I agree that some of these "online activation" or worse, "online verification before you pay" dealies are horrid. On XBL if you are playing an arcade game on another console other than the one you bought it on, you have to be signed in to play it at all. You can remedy this just by redownloading the game (which takes a second if you have it installed already) but it's similar to this. I don't mind one time activation, but having to be online to play a game despite the rare occasions an itnernet connection is not flowing to my computer, is short sighted.
