There's so much hate and confusion around this particular issue that I'd like to illuminate some things in a separate thread. Hopefully my reasoning will make sense to you and you'll see why Microsoft has had to instil regular DRM checks into their xbox because of their industrial strategy. The only plausible reason I can see Microsoft instilling the 24 hour online check is because of the used games market. What they're trying to achieve here is to turn all game titles into digital entities, just like Steam, so that regardless of whether you bought it on a disc or downloaded it off the Xbox store it ends up tied to your account. Where does this differ from Steam in a fundamental way? You can't buy games on discs with Steam (at least 99% of the time, and in the small cases you do there's no hope in reselling the disc). Because you can buy physical copies of XboxOne games, there is a possibly of attempting to resell the disc. If you have already tied a game to your account and you then resell the disc, the only way of preventing you from keeping your game once you've sold it is to check the license on your Xbox. I'd assume that when you try and trade games in there's an option to 'deactivate' the game from your account. If the regular DRM checks were not a thing, I can just imagine the extreme ([i]stupid[/i]) case. Bob buys Watch Dogs, goes home and installs/ties the game to his account. He then immediately returns Watch Dogs back to the store, and then proceeds to play the game because he's already installed it. Rinse and repeat with every game possible, building up an entire game library off of pocket change and returned games. Lets say for example, instead of regular checks, Microsoft has spot checks through the year for this type of thing. The effect is still detrimental. Bob could just buy all the games he wants in a certain time period, resell them immediately and then never connect his xbox to the internet again. This isn't a problem for Steam solely because Steam games don't come on discs - so there is nothing to resell. The [b]ONLY[/b] way of going around this issue without the regular online DRM checks is if game stores had facilities which could determine whether a game has been deactivated from an account or not when someone trades it in. This however creates, in my opinion, an even more disastrous problem. Only game stores which have the facilities to check whether games are tied to accounts will be able to participate in the used games market. As I'm sure you'll agree, if Gamestop (or any other corporation) was the only store licensed to sell used games this would not benefit consumers. Not to mention, having to organise the infrastructure for such a system of checking games on a worldwide scale to the right stores without possibility of abuse seems unfeasibly costly and inefficient. So as I see it, the 24 hour online DRM checks are Microsoft's reaction to the game industry slowly transitioning from disc based media to digital content delivery. If it was all disc based and digital content was completely separate (i.e. PS4's plan of attack) DRM checks are obviously not necessary. If it is all digital (i.e Steam's strategy) regular DRM checks are also not necessary. But because Microsoft has opted for a fusion of both, it is the only way of supporting the system without consumers racking free stuff every day. Whether you see this as a step in the right direction or not is not really my concern, if you don't like Microsoft's approach I think the PS4 will be a good way to go. But Microsoft hasn't put these things in for no reason, and I hope you guys can see that.