Continuing on the DRM tip, EA has some good news for PC gamers. In a press release earlier today, EA announced that all of their PC games released since May 2008 will work with the new EA De-Authorization Management Tool. This new program will allow owners of said games to work some iTunes-style (back when there was DRM) de-authorization magic and reclaim another install that can be used on any other computer.

In the past, EA games with SecuROM DRM on them limited customers to 5 total installs. However, this new tool, while continuing to limit the total amount of installs, will at least prevent people from getting screwed and losing an install when they re-format their hard drives, buy new computers, lose their entire house in a tornado, etc.

This is a good step forward, but I think its also a little disappointing that EA didn't follow Ubisoft's route of at least trying out the idea of using no DRM at all. Maybe games will never be as free as music is now due to the nature of the business, but that seems unlikely. Eventually, companies are going to figure out that DRM doesn't prevent enough piracy to be worth the trouble it causes their legitimate customers. Steam might seem like a good counter-argument to this point, but all it takes is one big crash on Valve's part and we all might be re-thinking how smart it is to invest in locked content of any form.

Used digital game sales will still never happen though.

UPDATE: Here's a link to EA's list of games that can be de-authorized.