Reddit reviews Indie Game Development Survival Guide (Game Development Series)

For the Indie Developer, DRM (specifically, simple things like product keys) offer a massive benefit to themselves with very little downside. To quote a book I was reading recently on the matter, "The goal of copy protection, then, is to keep honest people honest. You don't have to make your software uncrackable, which is an impossibility; you just need to make the copy protection tough enough to thwart casual attempts to bypass it." (Chapter 22, page 227)

Regardless of a persons personal stance on copyright protection, if you want to make video games for a living it is a logical step to try to protect your ability to make money off of that hard work. There is no honor in being taken advantage of. You need to be able to put food on the table and keep the lights on. You need to have some cash saved up in case you or your family gets sick, or your car dies or whatever. You need to plan out how you are going to make enough money to support yourself through your next project. Shit can be incredibly stressful if you don't pull out a blockbuster success every couple of years.

I had this big, 8 paragraph thing written out about larger development companies and how investors "just don't get it", but honestly, I've never worked for them so I can't really say for sure. My guess would be that it is partially the curse of owning a publicly traded company and partially because of upper management having a poor understanding of how the industry actually works. But like I said, I've never worked for a large publisher so I can't really say that with confidence.