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Why Bother With DRM?
Brad Wardell of Stardock and Ron Carmel of 2D Boy recently spoke with Gamasutra about their efforts to move the games industry away from restrictive DRM. Despite the fact that both have had their own troubles with piracy, they contend that overall piracy rates aren't significantly affected by DRM — and that most companies know it. Instead, the two suggest that most DRM solutions are still around to hamper a few more specific situations. Quoting:
"'Publishers aren't stupid. They know that DRM doesn't work against piracy,' Carmel explains. 'What they're trying to do is stop people from going to GameStop to buy $50 games for $35, none of which goes into the publishers' pockets. If DRM permits only a few installs, that minimizes the number of times a game can be resold.' ... 'I believe their argument is that while DRM doesn't work perfectly,' says Wardell, 'it does make it more difficult for someone to get the game for free in the first five or six days of its release. That's when a lot of the sales take place and that's when the royalties from the retailers are determined. Publishers would be very happy for a first week without "warez" copies circulating on the Web.'"
Sounds like Game Stop should sue.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Brad Wardell of Stardock and Ron Carmel of 2D Boy
I don't know who that is but a few days ago I submitted a story on an interview with Sony's CEO:
In an interview with Nikkei Electronics Asia this month, Sony CEO and chairman Howard Stringer revealed an interesting point about open technologies: 'Customers will refuse to accept it unless the technology is open. Youth in particular really dislikes closed technologies, closed systems and the like. I think the failure of AOL LLC of the US is good evidence of this. When the Internet was just beginning to spread, AOL boosted its subscriber base by providing special services only to its customers. After a while, though, customers began rebelling, complaining that they weren't children. Because AOL wanted to keep them locked up in a narrow portion of the immense Internet cosmos, open technology was created. Sony hasn't taken open technology very seriously in the past. Its CONNECT music download service was a failure. It was based on OpenMG, a proprietary digital rights management (DRM) technology. At the time, we thought we would make more money that way than with open technology, because we could manage the customers and their downloads. This approach, however, created a problem: customers couldn't download music from any Websites except those that contracted with Sony. If we had gone with open technology from the start, I think we probably would have beaten Apple Inc of the US.' He then mentions that Sony has a chance to provide something that Apple can't. Sounds like somebody should inform him of DRM-free iTunes. However when asked about customer confusion over too many open technologies, he claims that the customer will always like choice so the more the better.
Didn't get published so I thought I'd post it here as evidence that even the music distribution companies are saying, "Why bother with DRM?" Not surprising now that Amazon and iTunes are doing it though. I predict everyone will eventually pull their heads out of their asses, it just will take some longer than others.
My work here is dung.
unfortuantely, they often have -1 weeks of sales when there arent illegal copies circulating. I do sometimes pirate games, but i try to restrain from doing it when the game is young, e.g when a sequal has come out, i consider the original fair game. I know it doesnt really make a difference if i pirate it now or a year down the line, but it sits a bit better with me...
IANAL, Thank $DEIETY!
But I believe most places if you can be shown to be not defending your copyright, that you can loose it. Putting DRM would seem to me to be showing that you are trying to defend your Copyright.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Stardock can claim all they want against DRM. Their own "online" registration of game architecture, remove the first sale law for every American.
You can't sell a Stardock game because it is tie to your account, and tie to your PC.
Want to install the game on your girl friend PC? On your children PC? Yep... install it, but you will not get update of your game. So,... they simply release buggy version that need update and user tie with their new DRM network solution.
BRAD, STOP claiming you are on the good guy side, when you simply remove the restrictions from DRM on the DVD and put the same restrictions, over your network.
So, the purpose is not to prevent piracy, but to prevent multiple legal resales of games ... which would only result in further illegal piracy.
Sounds like a winning argument to me...
I don't think I have ever seen used PC games at a Gamestop; they have only sold new versions since I have been shopping there anyway (since around 2000 or so).
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
They don't want to just make a modest profit, they want to be gaming superstars.
Piracy is better the smaller a company you are, to a point. It is advertising, and it can get you more publicity. But to go from the game that sells 10,000 copies to the one that sells ten million, and continues selling for years after being produced, companies feel they need a way to force people to buy. One in every (gamer) household!
Just like the founding fathers wanted!
DRM doesn't bother me nearly as much as stuff like Steam and the death of the second hand market. Can you imagine how difficult it will be to bring a game to your friends' house to play?
"Hey, Ron, it's Steve. Since we're going to hang out tomorrow, I suggest you start downloading Butt Zappers 2 now. It should take up about 20 GB of your hard drive space."
"OK, what's your Live username and password?"
"It's XXXXXX and XXXXX. My credit card's on that account, don't use it to download a bunch of games like you did last time, okay bro?"
"Sure dude, but what if this puts me up over my bandwidth cap, you'll pay me back, right?"
"I guess."
"Wait a minute, I don't have any room on my hard drive left."
"So, just delete some of your old stuff. You can always download it later."
"Are you gonna pay for me to download all that stuff too?"
"Dude, I knew we should have gotten Playstation, Sony made a deal with Comcast and PSN downloads don't count against the cap."
"Yeah, and maybe we'd actually be able to download it. Looks like the Butt Zappers server is slammed right now."
Honestly, if they try to foist that stuff on us, I'll just stick with the old, disc-based systems.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
This struck me as a hypocritical position on the part of those game publishers. Either IP is property or it is not. If it is property, then there should be no restrictions allowed on whether or how frequently it can be resold (i.e. no one tries to stop you from reselling your car or your house). If it is not property, then there should be no artificial scarcity surrounding it which would also make this or any other DRM an inappropriate practice.
It should be obvious that what they seem to want is a level of control that is unavailable to the manufacturers of any other sort of good or service. It's surprising that anyone takes them seriously. Much lively debate occurs on the fine nuances of copyright law while missing the point that what they want is to be singularly special, to wield powers unavailable to other industries. That's known as the inability to see the forest for all the trees. That's why I think it's a phony debate, just like most media discourse surrounding what should be regarded as power grabs. They are aiming at an unreasonable amount of control over the marketplace in the name of copyright.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Used games don't make Publishers any money.
