Usually, the main reason many companies are taking such drastic steps is because of the growing use of piracy. Every industry is affected by it. From the music industry to the gaming industry. Why do you think EA Games placed strict rules regarding the activation of Battle Field 2 and why do you think Sierra had to go far with how Half Life 2 is activated?
More and more games nowadays are starting to become more and more accustomed to using 12-14 digit codes that require the game to be connected to a central computer just to validate the code.
I believe that the EU is starting to lose sense on why big-time companies like Microsoft are taking such measures. The EU seems to think that the use of an activation process is just a sign of corporate conquest when in fact it's just a result of piracy that has gone completely out of control to the point hurting the economy.
Heck, even piracy is affecting the FS community to the point where even the freeware developers' works are being pirated and sold on Ebay [like what happened last year] for profit.
Of course, money can be the chief motivation behind the decisions of EVERY corporation including the use of activation processes. It's what ALL companies do so Microsoft is not alone in the matter. But one would have to be a dang fool to think piracy is not the cause or the major contributer of all this whole activation thing.
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