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PC Grand Theft Auto IV Features SecuROM DRM
arcticstoat writes "Game developer Rockstar has revealed that the forthcoming PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV will feature the controversial SecuROM 7 DRM system. Unlike some of EA's recent titles, such as Spore and Mass Effect, GTA IV won't limit the number of times that you can install the game, although SecuROM will be impossible to remove without leaving 'some traces' on your PC. Anyone hoping to avoid SecuROM by downloading the game form Steam will also be disappointed, as Rockstar says that all versions of the game will feature SecuROM, including digital versions online. On the plus side, Rockstar says that it's 'working with SecuROM to post information on our support pages regarding how to remove these inactive traces of the program for users who wish to do so.' Has Rockstar gotten a better balance between draconian DRM and fair copy protection here?"
Yes, you have every right. And your choice is then to not take the offering. Not to break the law to get the offering without compensation, because you happen to disagree with the conditions attached to the offering. How laughable that people seem to think that it's acceptable to do this.
One man's "intellectual honesty" is another man's "simple mindedness". Just look at the hard-hitting "intellectual honesty" of the far-Right.
I assume from the way you phrase that you aren't yourself a quote content creator unquote.
I used the quotes because I'm talking about publishers as well as developers and publishers don't actually create anything.
Alright. Here's an interview with a game developer who used an extremely weak form of DRM (serial numbers only). Obsoleting the first generation of keygens increased sales by 70% overnight.
Now that article is pretty balanced - breaking the keygens only closed one way to pirate the game (cracked copies with the protection code removed were still available), and a 70% increase in sales certainly doesn't equate to eliminating piracy. But it didn't have to.
They did get a 70% increase in sales after the first fix (though they make no mention of how long that increase lasted). They also said that the 2nd and 3rd fixes had no impact on downloads and left sales either flat or slightly down (i.e. strengthening DRM hurt in one case). The fourth fix had a slight impact: 13% increase in sales. The link says:
As we believe that we are decreasing the number of pirates downloading the game with our DRM fixes, combining the increased sales number together with the decreased downloads, we find 1 additional sale for every 1,000 less pirated downloads. Put another way, for every 1,000 pirated copies we eliminated, we created 1 additional sale.
I did say that some people will buy the game if the DRM is strengthened. But I said that generally pirates can't be forced to buy the game using DRM and your link supports me on that: 99.9% of the pirates did not buy the game when the DRM was strengthened. And that statistic also makes it clear that a download can't be equated to a lost sale: it's more like 1/1000 of a lost sale.
The question is whether strengthening DRM is an effective way to increase sales (well everyone says "increase sales", but what they really mean is "increase profit"). Let's look at the numbers from the article: 92% piracy rate means 11.5 downloads for every sold copy. They figured that their DRM fixes resulted in 1 extra sale per 1000 copies prevented. So, 87 sales results in 1000 downloads, and fixing the DRM results in one extra sale. How much money should be spend on strengthening DRM for a 1.15% increase in sales?
Of course this is only one data point. But it's not convincing me that strengthening DRM is the way to go.
Your position is one that only makes sense if you assume you are, somehow, much smarter than all the major PC game publishers out there, despite having worse or non-existant access to the statistics you'd need to make a decision. I find that a pretty arrogant position.
I don't think I'm smarter than all the major PC game publishers at all - your reasoning to arrive at that conclusion is faulty. However, I do think that if the industry had real statistics to back up the use of DRM they would publicise them and put this debate to rest. The lack of hard data from the industry and the ease with which people can find pirated material make it is clear that DRM is pretty ineffective. It's an arms race the industry obviously can't win (not on the PC platform at least) and yet they continue to pour millions of dollars into the fight while the pirates spend nothing.