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The State of Piracy and DRM In PC Gaming
VideoGamer sat down with Randy Stude, president of the PC Gaming Alliance, to talk about the state of piracy and DRM in today's gaming industry. He suggests that many game studios have themselves to blame for leaks and pre-launch piracy by not integrating their protection measures earlier in the development process. He mentions that some companies, such as Blizzard and Valve, have worked out anti-piracy schemes that generate much less of a backlash than occurred for Spore . Stude also has harsh words for companies who decline to create PC versions of their games, LucasArts in particular, saying, "LucasArts hasn't made a good PC game in a long time. That's my opinion. ... It's ridiculous to say that there's not enough audience for that game ... and that it falls into this enthusiast extreme category when ported over to the PC. That's an uneducated response." Finally, Stude discusses what the PCGA would like to see out of Vista and the next version of Windows.
If a game is good, charge a nominal fee which includes patches, etc and ability to play online. Those who dont want to pay can play the local version (and may get hooked and end up paying)
Do you have any basis for making this claim, or is this just a good sounding excuse that you heard once and are now repeating?
It could be that what you claim is what developers are thinking, but we'd have to find some game company executive in charge of that sort of decision and ask them if we wanted to find out. It's not obvious enough that we can come to a conclusion by guessing - if you declare a PC platform like "Windows XP, Direct X 9 Dedicated Graphics" that's a relatively large install base. People with older PCs are no more relevant than PS2s are if you're considering developing a PS3 game.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Indeed. I'm a habitual software pirate. I know it's wrong, but I simply don't want to pay more for less.
Games with significant online content (MP mostly) I buy or skip entirely. I have bought, and not even at a discount, the entire Guild Wars series, as well as a great number of the optional addon content (extra character slots, skill unlock packs). I have spent more on GW than any one other game series in PC history. Why? It's good, it's fairly priced, has effectively no copy protection, and I can freely download the client. I have several times set it down for months and then picked up again. A subscription MMO would have lapsed, and I would likely have lost my characters or their gear.
This is why I don't play WoW. GW is better in all the ways I care about. Steam is also a leader in the Right Way to do things. I have probably bought more titles on Steam than via physical purchase over the last 4 or 5 years. Physical media is dying.
Even games that don't charge still can make money this way. For example, Neverwinter Nights 1 patched out its CD copy protection, but piracy remained low on the game because a big part of the game was automatic updates (which requires unique serial numbers), online persistent worlds, and the sheer numbers of player made modules available which equaled or surpassed the single player campaign of the game.
... about getting more companies to make games for our computers, as opposed to dedicated game consoles. THEN they say the system they want to see it on is Vista.
Aaaaaaaaarrrrrggghh!!!
Next, we'll read that we want to see all cars get hybrid-like mileage...
and that the system we want to see it on is the Edsel.
I hate to add to what I think is flamebait, but....
Microsoft saw the PS2, and was concerned that Sony was going to get the "Gateway to the lounge room" or whatever it was that they were thinking at the time. They were concerned that they were going to lose out to Sony in regards to a market they didn't know about. They started looking and realised that they could make money from it. Gaming in the lounge room has always been a large industry, and with the addition of the Wii it has become larger as they now have casual gamers added in there too.
So, it was just another business venture, and MS knowing that they were behind decided to buy their way in. It wasn't that they wanted to kill off the PC gaming area, if that's really what they wanted to do they wouldn't have come up with DX10 or maintained DirectX full stop, they would just drop it and let it wither and die. The only problem with that would have been the competition from OpenGL that would have eventually caught up to the position DirectX was in (In regards to graphics) and that would be a threat they don't want. Simply it would just be easier to keep supporting the DirectX platform and have fingers in both pies.
Besides, they want to keep their monopoly on the OS business (Remember what everyone calls the MS tax?) if they let games die off, they would lose market share to Linux as there are a number of people who would keep Windows around to play games.
Absolutely nothing for the PC gaming sections of stores. Absolutely correct, they aren't doing anything, it's a simple business decision, they aren't making any money from it. Why burn money on a platform that you aren't getting anything from?
