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.

Comments

Re:Easy - make the Games free and charge for onlin

[shmlco]

"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."

Bandwidth? Yeah, you're paying for bandwidth. I mean, it's not like they created the client software, the server software, the game, the characters, the entire world, or like they pay for servers, hosting, and the BANDWIDTH.

Sheesh.

Re:Just use Steam...

[cliffski]

so if you want to compete with valve, then you are fucked, because they will just lock you out of steam. I don't think having a single monopolistic gatekeeper for PC gaming is a good idea at all.

Re:Easy - make the Games free and charge for onlin

[theaveng]

I don't see *any* reason to play a PC game. Back in the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s it made sense to prefer computer games since the computer was typically more-advanced than a console. For example 16-bit Amiga was superior to the then-dominant 8-bit NES (both in graphics and sound quality).

But nowadays there's very little difference. A PS3 or Xbox360 or Wii looks just as good as the PC version. I don't blame some companies for not targeting the PC platform, since there's no real advantage to doing so.

Re:Easy - make the Games free and charge for onlin

[bigstrat2003]

As you've probably seens mentioned lots of times here on slashdot already, there is a big difference between a physical product and something that can be duplicated at nearly no cost.

Tell a lie long enough and it sounds like the truth. People say it again and again on slashdot, but it has no more truth to it than the day it was first said. The only difference between the two things you mentioned is a technicality: if we're discussing the ethics of taking them without consent, they are the same.