Pirated games don't make Publishers any money.
Solution: Games should use the Software-As-A-Service Model.
Imagine paying a "small monthly fee" for say GTA-IV, or a library of GTA games.
Your "small monthly fee" would cover :
- Saved game storage
- Game updates
- Technical Support
Imagine paying to receive a brand new PS3, and a full library of games.
When you are bored with one game, simply pay to play another!
For other small monthly fees, the publisher would also retain your saved games per month.
Nothing to update, nothing to activate, nothing to buy/sell or worry about.
No games to lose, backups to make, etc. All your games are available, simply replace the hardware, which could be covered by another "small monthly fee".
Computing is a commodity, like electricity. People should get used to paying as they use it. Nobody needs their "own" "Personal" computer, just use a cloud service of some sort.
Was there any follow up to Ubisofts release of a DRM free Prince of Persia
When I was a starving student (and associate engineer struggling to pay rent), I had a very slim budget, and would play "warez" until I could save/beg/borrow enough to buy the full versions, and I would *unless* the game sucked anyway. Now that I can afford software and music, I make it a point not to pirate copyrighted info, but I will still "evaluate" music before I buy it from MPAA publishers. And most people I know feel the same way.
So, the real product that DRM protects is the "Turd in a Can," a product that the consumer would not pay for if they knew beforehand that they were buying crap.
I can see the fnords!
Really, if we distill the arguments for DRM down far enough, it becomes clear that the idea is to try to work around the First Sale Doctrine and kill the second-hand market.
Most game makers sell the lionshare of games the first 5 days of release. Once that time has passed it's usually a trickle.
The question is, why bother with DRM at that point. How many people that are stealing games now would actually buy the game?
Let us consider, for a moment, a DRM-loaded game from the past year.
Spore.
Its DRM was considered by some to be so limiting that some people simply never played the game. People were exasperated that, at release, it allowed only one user account per copy. That installs couldn't be "restored" by uninstalling the game (many of these things have been added since).
OK, so all that said, copies of Spore were still readily available for download a week prior to release on torrent sites all over the world. Despite cumbersome DRM, that in some cases prevented actual customers from being able to extract full enjoyment from the product they purchased, anyone that wanted a DRM-free copy could still have gotten one prior to the release of the game.
Lesson: It. Doesn't. Work.
Maybe...maybe it prevents someone from taking the game to a friend's house and installing it, or the like. But it isn't preventing wide-scale piracy, even during that "critical first week".
If you don't defend a trademark, you can lose it. I'm not sure how this applies to copyright.
That's why RMS doesn't like the term "Intellectual Property", by the way. It's a vague concept that combines three very different bodies of law: Trademarks, Patents, and Copyrights.
For that matter, think about just about every copyleft-style license -- GPL, Creative Commons, etc -- do those become invalid just because people are copying them? No.
If such a law exists at all (for copyright, instead of trademarks), I would think it would have to do with actually legally defending your copyright -- as in, when you're aware of the vendor down the block selling burned pirate copies, you should sue him. It absolutely has nothing to do with taking the law into your own hands with DRM.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
(...I'd like to know more about this Butt Zappers game.)
I can see the fnords!
I know with Impulse (and it wouldn't surprise me if Steam does it too, haven't tried though), you can archive a game. You could then put said archive on a DVD or a USB key, and you have a physical thing you can carry around to install from. So your steps would be:
1. Archive game.
2. Go to Friend's house.
3. Unarchive game.
4. Play game.
But yes, if you want physical media, buying that is better then buying an online copy. That seems to be common sense.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
At least with Steam you can download it as much as you want, so there's that.
I get your point, though, and now that you just about have to have multiple copies of a game to fire it up at a LAN party I imagine we'll just stick with UT2K4 and earlier, plus L4D (a special case, and something that we'd all been dreaming of for years, so of course we all bought it). Certainly, the bar for buying a multiplayer game has risen since it became impossible or complicated to install one copy on several machines for a quick LAN session, at least among the people I game with. If we don't all want to buy it, there's no reason for anyone to buy it, and only with very rare exceptions (L4D) do any of us do much multiplayer FPS gaming outside our rare LAN parties.
It's kind of like board gaming, which we also do a lot of. If we all had to have a copy of each game to play, I doubt we'd do it as much, and we'd buy way fewer board games.
It's a pity none of us can stand console FPS games. The last one we had fun playing (rather than just frustration) was Perfect Dark, which we still break out from time to time. Oh well, there's still SSB.
I usually pay for a game if I know I will like it (i.e. tried the demo, played it at a friend's house, etc.) but I am hesitant to pay for anything I can't return if I don't like it. The last game I bought was "Jeopardy!", which, as anyone here who has played it will know, sucks royal ass. Granted, I paid $10 for it at Target but I didn't have the choice of returning it if I didn't like it. So I sucked it up.
On a game more than $10 I wouldn't pay full price unless I had the ability to take the game, play it for a few days to see if I like it, then return it if it doesn't work out (is buggy, not fun, needs a better graphics card, etc.) I'm not sure if it is the manufacturers who impose this return policy or the stores themselves. I imagine it is a collusion of both. It's a smaller scale on the "return Windows for a refund if you don't accept the EULA" conundrum: Microsoft says it's OK, but you have to take it back to the retailer. The retailer doesn't honor the return because they are losing money. It's a no-win situation.
"This food is problematic."
'What they're trying to do is stop people from going to GameStop to buy $50 games for $35, none of which goes into the publishers' pockets.
Somebody please correct me, but does GameStop even accept PC-games? Their policy is (at least where I live) to only buy console games used. And can those even have additional DRM (on top of the normal "must have CD to play" one)?
Chronologically late.
Annoying your users with DRM so that they cannot sell their games when they don't want them anymore does not make things better. In fact, it makes things worse.
I bought it, it's mine.