PC gaming was one of the major reasons DOS/Windows became so popular because all the IT guys in companies wanted to work on the same systems at work that they had at home Actually the PC platform was for business first, and the IT guys had to learn it for work. After that then the games came about. That turned a little bit cyclic as one of the reasons I got into IT was because of gaming, and learning the platform because of games.
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
I'd hardly call free but a fee to play online a creative business model. We usually call that a scam.
The difference is that Guild Wars gives people something, and there is never a fee you'll ever have to pay again to play the same thing, even if you lose the CD's. That is not the case with Wow, or Warhammer or any other mmo. The difference is those games (wow,warhammer, any pay or subscription mmo) are subsidizing their users to pay for the privilege to play an inevitable grind at the cost of the company's bandwidth. It's comparable to taxing people for air usage.
A real creative business model would be something you can embrace that doesn't have infinite fuckups (drm, subscription fees), and uses common sense. Such as, I don't know, paying for a game and not having subscription fees, drm, or cd keys or any forced "linkage" of any sort? Go back to requiring a cd in virtual CD or physical form, and we'll all be happy. Will it sell more copies in reality? You bet you it will. Is it cheaper to not have to pay a company to DRM your software (or engineers to do it)? Absolutely.
I play almost exclusively single player games. I have no interest for on-line gaming. The only exception was with a game called Trackmania and some PBeM I played in the 80s and early 90s. I never played an RTS on-line (although I did play Warcraft 2 on a local network), I never played an FPS on-line (again, only on a local network) and I never played any on-line RPG. I just don't see what's fun with on-line gaming.
I'm not saying your idea is not good for a few games, but the truth is a lot of people never play on-line. Most people I know play video games, but very few play on-line. For the game Trackmania, the only one I played on-line, it was only a small percentage of people owning the game who ended up trying the on-line mode. I really don't think it would be a good idea for most game to use this business model.
The latest trend in annoying DRM: publishers using SecuROM and install limits on games sold through Steam. Crysis Warhead, Far Cry 2, and X3 have a 5 install limit, crippling one of Steam's greatest features: unlimited installs on any PC. The former two games also use SecuROM. Why on earth would you add third-party DRM on top of Steam? Maybe because these publishers are run by dicks? Who knows. What I do know is that my PC game purchases have gone down solely because of DRM. I'd love to play Red Alert 3 or Far Cry 2, but I won't until EA gives up on installation limits and SecuROM. Shame, too, since I don't own any consoles.
(I know that Steam is a form of DRM with its own share of problems, but I rather enjoy the service. Unlike SecuROM or similar schemes, Steam at least provides some side benefits to gamers.)
I read TFA, And I gotta say, it looks like nothing more than a self aggrandizing attempt to justify the use of DRM and the adding of more of it.
It'd doesn't look like news, it looks like a press release.
In an interview about DRM with the PCGA they didn't ask ask the cost of DRM (in both development, real money, and alienated customers) vs its actual effectiveness at its goal (next to nothing.)
They didn't bring up the effectiveness of studios like stardock to still sell million plus copies of games, with NO DRM, they didn't mention alternate models of operation like subscription services (ala WoW and Eve online), or free content upgrade for people who can prove they own the game (simple reg codes).
Finally they have to realise that there are people who are not cracking their games for money or anything like that, its a challenge, something fun a test, it doesn't matter how strong the DRM these guys try to crack it because its there.
DRM will never be the answer because there's two massively divergent viewpoints on it. Publishers think DRM is the solution to piracy, the rest of us (their customers) think that piracy is the solution to DRM. We see it as something to be avoided when possible, and bypassed when we can't. We don't respect it, we don't respect the people who employ it, and we don't respect laws passed to try and protect it.
Our computers are too much a part our private lives to be policed they way corporations want them too.
No. WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.
