I've worked with a publisher before on the matter of taking down sites that host pirated versions of our product. Soon as you take a site down another will pop up. The only way to effectively fight piracy is to make sure the legitimate product will far outshine the pirated product. There are several ways to do this, amongst them:

Secret checks in a game to see if it is pirated. If it is, corrupt save, config files, limit resolution, crash game etc...

Online multiplayer accessible only with legit CD key that is both fun and stable.

Good support for legitimate users. 

Constant free DLCs available only to those with legitimate CD keys, as well as updates.

Your greatest friend in the fight against piracy is the CD key. Even if the pirates figure out the algoritm and keygen it, you will always have a private whitelist of keys that you published, and can blacklist all the keys that weren't published (keygenned keys). A CD key is the only way to tell a pirate from a legit user. Use it wisely.

That is why you force the user to create an account and tie the CD key to it before he can get an update or DLC.

Not far from my C:\_prompt blinking punishment, in fact.

Programmers are that much smarter than anyone -- but we aren't talking about games only, aren't we?

Which is fine... but it isn't going to deter the majority of those that pirate now.  When one doesn't have the money to spend on a 60$ game, then they will put up with these inconveniences if they want to play the game badly enough.

As for the support, and the game manual, these are NOT hard to find on FREE forums.  No, it's not support directly from the developers, but it's support none-the-less.  An example?  Yahoo Answers.  Yes, you would have to take the advice with a grain of salt, but it is there, and it is free.  There are hundreds of these kinds of forums.

Terrible advice. It reverses the usual effect piracy has - spreading word of mouth and increasing interest in the game. Your potential customers are going to talk to other gamers online, asking for opinions etc and they'll respond "This game is crap, it crashes all the time, I lost X hours of my progress due to corrupted savegame (...)" etc. This is the worst possible way to fight piracy. They aren't going to blame anti-piracy countermeasures. They're going to ruin your reputation, and rightly so.

Look no further than Titan Quest to see how it works in practice. Forums full of angry people reporting crash to desktop and their posts are ignored. I don't know about you, but one of first things I do when considering buying a game is checking the game's forums. If people are having a lot of problems, I'm not buying it, period.

If you're going to fight piracy, you should provide better overall service. Or at least good enough so paying a small price is worth it to avoid trojans and other malware pirated games can have. Skip retail so you don't have to pay fixed cost for each copy sold. Experiment with price and make it as low as possible. Surely you've heard about 50% discount on L4D increasing the sales (revenue) 3000 percent ? http://www.edge-online.com/features/valve-are-games-too-expensive . And forget DRM, the only people stuck with it are legitimate customers.

Just to add my 2 cents, I personally have never had an issue with DRM.

DRM is like criminal punishment. Nobody likes it (well, at least the people who actually EXPERIANCE it don't like it), but it is sort of necessary because if you don't have it, you would be completely destroyed. I think that it is in a way self-regulating, because if it gives people TOO much of a hassle they will just pirate the game and write nasty replies on the company's forums, and the company will be forced to back off a little. It's like a lot of things in the game world: the best option is somewhere in the middle.

Interesting observation, but you fail to note that the 'DRM' in the 90s didn't give the legitimate users nearly the headaches and hassle the current DRM does. I'd say the latter is the reason for the 'whining'. Is it really harder for pirates to crack now? It sure doesn't seem that way from what I've been reading.

Scoutdog:

You will only be 'completely destroyed' if you insist on keeping current business model. Sooner or later game developers will need to change.

