DRM rarely works as intended, it's purpose is to protect the game for at least the first month if not a few more.
That doesn't work, most of the time it is cracked within the first week or even occaisionally before it officially hits the shelves (store emplyoees have been known to borrow a box from the back and upload a copy).
Steam is nice, I love it, I LOVE steam community, but even steam is not compeltely effective, although pirated copies of steam games can only play on special cracked servers as far as I know.
Gamersgate, Good Old Games and Impulse are even ebtter in some ways, Gamersgate and Good Old Games require no end user client, and Impulse's client is pretty good too, although they do lack the Steam community (which is nice, it works in many non-steam games too).
There is no need to force us to keep the disc in the drive to play the game, I HATE that, while it might not be much of a big deal to pop the cd in, when compared to having most of the rest of my games on my computer NOT needing the disc in the drive, it is a hassle and I could even quicker get into another game and start playing by the time I get the auto-run menu going.
Some DRm is tolerable, but the companies need to stop using intrusive DRMs that cause problems for legitimate users, especially SecuROM and Starforce (although I have never had a problem with Starforce and I'm positive it's on my system, some versions of it have created a lot of problems for other people).
SecuROM has a habit of coming up with rediculously stupid DRM checks, activating every 10 days (luckily that was shot down by the public before implementation),
Online activation is stupid, except maybe with Steam (but it would be good if Steam could improve their offline mode), there are people who still have a seperate comptuer not attached to the internet for their games, or might have their internet down for whatever reason, or maybe have a laptop and don't nesecaraly have an internet connection all the time.
A small wish list / requirements companies should do;
1. Release a demo. A good demo that actually gives you a taste of the game longer than 10 minutes (preferably at LEAST 30 minutes, The Witcher Demo took me SEVEN HOURS to complete!).
2. Create a decent game and price the game CORRECTLY to the quality and content/length of the game. One reason your game might not sell well and be pirated is because people do not think it is worth their money! That is why games sell so damn well during Steam sales. I don't have a link on hand, but in sales since the post-christmas one in one of the sales Left 4 Dead had a 3000% increase in sales iirc, and sales of the game in brick and mortor stores where there was no sale went up during that time as well.
3. DRM should NOT include;
CD checks
Online activation
Spyware (may not be part of DRM but there ARE gmaes with it, like that Left Behind rts)
Scan your system for progrms that are perfectly legal and are used mostly for legal purposes but could be used illegally. It's like trying to confiscate all the tools from a construction site next door ot a bank because they COULD use the tools to break into the vault.
Frequent checks to make sure your legitimate custoemr is still legit (reactivating online periodically)
Stop treating legit customers as if we are all potential criminals!
Anything else intrusive that I missed.