I completely agree with your point, but I believe the much more troubling lesson learned from the Radiohead example was that even when people could get it for free 100% legally, they still chose to download it illegally, which leads to the natural conclusion that people aren't even bothering to consider the price offered in the first place, going directly to P2P as their first port of call.
Going to your TV example, it would be like Store A offering free TVs to anybody who wants one, but people still going to Store B and stealing the same model TV. As I said, much more troubling that this is the society we live in.
Unfortunately, the PC gaming industry seems to be designing itself for failure. In a time when companies are taking losses on hardware to increase their userbase (consoles) the PC gaming industry seems to be going to extra efforts to actually limit the growth of their market.
What has been the single most revolutionary improvement to console gaming? Multiplayer. The console industry has realized this and games that only offer single player are so rare that when something lacks multiplayer it can be seen as a black mark by critics. We are a social species, and gaming originated as a social activity. It is only for a brief period when transitioning into the electronic world that gaming became a single player activity. Improvements in hardware and data connections are bringing gaming back into the 'coffee table' world of board and card games.
Back to my topic. When you brought over your copy of monopoly, it was a game that was designed, and infact required, multiple players. Yet it is rare that you come across any PC game that isn't designed in such a way that you are expected to pay an additional fee to enjoy it with your friends. It may be a throwback to the per-chair licensing that is still utilized by many software producers, but it is detrimental to the growth of the PC gaming industry. It is an intentional speedbump that is thrown in the path of growth. If the PC gaming industry wants to continue with the concept of DRM, then they have to do so in a manner that allows people to socialize with the friends the know in the real world. Online 'lobbies' and forums don't completely fill that gap.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Steam has its good and bad points.
The good comes from the fact that once you buy the game, it automatically installs and updates the game for you. There has never been any work required for any steam game I have ever played. It warns me if it believes my computer isn't good enough (good and bad, a quad core 2.6 Ghz apparently throws a warning for a game requiring 2.7 Ghz). Steam makes PC gaming easy
The other side of the good debate comes from how the company is viewed. Look at Microsoft vs Google. One is viewed as trustworthy for the most part, as their slogan is "do no evil" while the other is seen as the evil empire. We both give up personal information to their vast data mining, but we don't mind it as much when it goes to google.
DRM is the same way. I don't mind Valve/Steam doing what it does, because I've transferred games between computers, I almost always have an internet connection, and I enjoy the features it offers. SecureROM and EAs Download manager make me cringe, especially at the fact that it acts like spyware on your computer (doesn't uninstall when its supposed to). For most people, it is a matter of trust. I trust Valve's steam to work correctly and do what it is supposed to, I trust EA to be the Evil Empire of gaming.
The bad parts of steam have only come from the fact that it is hard for me to share a game with friends. I'm not talking about illegally sharing, but where I would hand them my CDs and CD key's before, I'd have to now allow them to login as me
Unfortunately, just because it's on Steam doesn't also mean there isn't atrocious DRM. I downloaded Assassin's Creed from them. It worked fine for a bit but then suddenly it would freeze solid for about 5 seconds every time you killed somebody, or were spotted by guards, or got a flag. I checked out their forums. Lots of people had this issue. UBISoft told us all that nobody was reporting such a thing (EXCEPT US???) but they'd look into it. Somebody who isn't UBISOFT found the solution though: Disconnect your network cable. Because the issue is, Assassin's Creed connects to a UBISOFT server every 3 SECONDS while you are playing, and the lockups happen if it can't for some reason, or if there is a delay. If it detects not network though, it doesn't try.
In fact, Assassin's Creed is a shining example of piracy doing exactly what the pirates say: establishing word of mouth. On PS3 and 360 it sold like 1.5 million copies. They released the PC port. BUT, about a month before it came out, there was a pirate version "leaked", that intentionally locked up randomly, and was also designed to crash to desktop about half way through, to frustrate pirates and make them buy the real deal I guess. But what happened is by the time it was out, most people on the Internet had heard it was slow and unstable and crashed about half way through so you could never beat it. It sold very very few copies, and they blamed this on piracy!
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI