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Indie Game Dev On the Positive Side To DRM
spidweb writes "The online backlash against DRM has gotten a bit excessive, especially since the purpose of DRM is entirely admirable: to stop thieves and free riders and to help creators actually get paid for their work. This blog entry calls attention to XBox Live, a place where strong DRM is helping to encourage quality games at low prices which make money for their developers. Quoting: 'If I could snap my fingers and give myself the same absolute control over the games I make that XBox Live has over theirs (in return for lower prices), I would. The freedom of the current system is nice, but it comes at too high a cost. Honest people need to pay extra to subsidize thieves. The unfairness is just this side of intolerable, and it's only getting worse. DRM is fair if, for what the corporations take, we get something in return.'"
To me, DRM is about two things. First it's about making sure that people don't actually have control over the things they've ostensibly bought. The Amazon debacle is a prime example of this.
Secondly, it's about trying to create artificial scarcity, which seems to me to be all the wrong strategy.
And, on a different note, I don't think the low prices you're seeing are because of DRM. I think you're seeing them because developing good games shouldn't actually take the gobs of money that it's currently fashionable to throw at the problem. I know of several indie games that seem to be doing OK for themselves completely in the absence of DRM. Word of Goo, and The Penumbra Series.
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If your software has DRM in it, it can't be transferred or resold (first sale), so there is no used market, which increases revenue. It can't be backed up, so if you accidentally destroy the media on which the software is recorded, it must be purchased again, which increases revenue. It can be remotely deactivated, so you have to buy something else to play, which increases revenue. Thus, devs should love DRM in their games.
I like how the reason for high priced games is laid at the feet of piracy, instead of accepting the fact that the prices are based on what the market/gamer can bear. Who needs basic economics knowledge when you have a crusade?
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
I think you're seeing them because developing good games shouldn't actually take the gobs of money that it's currently fashionable to throw at the problem.
But it does take gobs of money if you want to develop a very slick-looking game that, besides its graphics, is the most basic regurgitation of a previously innovative and hugely successful game. There is very rarely significant innovation in subsequent games of a given successful franchise, yet they throw similar amounts of money at the development of each installment. See: COD, Every-EA-Sports-Game, etc. Let alone the development costs for games (and this is most of them) that do nothing more than attempt to mimic the pioneers/true-greats. Ultimately, I think it's because it's infinitely easier, in the corporate setting, to pitch a remake/sequel/imitation of a successful franchise, than to take a risky stab at something truly innovative.
How many hundreds of thousands of indie games are there that have never even approached the success of World of Goo?
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
All the honeyed words in the world won't change the basic, essential, fact that DRM is a system where somebody other than you controls your hardware, against your interests. It cannot work any other way. The purpose of DRM is entirely admirable in pretty much the same way that the purpose of mind control chips would be(just think of all the crime they'd reduce!!).
That's the thing, even if everybody agreed that the objectives of DRM are 100% squeaky clean and wonderful(which is hardly the case, DRM schemes to date have had a nasty habit of trampling all over first sale and fair use, and generally giving the seller substantially greater power than copyright law would grant them) the means by which DRM must be implemented, namely taking control of everybody's property in order to protect yours, are simply unacceptable.
Sure, if DRM actually worked toward its purpose, there wouldn't be as much complaining.
But DRM doesn't prevent piracy. It always get cracked. And furthermore, before it gets cracked, it makes stuff hard to use and not work right.
Ergo, people are faced with a choice: buy the product that is crippled by DRM to the point that you probably won't even be able to play it on your computer, or get the pirated product without DRM for free. That choice leads to DRM not merely failing, but working against its ostensible purpose. After many years of this being painfully obvious in everyone's face that DRM causes piracy, we begin to doubt the motivations for DRM. Maybe helping content creators get paid, isn't what DRM is really for.
In the case of music and movies, it's very clear that it's about controlling what playback equipment people buy, and creating monopolies for "standards" licenses. I can buy a bluray drive pretty cheaply, but a bluray player is expensive. And that is the purpose of DRM: to keep mplayer out of the player market. So it's about making sure someone gets paid, but that someone isn't the content creator. It's Sony's electronics (not movie) division.
Now, on to your xbox gaming rant. You complain about low sales and the high price of your game. And you use DRM. You wish you could lower your price and gain sales. Well, there's one thing you can do that will not lower your sales at all, and will probably raise them: drop the DRM. You're thinking about pirates instead of the customers. Telling customers to join the pirates, isn't going to help your situation. All if takes is for someone to have one problem with your DRM, and you will have converted him to the other side: the pirates' side. Look to your customers.
"The online backlash against DRM has gotten a bit excessive..."
DRM is still popular among game publishers, which leads me to believe there hasn't been enough of a backlash. Geeks like us know about DRM and can choose to avoid it when told of a product that has it, but your Average Joe won't know the difference until it bites him in the ass, and by then it's too late for him to demand a refund. Right now software publishers can sell me a game as part of a retail transaction and then impose additional terms, after the sale, at the point of installation. I see that as a kind of fraud, and say there hasn't been enough of a backlash.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
So difficult to pirate that nobody bothers
So he's not a complete moron in thinking that a "perfect" DRM scheme exists. However, it's pretty stupid to think that something would ever become "so difficult to pirate that nobody bothers" -- remember, it only takes one person to bother.
