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Game Distribution and the 'Idiocy' of DRM
In light of the increased focus on the DRM controversy in recent days, Ars Technica did an interview with execs from CD Projekt's Good Old Games about where the problems are with current DRM implementation. "For me, the idiocy of those protection solutions shows how far from reality and from customers a lot of executives at big companies can be. You don't have to be a genius to check the internet and see all the pros and cons of those actions." Penny Arcade is also running a three-part series on DRM from game journalists Brian Crecente and Chris Remo. Crecente talks about how some companies are making progress in developing acceptable DRM, and some aren't. Remo recommends against a trend of overreaction to minor gripes.
Is crack it.
I saw a good quote from a games company's enlightened Chief Executive recently -
"DRM can encourage the best customers to behave slightly better. It will never address the masses of non-customers downloading your product."
Why the others haven't understood this I don't know. And note the 'DRM can encourage...'. I'd say I'm a good customer (I spend a bunch anyway), but I'm increasingly drawn to warez, because they - and I can't believe I'm writing this - are less likely to screw my gaming PC. What is the world coming to?
"Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
DRM takes control of the product away from the consumer and put it in the hands of the media owner. When you buy any DRM-encumbered media, you don't control that media. The way you use that media is determined by the content owner. Don't have an HDCP-compatible monitor? Well, I guess you can't view these discs in HD the way they were intended. Don't have a fairplay-compatible MP3 player? Tough, you can't listen to the music you bought and paid for. The hilarious thing is that every single DRM scheme ever invented has been circumvented by pirates, and only legitimate, law-abiding consumers have to put up with this. Why buy media which is just going to impede your efforts to use it, when you can download it and play it any damn way you want to?
Because if you do that you send the signal you accept DRM. Do that, and we'll never be rid of it.
Talk about false dichotomy.
It'd be like "Either I can rape my kids, or have no children". Guess what? There's a third, and very palatable answer. We'll let YOU figure that out, if you are mentally able.
Yeah, that's the problem. It's why they don't give a shit in the first place - they've already got your money, so why improve or even care?
There is no such thing as "acceptable DRM". By it's very existence, a non-DRM'd game will always be more acceptable than one which has added bloatware in the form of DRM attached to it.
I've always bought my games. I often download pirated games to try out, but if I like them, I almost always buy them. There are a few exceptions where I've never gotten around to buying a copy, but they are far outweighed by the number of games that I've paid for and never played, still sitting on my shelf in their shrinkwrapping.
However, a few years ago, I was so furious with the music industry selling me a useless CD that I couldn't play that I vowed never to buy another music item again. I have a whole basement full of CDs, but none of them are dated after 2005!
With the bad experience I had with Bioshock, I'm very tempted to do the same thing with games. I certainly won't buy Spore even though I'm a fan of Will Wright's games, solely because of the awful DRM. I've tolerated having to use No-CD crack up until now but if things keep getting worse, I'll stop buying games altogether and I'd encourage others to do the same.
The idea that DRM can be moderate seems fairly sensible on the surface(some DRM schemes are more restrictive than others, therefore the less restrictive ones must be moderate, and everybody knows that moderation is good!); but in a more important way, it is nonsense.
A DRM system consists of a locked box and a key. In order to be effective, the system must simultaneously know the key, while preventing the user from knowing it. This means that the DRM system must deny the user access to some or all of his own system. There is absolutely nothing "moderate" about being locked out of parts of your own memory space. In this sense, all effective DRM systems are absolute. If DRM is working, it isn't your computer, period. Some DRM systems are more indulgent than others about what and how they restrict; but that isn't the same thing as moderation.
Note: there are some DRM systems that don't control the user in this way, and might be said to be genuinely moderate; but none of them are effective. Further note: my opposition to DRM is no more an endorsement of piracy than my opposition to mass surveillance is an endorsement of murder.
To quote someone...
"Modern DRM isn't about stopping piracy. It's about stopping the game from being resold at used games stores so EA doesn't have to compete against their own games with the average customer."
"DRM can encourage the best customers to behave slightly better. It will never address the masses of non-customers downloading your product."
Seriously, WTH is that supposed to mean? By better it means, not loaning it to your brother, it means not being able to sell it. All perfectly reasonable things.
DRM definitely does encourage customers to visit the pirate sites to get proper usability back by downloading cracks (AKA no cd cracks). Eventually you are going to lose a number of customers who get fed up and cut out the middle man (the producer) and start with the cracked version. After all you trained them for years this is where you get the full value product.
iTunes songs are 99 cents. That is 200% more than what "market competitor selling downloads of the same content?
iTunes movies are 2.99 to 4.99. That is 200% more than what "market competitor selling downloads of the same content?
iTunes mobile software is mostly $1-10. Most mobile software for other platforms is $15-$50.
Apple's DRM isn't designed to reform thieves. It's designed to create a market. You can't stop thieves, but you can create a functional market that leaves the thieves to steal elsewhere. Or are you suggesting that because there is shoplifting, we can't have retail stores?
The iPhone Store Impending Disaster Myth
No, YOU missed the fact. Those millions of illegally acquired pieces of software AREN'T customers. They will NEVER be your customer.
Instead of focusing on consumers that aren't paying you focus on the ones THAT ARE!!
By implementing stronger and stronger DRM you're wasting resources on nothing, but that's not the real reason DRM is put on disks. It's to stop customers from taking back a shitty game.
Lets look at Spore. You buy Spore, install it and link it to your email address. That copy of spore is now permanently linked to you.
After doing this you realise that Spore is a piece of shit with frequent crashes every 5 minutes, but oh look! You CAN'T refund it because you linked it to yourself. So even though EA have released Spore in the horrible state it is they still make a ton of profit with angry customers not being able to refund.
If you buy a toaster and it doesn't work, you take it back. What makes the gaming industry so fucking special?
I don't particularly agree with loaning it to someone,
"Loaning a game" implies that while the game is loaned out, the original owner can't play it. It's your game - you should be able to damn well decide who to loan it to. If you substitute "book" for "game", it sounds pretty ridiculous.
It's only when "loaning a game" translates to "burn a copy of the game" that you run into trouble. But that's not really "loaning", is it?
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Any spore installation (or any other program for that matter) is copied millions of times in the course of normal use on a single computer (regardless of whether money was given to some 3rd party). It is loaded from the hard disk to RAM, occasionally swapped back to disk and vice versa. What makes this copying "OK" and other copying not "OK"?
It's because of stupid semantics arguments like this that barely-readable legalese EULAs crop up. If you know that things get copied back and forth from HDD to RAM, you should also know the difference between copying back and forth to RAM for the purpose of execution or backup and making a separate copy on (semi-)permanent storage to hand the data over to somebody else. Pretending it's all the same is disingenuous at best, dishonest at worst.