Apparently Rockstar hasn’t paid much attention to the press lately, because if it did, it wouldn’t be shipping the PC version of GTA4 with the much hated and controversial DRM, SecuRom. Putting SecuRom in your game is a sure fire way to annoy pretty much every PC gamer there is. I hope Rockstar is prepared for the wave of backlash sure to come, as seen with EA’s many SecuRom debacles. I find it very curious that despite all the negative press and community reactions to SecuRom that developers and publishers alike, continue to use it.

Whether it’s wrong or not, the PC community has made up its mind about SecuRom. It’s pure diabolical evil, and if it could be represented in a non-digital way, it would be Satan himself with tattoos of Hitler and Mussolini on each arm. Steam users, just when you thought it was safe to go out at night, Rockstar throws SecuRom on the Steam version of the game as well. So no matter what avenue you take, you will be getting SecuRom’ed in the face.

While this version of SecuRom won’t limit installs or anything horribly restrictive like that, it’s still crappy DRM that the PC community has united against. I expect that GTA4 will get down ranked in every user score that PC users can get their revolting fingertips on. We’ve seen it as recently as Fallout 3 and its SecuRom based CD-check, and I guarantee we’ll see it again. Why won’t developers take StarDock’s approach on DRM, and understand that forcing DRM on us is a bad idea, no matter how big the game is. I actually suspect that SecuRom has caused more pirating than it has helped prevent. But that’s my personal opinion and based on no facts whatsoever (facts are for chumps!). This is just one more game potentially forever blemished by the nasty SecuRom disease that seems to keep popping up out of remission. Hopefully developers will take notice to how much displeasure SecuRom causes, and finally get rid of it. Until then, we continue the anti-DRM revolution. Viva la Revolucion!