What it does:

• It adds unnecessary overhead
• It prevents legitimate players from running the game
• It prevents people with high end systems from running two games with xtrap at once (for example vending in game b while playing game a)
• It prevents people with low end systems from playing at all
• it increases startup times significantly
• it increases system requirements significantly
• It costs the companies who license it for their games alot of money that could be spent improving their games instead
• Makes it impossible for the game to run on linux or mac osx using available tools (for example wine or cedega on linux)

What it doesn’t do:

• Stop hackers.
• Stop Spammers
• Stop scammers
• Make the game more fun
• Make the company more money

The ultimate result from this software is less income revenue, higher expenses, a smaller user base, and a higher level of dis-satisfaction among players.

How does all this really relate to linux? The same way it relates to OSX, so listen up.
Gamers WANT to play these games, but they also want to switch from windows. Every game that contributes to the microsoft strangle hold is in fact acting against gamers’ best interests. I know a dozen linux users just off the top of my head who would flock to a free game if it was playable under linux, and a half-dozen more mac users who feel the same way about their beloved OS. I don’t have many friends, so this is saying something.

So why doesn’t market research show this? Linux gamers feel shunned by a game who refuses to provide even marginal linux support, and simply move on. Linux is a community. If you shun it, it will shun you in turn. So surveys of linux users don’t mention games because most linux users don’t have the time to filter through the hundreds of games that don’t run on linux for the handful that do, and those games just aren’t worth it right now.

The fact remains that more and more users are switching to apple and linux systems. Linux has made an appearance at retail stores in the form of the eeepc and several other products, it’s now available on mobile phones, and a large portion of discrete hardware in the average home runs linux of some sort.

Case Study: World of Warcraft
A large handful of players of world of warcraft use linux. Enough that there’s probably 1 in every guild of decent size. When blizard learned that linux users were playing their game, they made an attempt to block them, calling them hackers. The community was outraged, and many people simply stopped playing. After a short period of significantly reduced profits, Blizard reversed their position and began to instead release linux-friendly versions of their game. The people who were banned are now back, but many of the players who quit never came back. Since reversing their position, Blizard has gained record success in an mmorpg.

However, I will on occasion, such as in my last post, remove private information if I see that it’s reasonable to do so, and I may append additional notes to the end of a post without changing the content and meaning of the original post.  :)

Edit:  found out who, don’t care anymore.  thanks~