While what you say is reasonable, there is an interesting side effect. Hasbro is a huge company, with a lot of money to lose. The story is now on slashdot, soon it can be on a few portals, and if the conclusion will be: "hasbro makes games you can't play as designed without breaking law then sueing kids for playing them" and some groups will suggest boycott against hasbro then the losses on this move would be pretty nasty since it can influence all hasbro brands and products. WOTC is a small thing for them, and D&D is small even for WOTC.

The problem is: they encourage online play, but in online play some of the copyrighted material (handouts) will be shared in all cases. They encourage inviting new people to play with them, and letting them buy the game later. For this you need to send rules to them. It means you should share files for an encouraged behavior.

And this is enough for most kids to believe they could and should do this. For kids sending file when you have to use it with a friend isn't "copying" and isn't something to do with copyright. For them it is how the game is designed to work.

A such legal trap and sueing minors, sueing people who pay reprogrphy fee for making personal copies, sueing people from poland, etc. in USA, etc.

Not something you would want from a toymaker. If they intentionally add a legal risk to their toys and games, would you let your kids play with any of their products?

This question can cost them a LOT of money. And I hope it WILL cost them a LOT of money and make them think twice before any attempt to sue kids...

(Sadly I don't want to quote my blog for more details, but don't want to link it, since it could be too much traffic, not sure how to share my other thoughts about the case)

While your story about copy protection seems to be true if you don't think about it, the mement you remember the Galactic Civilizaions II title by Stardock, their decision to go without copy protection and yet their surprising amount of copies sold, you would see the incident from a very different perspective.

Why?

Because it shows clearly, that the game performed better without copy protection, even when makers of starforce posted a link to warez copies, than expected. You could say: Because many people decided to support it for their decision to go without protection, but if it would be the norm, it wouldn't work...

Why its expansion had good sales then?
Why many smaller companies decide to go without copy protection without announcing it?
Why many companies try to have the same model: if you buy the game, you also pay for some service and buying the game is a good deal for you?

If you pirate you could see what will you get, but that isn't much different from a demo. If you want to play on the long run, you will pay for the software and the service anyway.

Why media files without DRM can produce better sales than ones WITH DRM?

For a good game you would play for months and not just try it once or twice: Copy protection schemes don't help at protecting the intellectual property, since the publisher can lose more customers due protection related problems than what they gain with extra effort needed to pirate the software.

If you can "steal" the software to try it before buy it, you would try software you wouldn't buy in other cases, and you might become a loyal customer for both that product and future products.

EA and Ubi that sells low quality games and don't want to see you trying the game before you would buy it, since you don't get good service, the game is bugous, and you don't have a reason to buy it to see another title from same publisher... Are quite different.