As for you: make up your mind what you're selling. If it is the media, then the moment I sell it, it belongs to somebody else. If it's the right to play the game (i.e. the "license"), then you already sold "one right" -- if I make use of it or somebody else should be none of your freakin business.
Don't try to eat both the egg and the hen at the same time, it's bound to fail.
I think 2D Boy gives publishers more credit then they are due. I think publishers ARE stupid over all. I think they really do think they can win this war. They think "Well if we just keep getting better DRM, we'll find something they can't crack." I think they also believe that DRM does give good ROI, which is to say that the increase in profits is greater than the cost of the DRM. I really believe that most publishers are stupid about this, just like the music publishers.
The problem is they see these big numbers of copies out there and get dollar signs in their eyes. They think "Man, if we had been paid for each of those copies we'd be RICH!" They are right too. Games are heavily copied. If every person who ever downloaded a copy instead paid for the game, they'd probably make 5-10x the money. What they don't consider, of course, is that not everyone would. There's a lot that people will take for free that they won't take at any price, much less a $50 price. You offer it for free, they say "Yes I'd like that." You want any money for it, they'll pass.
However, greed is able to short-circuit logic for many people I don't think the people at publishers are any different. They see the money they could be theoretically making and stop thinking logically about it.
Also the DRM companies push their products heavily, of course. They reassure the publishers "Oh ya, our DRM is really effective it'll get you a bunch more sales but if you DON'T use it, we'll you'll go to the poor house because nobody will buy your game!"
Personally, I think the numbers on the Bittorrent sites tell the real story. Demigod sure as hell got downloaded a lot, because people were very interested in it. However, Spore got downloaded even more, because even more people were interested in it. The difference DRM had on downloading in that case? Zero. People downloaded if they wanted to.
"What they're trying to do is stop people from going to GameStop to buy $50 games for $35, none of which goes into the publishers' pockets."
Actually, when a retail buyer can afford only less than full price and bought it at $50 KNOWING ABOUT THE RE-SALE MARKET, then the resale market DOES put money in publisher's pockets, by increasing retail sales. I often bought new $40-50 PC games ONLY because I knew I could sell them a couple weeks later for a $10 loss. I actually MADE money ($30 profit) with San Andreas, having bought when slashdot warned me of the impending sales ban due to the Hot Coffee debacle. I STILL don't have GTA IV, too many issues at launch.
DRM doesn't bother me nearly as much as stuff like Steam and the death of the second hand market. Can you imagine how difficult it will be to bring a game to your friends' house to play?
Friends? What are those?
But seriously, when I play with my friends online I don't bother going over to their house but rather meet them online (unless alcohol is involved). Seems more efficient that way.
Otherwise it really doesn't bother me about the second hand factor of steam.
I realized I have boxes of games that I'm too lazy to eBay and most of them won't work on Windows XP so I don't know what the point of keeping them around is for. Being able to re-download them after I lost the box or CD key is a plus as well.
I've actually bought a game or two online because I lost the original packing and was hankering for an oldschool game.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
If you're talking about a LAN party, not all games really require you to buy a copy for everybody. Demigod (most recent example I have) lets you use one copy for everybody on the LAN. It even says you're allowed to do that in the game's manual.
It seems like it's next to impossible to find out what the policy is before actually buying the game, but some games are friendly towards LAN players. :)
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
I never buy a game in the first month, let along the first week of a release. Mostly, I'm waiting for the quality of the game to become apparent after some play in the real world, and also I don't like the bleeding-edge prices of new releases.
Avoiding weird DRM is another benefit.
After a few days or weeks, the real effects of whatever cockamamie DRM scheme the publishers crowbarred onto the game become apparent.
After a few weeks or months, applications like Alcohol 120 will adapt so that I can be assured of making backups.
After a few months to a year, the price starts to dip into my admittedly modest range. By then, I know whether I can keep the game for myself if the company goes out of business, whether I'm facing potential hassle in making my own backups, and whether the game is worth it in the first place.
After a few years, the game may re-release with digital distributors under no-DRM agreements geared toward truly enthusiastic gaming communities. Witness GOG.com.
Gaming on the long tail rules -- provided you're not desperate to get hopped up on the Newest, Shiniest Thing.
Get real. When was the last time a popular game* was released and it wasn't available that day via P2P? In fact you often see them days BEFORE release on P2P already cracked and ready to go.
I remember when Spore came out the first day or two had something like 30,000 seeders on TPB. Even right now there's about 15k people seeding both the star trek movie and the latest episode of fringe ... and as many people downloading. And this is just ONE tracker. It's actually faster to download the game/movie than drive to the store and buy it half of the time.
Any software company that deludes themselves into believing DRM stops piracy by any significant amount delusional. It's all about preventing resale...which is still detrimental to the customer. Stupid how a library can rend DVDs, CDs and books but somehow software managed to squeak in such an exception.
* Excluding exclusively online games (aka WoW, etc.)
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
Why can't game developers just accept the fact that their software will be copied, and instead adopt a business model that is unaffected by unauthorized distribution of their software? For example, distribute the software for free via bittorrent etc., but charge monthly fees for connection to the servers? The shrink-wrapped software business is dead -- time to bury it. People need online access for patches and updates anyway; it is a safe assumption that 99% of your customer base has at least occasional connectivity to the internet. Also, first-sale doctrine becomes irrelevant if all you are paying for is server access. (There is a related issue that remains -- should accounts be transferable? If I grind a WoW character up to level 80, should I be able to sell it to somebody else?) Sure, there is a side effect that even single player games would require an online login. But I really think the software-as-a-service model makes a lot more sense for games than for businesses. Businesses are as geographically distributed as game players, and you really don't want a third party to have access to your business's data.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Steam only allows the creation of "backups". These are NOT BACKUPS. When you reinstall one you must connect to Steam to have both Steam and your backup "blessed" before you can use them. This is not a problem in your chosen example, but when Steam goes away (nothing lasts forever) then all those steam backups will be worthless. Valve has pledged to release patches to make them not worthless, but odds are that when Valve goes out of business they won't have the ability to make such a decision.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"What they're trying to do is stop people from going to GameStop to buy $50 games for $35, none of which goes into the publishers' pockets."
Really?
Last time I checked, Gamestop sells used games a day or two after they come out (at $60) for $55.
And I haven't seen a PC game or peripheral (new or used) in a Gamestop in ages.
The Steam hate might have held some ground in 2002/03 while angry Counter-Strike players still clung to WON.net, but times have changed. Unless you're regularly blowing all of your monthly bandwidth on torrenting "linux isos", you can stomach a Steam game download or two with even the most draconian ISP.
"It's XXXXXX and XXXXX. My credit card's on that account, don't use it to download a bunch of games like you did last time, okay bro?"
Steam doesn't persistently store your credit card information. I'd be weary of any digital delivery service that did.
"Can you imagine how difficult it will be to bring a game to your friends' house to play?"
Okay, okay, let's just say your pal doesn't want to waste the bandwidth or time on downloading; that's fine. So, I don't know - as difficult as opening Steam up, navigating to "Backup games", burning it to a disc and walking it over? Personally, I can't imagine a mortal among us to tackle this Herculean errand.
"Wait a minute, I don't have any room on my hard drive left."
Gone are the days of juggling CDs and game installations to ensure you have 100MB of space left in order to pay tribute to the Windows 95 swap deity. If you're using an even remotely modern HDD of an even half-acceptable size (heck, even grandma's new HP for checking chain e-mails and visiting smileycentral comes with a 300GB drive these days), yeah, if you don't have enough space to install something from Steam? Not only are your computing practices more than likely idiotic to begin with, but you can most certainly deal with uninstalling some junk. Or hell, you've just proven you need it - so go buy a second HDD.
But you know what? The fact is, Gabe Newell, Valve co-founder, has gone on record mocking conventional DRM and stated, paraphrasing, that the mission of Steam is to make buying games, storing games, and accessing games easier and more convenient for the customer. Their content servers are widespread, well-maintained, and frankly - your aside about the "Butt Zappers server being slammed" is moot. Even the dreaded Slashdot phenomenon is a drop in the pond to Steam's full throughput. The recent roll out of of Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2 content packs have proven testament to this.
The only real complaint of yours that stands is with respect to re-selling your games - but really, tough shit. It's probably the only real remaining trade-off of digital delivery, so just consider that you're trading resale value for a few dollars in publishing costs the next time you buy a Steam game a bit cheaper than the brick and mortar box cost.
As a final note to answer any forthcoming "but, but, but, what-if!?" conjecturing, Valve has stated repeatedly that in the event they close up shop, a means for us customers to retain our purchases will be provided. If you have to crusade against digital delivery, don't go after Steam.
I mean, carmakers worry about it enough to *advertise* their car's historical resale value (well, if its good, eg Honda).
Granted, I suppose 'gamerz' probably dont worry *quite* as much about resale value when deciding to buy a game as someone buying a new car, but with the way the economy is going, they might start doing so more and more.
Just like companies that don't offer support (even documentation) on older products becuase they don't sell them anymore - no concept whatsoever that resale value might affect the price the market is willing to pay for new products.
Yes, trying to kill the second hand market (both the friend handing over a game they no longer play and the selling-on-to-recoup-some-cash parts of that market) is the publisher's primary reason for DRM, there is another factor that many seem to forget about when it comes to piracy/DRM.
That factor is shareholders and other investors. The developers and publishers know that DRM essentially does nothing most of the time and is in fact sometimes a cost (if the time cost of wiring the DRM deep into the game, as some do, is greater than the small or zero amount not lost in sales), but do they want to spend an age explaining that to the mugs who pony up the venture capital.
When an investor asks what you are doing about people copying your games "there is nothing we can do" is not an answer that will go down well.
I have never seen a proper legal business that will buy PC games, much less sell them back to the general public.
Where can I find such a place? I would much rather support local business than pirate.
I won't even get in to what happens when you try to return an opened game to a brick and mortar store..
So this isn't so much about preventing piracy as it is about circumventing the first-sale doctrine?
No sympathy. If this is really the goal of such DRM systems, then their authors should go to jail. The first-sale doctrine is too important to allow to be subverted in this manner.
Case in point:
Fire hoses do not work against pirates equipped with rocket propelled grenades.
Fire hoses have not be tested on thieves. EA may be working on the technology.
DRM has not been tested on pirates. The Coast Guard may be working on the technology (You pirate, you can no longer listen to your ipod! Bwahahaha!)
DRM does not work on thieves.
Shooting them in the head works on pirates.
Shooting them in the head is against the rules of engagement for thieves in this class. EA may be working to change that.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
In a real market economy then there would be a process of price negotiation between seller and buyer. "Negotiation" is the key concept here. The "market" was originally a place where seller and buyer sat face to face negotiating the price of an item. There is virtually no negotiation in the "market economy" today. I know corporations that preferred to go belly up rather than lower the price of their products. It costs next to nothing to clone a DVD, or even some small electronic devices. Instead of adapting to the actual demand by lowering prices, companies prefer to alienate their customers with DRM.
Intellectual Property (IP) is a new form of property that is here to stay. Therefore, so are IP protection and DRM. Unfortunately, what we see most often is abuse, from both camps.
In predominantly client-server based multi player games there is no real need for copy protection mechanisms as the account you are playing with is ultimately under the control of the provider. You can install the game on a thousand systems but without that account token you're unable to play the game.
For software aimed predominantly at a single users or users within a small LAN however (RPGs, Racing Simulators, etc) there is definitely a need for at least basic copy protection to prevent trading between players. Not that long ago (5-10 years?) the original installation media was generally considered prohibitive enough for the average user. These days with near zero day cracks and widely distributed and easily cloned installation media it just isn't.
I think most people can reasonably see the need for these protections to be in place and most understand the implications of downloading and using pirated software. The question is simply where the line is drawn for the obtrusive and sometimes downright malicious DRM in software today.
Basically, the mania for "restrict the hell out of it at release" appears to be driven by a desire to get as many "sales" as possible early on. Later on won't matter as much because there's a spike in sales followed by a trail-off over a period of weeks to whenever.
Fine.
But... as with "Spore" and other games, if the legitimate customers are inconvenienced, they scream to high heaven and, as noted elsewhere, that has a direct impact on sales and the game's reputation. I was planning on picking up "Spore" right up to about a day after it was released and the screams had started. Scratch one sale.
Ditto with "Sims 2."
Does the term "blowback" say anything to market-droids?
World of Goo has no DRM.
I found that that, coupled with the gameplay I had sampled on my counsin's Wii, was enough to compel me to purchase it.
Granted, the fact that it cost $5 more, direct from the publisher, to purchase for my PC than it did to purchase for the Wii, was almost enough to compel me to turn back around and steal it.
In the end, I just ended up installing it on every computer I own, and figured I got my money's worth. WoG and Crayon Phyisics are the only games I've bought in recent memory that charged a fair price, and the only ones that didn't bullshit me with DRM.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
Yeah, but do they know that it also prevents sales from happening at all? You're so worried that I'll buy it used for $35 instead of new for $50, that you forgot you at least got that initial $50 from somebody. But when you DRM, that initial $50 doesn't happen.
I haven't bought a copy-protected/DRMed game since the 1980s. But I bought some not-DRMed stuff from id in the 1990s and a shitload of not-DRMed stuff from Loki a few years back.
I'll admit, I haven't been gaming lately. So maybe I'm not your market anymore. But keeping me from ever becoming part of your market, saying "no, I don't fucking ever want your stinking money, you infrequently gaming assole" just can't be a good idea. If I ever wanna get back into it, I'm certainly going to research the titles I'm interested in, first. If not DRMed and doesn't require some weird server connection for a single-player game, then answer is: buy. If DRMed, then answer is: pirate ro do without.
Money or no money, take your pick. DRM means no money.
If you're talking about a LAN party, not all games really require you to buy a copy for everybody.
Other than Starcraft and Demigod, do you know of a list of PC games that allow such "spawned" installations?
But even with games that do allow "spawned" installations, you can't count on having as many PCs as players, especially if the players are still in K-12 school (I babysit) and can't bring the family PC.
Lets see, when you buy your new car (because thats all you can buy), you have to have the dealer take your dna and finger prints, just about any vitals you have. Then you, and only you can, drive your car, of course after scanning your thumprint while sitting in the chair and putting a piece of your hair in the slot for analysis. mmm.. sounds fun and easy.. Now lets look at the gamestop reasoning. If the car manufacturers followed this logic, there would be millions/billions of dollars lost in the (now defunct) used car sales business. Most people wouldnt be able to own a car because they cannot buy used and new is too expensive. Everyone that was able to afford a new car would drive it until it isnt driveable anymore because its too expensive to buy a new one and you cannot sell your old one to make up some of the original cost. In doing that, the car makers will then not have near the demand they once had. to me, this whold doing it to stop the used game sales market is just as much bull as anything else. there have always been "warez" and will always be "warez". Make a good product and it will sell, make a mediocre one and you may break even. Its quality of product that dictates sales, not how easy it is to "pirate"
when I play with my friends online I don't bother going over to their house but rather meet them online (unless alcohol is involved).
If your family has taken a trip to another state for an extended family reunion, or if you're still under 15 and you're at a babysitter's, you might not have a choice to stay at home and play online. I run into both issues: I babysit, and I handle the video games at my family's annual party. The only alcohol involved is the isopropanol solution that I use to clean game cartridges.
I'm sure GM is pissed about the lost sales happening at every used car lot in the nation.
Unless you're regularly blowing all of your monthly bandwidth on torrenting "linux isos", you can stomach a Steam game download or two with even the most draconian ISP.
Imagine an address more than 2 miles from the nearest DSLAM and not in any cable TV company's territory. So the only connections that get more than 0.05 Mbps are satellite and 3G. Both tend to have caps on the order of 160 MB per day, which is fine for WiiWare but not for bigger PC games.
As drinkypoo said, Steam is not a straight backup.
I haven't used Impulse's archive feature, so I'm not sure if the archives are completely separate from Impulse itself (I'll take your word for it), but my experience with Sins of a Solar Empire is that I can simply copy the game folder directly out of Program Files to another computer and run it without hassle.
The confidence of ignorance will always overcome the indecision of knowledge.
The would rather punish GameStop for selling a used copy of a game? If DRM doesnt work, and they drive stores like GameStop out of business, then they will just drive MORE people to download cracked games...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
DRM, by definition, only effects legitimate customers. DRM causes problems. It is well documented that DRM sometimes causes legitimately purchased games to not work or to cease working.
Thus what the game companies are basically doing is making it harder for us to buy their product. Making things hard to buy is generally counter production to selling things.
I find being offended by me offensive.
So, now let's see them back up their contention with facts and evidence.
Now, I will wait for the koolaid drinking anti-DRM fanboys to mod me down.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Imagine paying a "small monthly fee" for say GTA-IV, or a library of GTA games.
But how often would a PSP, DSi, or iPod Touch on such a plan have to reactivate at a Wi-Fi hotspot? And how much would it cost per month to upgrade the home Internet connection from dial-up to satellite or 3G to make this happen?
It's not even that he's unaware of DRM-free iTunes. If that were the only problem, I'd be quite happy to inform him of an opportunity that I simply don't see being exploited right now:
Purely web-based purchasing, with an open API.
Amazon MP3 is pretty cool. Better than iTunes, because I can use any program I want to play the music, and because there's a Linux client, I've now set my mother up to purchase music that way, and have it automatically imported into Amarok.
But it could be so much better.
Purely web-based would mean no client I have to download and figure out. An open API, or even a decent enough web interface, would mean I could write an Amarok plugin -- be able to listen to a preview, and buy it right there, just like (I assume) iTunes does. Others could write Songbird plugins. It's possible they could even make a deal to incorporate it into iTunes.
Protection would be relatively easy: Just a temporary URL, and it'd be about as good as Amazon MP3 is right now.
The problem is, of course, that he doesn't get it at all.
A lot of people thought Sony's content download service was doomed, but it's in a pretty good place right now in the form of the PlayStation Network, available to PS3 users for network gaming, video, etc. The DRM is based on Marlin, an open scheme developed by consumer electronics companies and other companies.
So close, and yet so far...
So, I'm guessing to this guy, "open" is just a buzzword. He seemed to have a basic grasp of what it means, and then he went and claimed a DRM scheme could be "open".
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I work in a game company... The problem is not that they don't sell games, the problem is that they want to sell more and make more money... The real problem is the price... Sell it for less, let's say 5$ to 20$... But they won't make enough money you could say and Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft take a part of the game price so it's less money for the studios... First, a CD is less than a buck to print... Second, it's entertainment... Ok then... Turn piracy into honnor quest... I would be a real douche if I pirate a game that cost only 10$... I think that if you sell 1000000 more copy of a game because it's cheaper and you provide downloadable content, everything will be fine... You have no honnor if you pirate a 5$ game because if you really want it, you can pay for it and brand new, but you're 15 years old and the game cost about 60$, it's another game (pun intented)! Imagine the time required to cut enough lawn to buy 1 game and have some fun elsewhere than in the living room (girls, chips and chocolate are important too)... The trick here is maximum 20$... I don't think 20$ is a huge amount of money... I can lose 20$ and don't bother... but I cannot lose 50$ and don't bother... So make it more like buying a bag of chips because it's only entertainment... It will probably be boring in two weeks anyway... Choose wisely... Get people entertain and make money... or... Get people angry and go to war to make money... Will they ever learn?
Not sure of any recent games. But Command and Conquer used to come with 2 CDs specifically for this reason. Give one to a friend, and you could play on modem against eachother.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The Steam hate might have held some ground in 2002/03 while angry Counter-Strike players still clung to WON.net, but times have changed. Unless you're regularly blowing all of your monthly bandwidth on torrenting "linux isos", you can stomach a Steam game download or two with even the most draconian ISP.
Well, I'm not specifically targeting Steam, but game sizes are ballooning while ISP download caps are getting more draconian. You can't gloss this over, it's a problem that's only going to get worse. And anti-Net Neutrality deals between console manufacturers and ISPs are likely on their way, (for example: Xbox counts against the cap, PS3 doesn't) which means your choice of console could be affected by which ISPs are available in your area.
Steam doesn't persistently store your credit card information. I'd be weary of any digital delivery service that did.
Then you should be wary of Xbox Live and Playstation Network. You have to give out your Live or PSN login to download DLC to another 360/PS3. Which means whoever has the info can abuse your credit card, get you kick/banned off servers, etc.
Okay, okay, let's just say your pal doesn't want to waste the bandwidth or time on downloading; that's fine. So, I don't know - as difficult as opening Steam up, navigating to "Backup games", burning it to a disc and walking it over? Personally, I can't imagine a mortal among us to tackle this Herculean errand.
Irrelevant to console games, but I will note that I have seen some big screwups with Steam firsthand-including refusal to play a single player offline game in the same house when someone was playing an online game at the same time.
Gone are the days of juggling CDs and game installations to ensure you have 100MB of space left in order to pay tribute to the Windows 95 swap deity.
Again, irrelevant to console games. Especially to the $360, where Microsoft deigns to charge $100 for a 100 GB drive.
As a final note to answer any forthcoming "but, but, but, what-if!?" conjecturing, Valve has stated repeatedly that in the event they close up shop, a means for us customers to retain our purchases will be provided. If you have to crusade against digital delivery, don't go after Steam.
I can guarantee if that happens, it won't be up to them. If you want to put your all your eggs in one basket, that's your choice. But again, this isn't primarily about Steam. It's about the future of consoles-a future that will be download only, whether the consumer likes it or not.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Can you sell the game on and the new owner activate the game anew? And can HE do the same? And can the seller next?
And when there is no activation, will the game still install?
Make activation give benefits to the one activating it but don't make it require activation to use.
... more should be expected more from game companies. Many classic games no longer work and people have to use emulators like DOSBOX, etc. Not to mention a lot of defunct 3D accelerated games that no longer work properly (older 3D accelerated versions of mechwarrior 2 comes to mind).
There is no good reason for software to break down at all given all the talent and interest in saving many classic games. I'd really like it if the industry extended a branch to some of their fanbase of whom many also work in the industry or related industries and if not, are heading in a similar direction via hobby, or looking at it in the future as a professional career.
There should be very little reason why people have to go to www.gog.com to rebuy games they've already long since purchased. I wouldn't mind paying a small fee monthly for maintenance of a catalogue of old games personally that kept them updated and working as hardware evolves and changes.
That might be asking too much, but the quality we get out of the software entertainment industry is pretty crappy these days if one looks past the flashy graphics. Broken AI and unfinished product is the norm rather then the exception.
DRM is a horrible idea, it doesn't really serve a good purpose. I spent time last year studying about DRM for college project and all my findings point it being useless.
Besides preventing certain media players from being able to play certain music files or preventing DVD's from being able to run on different Operating Systems, DRM fails to make a proper case with digital media.
I don't think allowing open copying of commercial DVD's is a good idea but I also don't think blocking music files with a DRM is a good idea. There is no need to eliminate the idea of DRM but I think we have to put a logical cap on how we use DRM.
One of the biggest problems with DRM is OS support. Windows and Mac deal with DRM fine, but Linux and Unix don't cope well with DRM. I think if were going to allow DRM to live then we need to make sure it works 100% across all platforms. and not only on the most used platforms.
In the end DRM serves really no good purpose. DRM is really only a way to introduce problems into media and the Operating Systems that have to work with the media.
Thanks
Docmur
Umm, your scenario makes no sense. If you are going to play PC games at your friend house, you take your PC and have a LAN party. If you are going to play console games, they already have the game, or you do, and you go over there and play it.
Your Steam scenario doesn't exist and is, quite frankly, stupid.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
Instead of "Intellectual Property", you'll have encryption (the whole system of laws will be different). You'll also see stuff far different from Halo or Madden.
