The point is that there isn't a cracked version (yet).

But when it comes out, those who don't pay will get a markedly better experience than those who do. And yet any high piracy numbers will be used to further justify invasive DRM like this, harming people like me who just want to pay for a game and not be punished for doing so.

It's the most backwards assed system I can think of. Why do we as an industry still pretend DRM is worth a damn?

This has commonly been the case with DRM'd games.

Yup. I've been steadfastly anti-DRM since I had a game that just crashed after a few minutes because it thought my SCSI CD-ROM drive was a virtual drive and the DRM kicked in.

I ended up having to pirate it in addition to buying it in order to play it the first few weeks. They eventually released a patch, but by then I had been playing the game for weeks without another problem and there was no way I was risking their countermeasures.

At the time, I was pissed that I spent my good money and they screwed me like that, and even denied the problem for weeks before fixing it.

I also remember having a terrible experience with games for windows live back in the day... it wouldn't let me play my legally purchased game without creating an account first. Problem was, there were problems creating the account! When I finally got it working somehow, it decided that games for windows live needed a 3 hour update first. I was never more furious at a game/drm before or since. Man I hated games for windows live, glad that shit is dead.