I realize this is somewhat late, but I thought I'd throw my 2 cents in anyway. (It's the internet! What else do you do?)
I agree that DRM ultimately only hurts the consumer, and in some cases encourages piracy. In trying to think of an example, if you've bought a game that you can only install on one computer, and said computer dies, you have lost the game. You may have the install file still saved--or be able to download it again, like from PlayFirst--but the code won't work on the new computer. In that case, someone who might otherwise never consider piracy might then seek out another "pirated" copy to be able to play the game they've already bought.
If PlayFirst is going to stick to DRM, though, perhaps they could use a method similar to what ituns used for a long time? You could buy a song and authorize it to be played on five separate machines--including an ipod for one of them. Only five installs, but at least you could use them wherever you wanted. PlayFirst doesn't have to allow <i>five</i> machines, but three--like the three installs on the same computer they use now--seems very reasonable. (And if they make the argument, "but someone could just share their unlock codes with two friends," as I am sure someone will, yes. They could. But 1) that leaves them in need of buying a new game themselves, should something go wrong, and 2) it seems better to me to have one sale than zero, where there's just piracy among those three people.)
To be frank, the music industry has proven that DRM doesn't work and does hurt the customer more than anyone else; I forget where I read the article, but someone pointed out that over the years, since so many different systems have come and gone to sell songs online with various DRM protection that a fair amount of music the article's author had bought and paid for legally was no longer accessible to him. And piracy is always going to be there, until--in my opinion--there are more positive reasons not to than there are potential negative consequences from doing so.
But this might be something worth suggesting? I did see that ECC will be released other ways, but with PlayFirst being the first one--and the one that I used--I can say that at least I, personally, would feel better buying from them in the future with this sort of policy in place. Without it, I doubt I'll be buying from them again; for one game for ten bucks, which I'd been looking forward to, it was worth it. But it's not a place I'll shop at again.
