[musicale]

> If you let people install the software easily, they'll just pirate and won't buy the software. If you lock things down you'll irritate people and they won't buy the software.

Baked in DRM platforms like App Stores, Steam, etc. seem to be reasonably effective at blocking casual piracy (at least during launch windows) without becoming completely unusable. Some of the DRM pain is compensated for by the convenience of somewhat streamlined access to your software library on multiple devices, with relatively easy download and installation. This doesn't scale well though if you have more than a couple of app launchers/installers to deal with.

Game stores tend to have the nice feature that you can log in on any PC or console and immediately get access to your software library.

Something I'm less enthusiastic about is games (Diablo 4) that require an internet connection even in single player mode (and even if you "own" the physical game disc.)

As a customer I'm not a huge fan of DRM, but as a developer I'm probably OK with outsourcing it to Apple, Valve, Nintendo or whoever as long as it doesn't create usability nightmares.