated before being used the first time and if those keygen servers no longer exist, you're fucked.

It is only the DLC that is being cut off, not the game itself.

Luckily I have not bought a single DLC from EA ever, except for Warden's Keep for DAO just for the storage chest which came out as a free mod from Bioware the very next day.
I wonder how the games that connect to the EA server at the very start will playout if the server dies or gets shutdown.

The Saboteur's DLC was bundled for free with all new copies, so this isn't something people specifically bought (unless they bought the game used and then paid extra to unlock the DLC).

As far as I know EA games don't actually require you to log in to the EA/BioWare/etc. account to access offline functionality despite repeatedly nagging you about it. Origin handles DRM authentication outside of the game itself, so games requiring it will presumably also keep working in offline mode.

Nope! Because Microsoft was stupid enough to let EA handle XBox Live servers. Presumably DLC content, too.

If you refer to monthly fees, I think fortunately there can be only so many MMO(RPG)s around. Especially with the emerging of small development studios and indie market (also from China, India and god knows where), and that in the digital age you are not dependent on the big publishers like EA with their retail store connections, I feel there is an abundance of developers who want some revenue for their games. They can''t all get it with monthly fees, so most still have to sell them item by item.

But then there are services like OnLive which might offer lots of games to play for certain monthly fee, but I have no idea how profitable model it is currently to those publishers who make the deal with OnLive. E.g., is it more profitable for EA, Ubisoft etc. to publish their games on OnLive, or try to set up their own similar services for their games?

Anyway, certainly the publishers' aim is to lure people to pay more for less. Hopefully they don't forget that people still have only certain amount of money they are willing to use on games, and quite a big part of gamers are occasional gamers who don't want to pay monthly fees for playing only a few games a few times a week, or month. Or then those monthly fees would have to be so miniscule that they can be easily combined with cable/streaming TV service fees, as an extra service.

They definitely want to turn singleplayer gamers into online service users. I think singleplayer gameplay will survive but it will be wrapped in an online blanket.

They've been saying this for years, and let's be honest: David Braben is a whinging git at the best of times. He was like it even back in the 1980s. I have a copy of Amiga Joker from around 1993 somewhere with an interview about how he complains about people pirating because they're "too lazy to buy the game".

Last time I checked, it was about what the customer wanted to buy, not what the developer wanted to sell.

EA fucking with YOUR OWN game property? There's a pirate cracked plus version of the game for that....

On consoles? Of the DLC? Maybe, but it would be hard to get and use.

The PC version is fine btw, the DLC was on the disc.