Other than Starcraft and Demigod, do you know of a list of PC games that allow such "spawned" installations?
Most multiplayer games from the era StarCraft was released in had LAN play with fewer copies than players, some had stuff like 3 players per original CD, others only required the host to have the CD. More recently I can only think of Arena Wars which reverts to demo mode when run without a CD (but lets you join any game over LAN, even if it uses stuff that's locked in the demo).
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Even the dreaded Slashdot phenomenon is a drop in the pond to Steam's full throughput. The recent roll out of of Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress 2 content packs have proven testament to this.
I think the download servers are operated by the publishers of the respective games, I've downloaded Valve games at my full connection speed but when Plants vs Zombies was released the download ran at about 10kB/sec (of course the game is only 25MB so that wasn't a long wait but still annoying). It seemed to depend on the publisher, some games downloaded faster, some slower.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Here's the problem: That $50 price includes the game's value at resale. If the resale value is $35, then you're diminishing the value of the original purchase price by making it impossible for a 2nd buyer to use. Simple, basic economics. So, if you remove that functionality, some of which justifies the $50 price, the game is no longer worth $50, because the value of its resale is now gone.
So, the result of adding DRM to your game and not lowering your price to reflect the diminished value is that your game now appears overpriced. Good job, you've now guaranteed yourself flagging sales because of greed.
Imagine if car companies programmed their cars to self-destruct if sold to a second buyer. It's ridiculous. The argument that second hand sales take money out of the pocket's of the producers? Ridiculous also. Just stop it, you idiotic, economically ignorant publishers. Focus on making a damn good game, one that's good enough to purchase in the first place.
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
You need to enforce your copyright or patent, or you lose some of the right to enforce it.
This applies only to trademarks, not copyrights.
It applies most strongly to trademarks. But copyright and patent claims can still be estopped by laches: harming an alleged infringer by delaying legal action against this infringer.
I believe you are thinking of trademarks
The laches defense applies to any claim of trespass, including copyright and patent infringement claims. In Latin, vigilantibus non dormientibus æquitas subvenit; in English, "you snooze, you lose."
which have nothing to do with DRM.
Sega tried to build a DRM system around presence of the SEGA trademark. It lost in court: Sega v. Accolade.
You do know that you can copy your steamapps folder to another machine that already has steam installed on it, right? I did this with a couple machines at home, I copied TF2 and Portal to a newer, faster machine, because to download it all over again was going to take way too long. I closed steam on both machines, copied the steamapps folder over the network (or in your scenario you could copy to an external hard drive or flash drive if you have one that's big enough) and pasted it on the target machine. considering you don't even need to reinstall the game on the target system, I'd say it doesn't get much easier than that.
I'm not talking specifically about Steam. More "Steam-like" download only services. In fact, I'm talking about the future scenario where Xbox and PS3 are download-only. That's why I mentioned "Live" and "PSN" in my example. It's my conclusion that you will not be able to bring games to your friend's house to play in the next generation.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Because the people that sell it assures us that it will work this time~
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Valve has pledged to release patches to make them not worthless, but odds are that when Valve goes out of business they won't have the ability to make such a decision.
That is such a ridiculous claim. How the hell would they not have the ability to make that decision? It's not like Valve has absolutely no foresight what so ever. They could release patches way before they give control over their servers are shut any thing down
If the servers shut down and everything just permanently stopped working, you would be pissing of a monumental amount of users in a unprecedented way. I really think it's really in Valve's best interest to not let such a thing happen, regardless if they aren't going to be around afterwards. If by some incredibly small chance the that Valve fails to release a patch to validate the games, I'm sure some 3rd party will find a hack that will render the games playable again.
Why don't we wait until Valve stops releasing chart-topping PC games before we start spreading the FUD, eh?
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
Why the hell would you go over to your friends house to play a PC game outside the context of a LAN party (where you would be bringing your PC containing the game)? What, you plan to take turns zapping butts while sitting in front of a desk? Lame.
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
Or learn to move your PC.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Don't forget that those of us who live in the land of digital oppression can't even watch our DVDs on our Linux PCs.
Open Arena is how a LAN game should work. It's FREE and cross platform. I can have the linux box duel the Mac. A friend comes over with the laptop? Have another free copy. I know, not a sustainable business model, but it's a damned enjoyable game.
Isn't that insanity.
I started playing computer games on the C64. We were knee deep in pirate games and this was pre-internet. They had disk checks that would rattle and wreck the poor C-64 drive, then there copy software that duplicated the errors, or crackers that removed all the copy protection, and made the game smaller and faster to load, and didn't rattle the floppy drive. This is when they started training me that publishers were knobs and crackers were white knights. Publisher: Force a disk check that will hammer the disk drive against the stops, cracker remove all that crap and make it load fast and smooth.
In over 25 years what have we seen? Absolutely nothing has changed. Publishers keep making paying customers suffer while not even slowing down the crackers by a day. Crackers keep delivering a superior user experience absent of the hassles involved in using the actual product.
Every day for 25 years, the same bone headed failing decision is made again and again, with the expectation that they will get a different outcome. That is insane. Clearly driven by out of touch, cover their ass managers enforcing the status quo.
In the intervening 25 years! How many times was it decided again and again to pay money to DRM vendors, whos product worsen the user experience, and has never actually worked in its stated purpose been used again and again.
How do you build a completely failing product (DRM systems) endlessly? The whole thing is mind boggling.
DRM salesmen must be the best in the business. "My product will annoy your paying customers and utterly fail to deliver on any of the stated claims of quelling piracy. Here is the contract..."
As far as the latst software rental schemes (AKA Server based DRM). Fine just make sure you change the price to reflect the new non ownership mode. A game that you can resell is worth about triple the price of one that you can't, so I expect a 66% price cut to go along with the new model.
Then why is there an option for steam to remember you card info?
"navigating to "Backup games", burning it to a disc and walking it over? P"
Seriously? I didn't know you could just install backed up games, I thought it had to be 'reinstalled' thrugh steam on that PC. Nice, thanks.
