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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.
There are now two games I *really* wanted that I can't get because I don't want their DRM infesting my machine. Nor do I want to use pirated games (being a programmer myself I don't like to download illegally, I really would prefer to pay), so I don't get to play at all.
I've been a computer gamer since 1983, and this not being able to buy things because of stuff put there to stop piracy is a new experience for me.
I hope its short lived, or the number of new games I buy is going to plummet.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
I usually do as well, unless it doesn't require any interaction on my part after it's installed. I especially hate when the CD/DVD has to be in the drive... it's www.gamecopyworld.com immediately after install if that's the case.
The only games I currently play that I haven't cracked are Steam games... their DRM is barely acceptable, so I haven't felt the need to do away with it.
I've been playing Spore recently, I would love to go out and buy it, but I refuse due to the DRM involved. It's a pretty good game and I'm happy to pay for it, but I won't pay for DRM.
"Remo recommends against a trend of overreaction to minor gripes"
That, in a nutshell, is why the industry isn't taking all the bleating about DRM seriously. DRM is a business decision. It's not there because they hate your freedom, it's there because they think it will help stop or at least slow piracy. If the world wasn't full of thieves, there would be no DRM.
Acting like DRM will go away if you cry about it is childish. It will only go away by becoming invisible. Nobody seems to know that iPhone apps are protected with DRM, nor that it helps bring prices down (although it certainly doesn't have to; PSP DRM hasn't had any effect on software prices).
The real issue is that DRM doesn't work well in the hands of software producers (audio/video/apps), because their monetary conflict of interest pushes them to wield the power of DRM to extort hight prices.
The only successful DRM comes from hardware makers (read: Apple) who balance the power to govern sales without extortion prices and without runaway piracy, because their interests are aligned with both consumers and intellectual property content producers.
That's why Microsoft's DRM didn't work; the company only cared about producers because it wasn't selling its DRM products directly to consumers, and subsequently stacked the deck against end users.
Apple carries DRM like the Ring.
The Japanese iPhone Failure Myth
Once Joe-Sixpack graduates from the baseline "I put CD in drive and click copy, if it doesn't work, I can't copy it," to the "I go online and download this crack," or "I go online and download this torrent," Joe-Sixpack is already far, far beyond the effects of DRM.
Joe Sixpack has long known where to download cracks and torrents (and that shoudln't surprise anyone here anymore). DRM has been since it's inception been an annoyance only to customers. I can understand that companies try to curtail piracy, but its measures have been ineffective and have delayed cracks for a week or two at most. Joe Sixpack gets his cracks from the same torrents that non-Joe Sixpacks do.
Then use that money saved from not having to develop useless DRM and make a good game.
I was at a company that had produced some software and decided to implement a form of copyprotection about a year and a half ago. Their number of customers was very limited and they were selling it for a very high price. They decided to go with an existing solution (a commercial off the shelf copyprotection requiring an authentication server, mac addresses (lol) of the client PCs and a USB key on each client).
They sold their software for 100K$ to three companies. The copyprotection had cost them a flat fee of 10K$. It was after they had released their software they realized that the authentication server (which was to be locally or remotely installed as a service) had some strange bugs if a computer had more than one network card, and would stop legitimate users from authenticating. This of course affected 2 out of their 3 customers who had opted to install the authentication server on a server.
This was of course a bug in the copyprotection software, and was fixed in an update. A few months after the whole fiasco I had heard from one of their customers that they had installed the software on terminal server. Now everyone used the software on the terminal server, thus circumventing the mac address and USB key issue and violating the EULA without any real technical knowledge.
The worst part of it all was that it was a company with a headcount of 5 that developed the software, but they had an internal procedure regarding the copy protection that was overly paranoid and bureaucratic at best. It took them 3 weeks to hand me a key for porting the software to linux, and after 2 days of waiting I had #ifdef'd all of the copyprotection stuff so I could at least do my job. This of course led to internal debate about if this violated procedure or not (fyi: it did, and I was sternly asked to wait for a key next time and remove the #ifdef COPYPROTECTION wherever it occurred).
The company went out of business a couple of months ago, effectively leaving customers stranded if they buy new hardware, which they eventually will. As to why the company went out of business? Poor management, enormously small market, bureaucracy in a small company, bad ideas, in-house developers knew where the company was going and were actively looking for another job two or three months after they were hired.