Oh great, I hadn't even finished reading your post before making the Apple fanboy statement. Some things really do speak for themselves.

It's no coincidence that publicly traded companies like EA and Activision are the pioneers of this garbage, and privately-held Valve refuses to participate (see their longstanding refusal to charge for DLC on the Xbox, for example). Valve knows that in the long-run, angering their customers will result in fewer gamers and a declining industry.

What the fuck? I guess your brain must have selectively filtered out the unremovable ads that have been present in CS 1.6 for years (courteousy of Massive Inc no less). Unfortunately there are too many people like you being duped by Valves Reality Distortion Field, and are doing gamers a tremendous disservice by giving Valve a free ride on several issues. Steam is and has always been a resource sucking DRM scheme dressed up as something less repugnant. Shame you won't find out until you want to play 10 year old games on machine from that same era, or find your account suddenly disabled with no explanation. You remind me of Apple fanbois.

If I found out that an idiot with a toy helicopter was causing my wifi to drop on a regular basis, I would do my best to ensure that it experienced an mysterious loss of control. Preferable while 100ft above a lake or busy highway.

How fortunate that the medium of games is, by it's nature, more than feasible for the hobbyist or non-commercial to contribute to. I'm never really concerned about the Jack Thompsons of the world and those who favour yet more nanny-state laws. Censor what appears on the shelves until you are blue in the face, you will not stop modders and independent developers from releasing their stuff for free.

You fail to realise that the worst-case laws that outlaw all anonymising software, open wifi access points, p2p software, and the introduction of total internet surveillance will happen ANYWAY, EVERYWHERE in the world. Only when this situation has been suffered for many years will the pendulum start to swing the other way with a change in culture and peoples tolerances, possibly even revolution. The sooner the dystopia starts, the sooner it will end.

In the past most game demos were not a cheap copy of the games first few levels. Half-Life's Uplink demo was a short high quality standalone episode that is worth playing in its own right, and was an awesome incentive (for me at the time) to buy the full game. Darwinia also had an addictive demo featuring a unique level not included in the full game. When custom made demos such as these are released, completing them is far more satisfying than walking through some random door and have a message saying "Please buy the full version to continue". When I play a game for the first time I want it to be a fresh experience, not something I have already seen in the demo. This modern trend and the whole tone of the article just stink of the greed and laziness that pervade the mature games industry.

More likely its actually that campers favorite from Half-Life the tau cannon..