"
But you know what? The fact is, Gabe Newell, Valve co-founder, has gone on record mocking conventional DRM and stated, paraphrasing, that the mission of Steam is to make buying games, storing games, and accessing games easier and more convenient for the customer. "
And I can find a similar statement from everyone who uses DRM.
"buy a Steam game a bit cheaper than the brick and mortar box cost. "
Since I ahve yet to see steam be cheaper then the damn store a block from my house, it doesn't really hold water.
No, I prefer having resale. In fact I bought Drakensang through steam and now regret it. While it is a FANTASTIC single player RPG, it's not really repeatable to me. So I would like to ahve had the choice to resell it, or give it away. I probably would have given it away.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Diablo I and Diablo II
Assuming steam stay in business forever, so there is that.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
What about my 250GB pr0n collection? Are you suggesting I delete some for a stupid game install? You'll have to pry my (well I'll let you figure that one out) cold, dead and somewhat sticky hand.
AFAIK, all the single-player games on Steam have been cracked anyway, so I'd treat that the same as if I lost a game disc (which happens all the time): I'd "pirate" the game I already paid for. In the mean time, it keeps me legit and makes it so I don't have to keep disc images on my hard drive in case the torrent loses its seeders and no more pop up (if Steam died, there'd be thousands of people pirating the games in the weeks after, so no shortage of torrents to worry about)
As for the multiplayer ones, who the hell would want to play on unregulated servers anyway? That's one thing these DRM schemes have given us, at least: way, way less cheating in online matches. Any multiplayer game with enough of a following will likely find a way to live on, but most would probably just die, which is what almost all of them do anyway. I bought L4D knowing that I won't be able to play it in 10 years--not because of DRM, but because I won't be able to find 4-8 people who want to play it.
Meanwhile, if Steam dies next year and 10 years from now I want to play HL2, I'll just dig my torrented, cracked copy off my Super Laser Holodisc external drive and install it in a VMWare instance of XP, or something.
I've never had a PC that could not display on a SDTV.
The desktop PCs I saw at big-box stores have VGA or DVI out and that's it. All PCs can display on an SDTV with a $50 VGA-to-composite adapter. But because big-box stores don't carry these adapters, the general public doesn't know they exist. There are aftermarket video cards with built-in scan converters, but most home PC owners never seem to replace their video card before throwing out the whole PC.
Nowadays HD is the standard
Sure, there are standards for HDTV transmission. But can you cite a source stating that the majority of U.S. homes with a TV have an HDTV? The latest figure I could find was 34 percent. As of right now, developers of video games designed to display on a TV have to target the rat's nest of mandatory DRM that is game consoles.
and the PC is better at doing that
Then why do so few PC games have a mode designed to split a 32" HDTV, compared to the 19" monitor per player that most PC games assume? It might even be a form of DRM, so that people who want multiplayer have to buy more copies of the game.
"Unless you're regularly blowing all of your monthly bandwidth on torrenting "linux isos", you can stomach a Steam game download"
I'm sorry but you don't have a clue at all, ISP's have become extremely tight with bandwidth. Right now the ISP I am with gives you less then 100GB bandwidth per month for FULL price (over $50 a month), steam, demo's, torrents, youtube, etc, would easily eat that all up in a month. Hell I download trailers from gaming sites that are between 100-500MB and I download a LOT of trailers.
No kidding.
Really, if we distill the arguments down far enough, it becomes clear that Joel was a better host than Mike.
Quick, while they're not looking, somebody run off to the USPTO and file a patent for "technical protection measures," then refuse to license it! We'll be rid of this nonsense forever! (or just until the judge throws the patent out, anyway)
$ make available
is the way to go ... i think i saw a copy of Sims 3 floating around already and its due to be released two weeks from now
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
You can't try to kill the second-hand market without seriously hurting the first-hand market.
I picked up this recent release in my local games store last weekend and was disgusted to discover it has a three installation limit due to DRM - this is despite my carefully reading the packaging before I picked it up - the only thing it says on the box is "Important Notice - This product is copy protected".
To me, this is totally wrong - DRM protection should be mentioned on the packaging, "copy protected" just implies that you cannot make a copy of the disk.
So don't buy this game!
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Don't sell games at all. Just sell subscriptions, even for single player games. Instead of paying 50$, i would pay 5$/mo for that game. That lowers the barrier to something WAY more people can afford. Then there is no way to "pirate", short of cracking into the servers and giving yourself a free account.
Put more games on Steam like systems. Stop charging me for boxes, discs and booklets.
Let's take the case of Bioshock 2.
1) Before the full release, offer a one level demo for free
2) When the game is fully tested and ready to rock, post it as a free download (with the demo option available) on Steam, BT and whatever else
3) If you want to keep playing, you subscribe to the game for a few bucks a month. At first it could be something like 10$ a month, as popularity flags drop the price.
4) Offer deluxe bells and whistles accounts for slightly more.
Then the DRM is just a matter of having the game check in once in while.
Also: Piracy is ship to ship armed robbery. Calling copyright infringement 'piracy' makes light of what is happening in Somalia and overblows kids sharing music.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
'Publishers aren't stupid. They know that DRM doesn't work against piracy,' Carmel explains. 'What they're trying to do is stop people from going to GameStop to buy $50 games for $35, none of which goes into the publishers' pockets. If DRM permits only a few installs, that minimizes the number of times a game can be resold.'
It makes sense to the devs because they aren't thinking like a consumer. Since DRM has become a big thing in the PC gaming world I have pretty much stopped pirating games... and buying them- I have just been playing console games. Wheras I used to buy PC games all of the time I seriously can't remember the last one I bought- I think it was about 2.5 to 3 years ago or so- right before DRM started getting big in the industry.
I will never ever buy a game if I can only install it a limited number of times. If you look at the rate you have to re-install windows, then I guess games will become, use and throw away. But if it's a Excellent game, without DRM, and I really love it. Consider it sold. See? Easy... make things players like!