I own a legitimate copy of DROD:Journey To Rooted Hold and it contains no copy protection. Actually it's open-source. But the last time I checked, DROD sells very well for an indie game. A sequel was released and multiple paid level packs were released (typically one per season). This is interesting because DROD demo not only has a fully functional level editor -  it's open-source. Many user-made holds (level packs) are good, but few of them come close to the level of polish official level packs have. It appears people are willing to pay for that. Another thing Caravel is doing is providing another scarce good you can pay for - CaravelNET subscription. It provides access to many extras, like being able to spectate other players in realtime, submit highscores, donload best replays, and offers much more integrated experience in general. Additionally, while demo is fully functional in many ways, full version contains more visual styles allowing for more varied level generation with editor. (not to mention one LARGE polished level set)

http://caravelgames.com/Articles/Games.html

Have you ever had a game that requires CD to be in drive while playing ? What happens if the disc gets scratched ? It's not like CD's are very durable...

How about Prey ? I bought it because i knew it was on DooM III engine (id games are written cross-platform and are famous for working well on Linux, even if there's no native port). Despite of having a legitimate copy, I had to download a crack because the game's copy protection was interfering with wine.

Another example: Fish Fillets 2 _demo_. It contains SecuSuck or something similar. Suffice to say the demo didn't work in wine, because copy protection made it complain about being run in a debugger. So what ? I obtained the _demo_ in a perfectly legit way, why does it care what do I use to play the game ?

(FF1 was initially commercial but was comercially unsuccessful and was released for free along with source code. It's a great puzzle game and you can download it here: http://fillets.sourceforge.net/ )

I don't take credit for this idea because it's not mine. It's mostly from techdirt and Ernest Adams from Bullfrog/Gamasutra.

Here's an another idea. I understand that completely switching business model on the first try (starting with a full new game) is a pretty big leap and a risk. You could try that with a big content pack for an already existing game. Even in a game like Elemental(sold in a traditional way), which is supposed to derive a large portion of fresh blood from user-made content. Say there's bunch of features that currently can't be modded due to engine limitations. A significant portion of the engine would have to be rewritten to add some cool new functionality and modding options, etc. So you'd announce that this kind of change would take some development time and effort (which could be spent on another game, for example). And you start collecting pledges rather than donations. Declarations from people willing to pay for a cool addition. Once there are enough pledges (it's best to keep the process open like Wikipedia does - I mean that players see how much $$$ is already declared) you collect the money and only then start working on the expansion. Once it's done, it's released for free for anyone who already has the base game. Releasing for free to 'everyone' may have a beneficial side effect - expansion packs in games with multiplayer component are infamous for dividing community.

This is a more cautious approach. You could test the waters with pledge-fuelled expansion rather than full game. You'd only take expenses if there's enough demand, so there's no risk that you don't break even. Of course, there's risk of alienating player base if they feel like they're being ripped and pay for patches. Stuff like patches that merely fix what's broken and add sorely needed functionality (imperfections in interface or online server browser...) should remain free. Hopefully middle ground can be found. Also, perhaps it would be wise to only collect pledges/declarations from people who already own 1+ of your games. Additionally, there could be incentives to be among the ones that paid for the expansion. Say, people who funded the development get to play with new stuff 2 weeks earlier. (E.g. a new nation - people who haven't paid could play against it in multiplayer, but would have to wait 2 weeks to get access)

In short, it would be like 'content packs' seen in some other games, except that 1) You take money before you spend time on development 2) it's released for free for everyone who already has the game. I think people would be more likely to pay in advance for small 'content packs', and would have more positive attitude if everyone in game's community would get it. No splitting community this way. No barriers for people who join the game community late. This should translate into longer lifespan of the game.

Let's put it this way....

You wanna fight piracy? Then don't actively fight piracy because it's useless and angers legit users. DRM is the proof of that, it simply doesn't work  on top of costing money that could go into making the actual game better. At best it's gonna slow down the process but it's not gonna do anything to stop it. Look at how many people went out of their way to pirate Spore just to show their anger to EA.

The best article I've ever saw about ways to fight piracy is this one http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/experienced-points/5961-10-Ways-to-Fight-Piracy

The guy points out a lot of things that could actually help fight piracy. Though I would add good lenght demos to his "Provide a Demo" point because I've had my share of either miss-leading demos or demos that are so short you barely get an idea of the game.