Defense Grid is ten bucks, and it's giving me more than ten bucks worth of fun. Sure, I'm at Microsoft's mercy, and I don't "own" the product, but hey. Ten bucks.
It's also twenty bucks for the Greenhouse version, which seems more than a bit odd. It's worth mentioning, though, that you do own that one, such as it is -- the only DRM is a single Internet check on first installation, which seems reasonable for a downloaded game.
I charge $28 for a new game. I would LOVE to charge ten bucks. But, to stay in business, I'd have to triple my sales, and that won't happen. Would sales go up? Sure. Would they TRIPLE? Almost impossible.
I don't know about that. You didn't seem to have much trouble getting onto Slashdot, which would get you a fair number of sales. But your general attitude in this article already makes me skeptical, and there's no way I'm paying $28 for what I see in that game. $10? Sure, and if it was good, I'd tell my friends about it. $28? You just lost a sale, buddy.
The result? My games get pirated like crazy,
The question: Would your games be pirated less with more DRM?
More importantly: Even if they were pirated less, would that mean more sales for you? Because if I was pirating your games, and I suddenly couldn't pirate them anymore, I'd probably go pirate another game, not start paying for yours.
DRM is fair if, for what the corporations take, we get something in return.
I will agree with that. However, very often, what we get in return is nowhere near worth the DRM.
An example of a marginally fair trade: Steam. Being able to IM a friend and hop into the game he's playing is cool. Being able to back up games, with a tool that will nicely create DVD-sized files, is very cool. Being able to download every game I own -- saturating my fiber connection -- after a reformat, in case something went wrong with the backup -- and needing only a username and password to recover all my games, and they're even planning to include savegames and settings, at some point -- is awesome.
But this is still a trade many users are unhappy with. I'm online all the time -- many users would like to play their single-player games offline.
An example of a very fair trade: World of Warcraft. The DRM is pretty much inherent in the system -- it connects to a server, and that server is unavailable to anyone who doesn't work for Blizzard. While there have been a few pirate servers, they pretty much have to reverse engineer and/or build from scratch most of the content and gameplay, and there's still the network effect -- if your guild's on a Blizzard server, you're on a Blizzard server. This is a case where you give up pretty much nothing for the DRM to work -- the one thing it takes from you is the ability to play offline.
One of the problems with eBooks is they take away the ability to loan or sell the books you buy online, not to mention the lack of a satisfying physical object, and they still charge the same price for the book.
That is why those of us in the know insist on unencumbered PDFs. I can get one that's watermarked, so I can't easily pirate it to the world, but I can easily share it among friends.
the purpose of DRM is to prevent free riders (aka self-justifying weasels and morally damaged scumbags).
The purpose of the McCarthy trials was to prevent communism from taking over America. It's a noble goal, but the casualties are unacceptable.
If DRM enables pro
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Yes, I've noticed that somehow derivative games seem to be a LOT more expensive to produce. My suspicion is that basically the giant pyramid scheme that is the modern corporation siphons off too much money.
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I absolutely hate DRM -- it creates problems for legitimate users and does virtually nothing to stop piracy.
But... I think that it is attempting (and failing) to address a very real problem. It's all well and good for us to say "just don't worry about the pirates", but it's probably not a long term solution. Eventually, honest users feel like suckers for paying for music/software/movies/etc and they start moving towards taking stuff for free as well. I know that CD sales went up while Napster was big, but it is truly hard to imagine that such a situation unchecked would have continued for, say, a decade. At some point people just decide it's stupid to buy stuff they can get for free.
And as much as we've become accustomed to the idea of free creative works, it's not really a cure-all either. Yes, some stuff will get created even without any notion of intellectual property, but some very valuable stuff won't get created in such a world. So without any other obvious solution to the problem, it's not so hard to see why DRM is attractive to desperate content creators.
I don't have a solution. But I do believe there will be a growing problem for funding digitizable media in the future.
Cheers.
I don't mine the intentions of DRM. I'm all for game developers getting payed for what they make. The reality, though, is that the drm gets cracked and the game gets pirated anyway. So the end result is that the game costs more to make in order to put the DRM in, the user experience is often worse from having to deal with said DRM, and the pirates still do what they do. So nobody wins.
At some point (and it may have arguably already happened with some games) the consumer will be able to a get better game by NOT paying for it, simply because they will be able to find a cracked version that doesn't treat them like a criminal. (ie phoning home regularly for security, getting pissy about being reinstalled, etc.)
I wouldn't have a problem with DRM...
If it didn't violate the First Sale Doctrine.
If it didn't violate the principal of Fair Use.
If it didn't violate my right to format shift.
If it didn't violate my right to backup my data as many times as I want, in any way that I want.
If it didn't violate my right to use my content on any device I want.
If it didn't violate my right to use my content whenever I want and without expiration, even in the event that the content provider no longer exists.
These are all rights that content providers have not been able to bribe politicians to take from us in the US.
These are all rights that DRM can strip away, by making the expression of these rights impossible without circumventing DRM and doing that is criminalized under the DMCA.
DRM doesn't stop piracy in the slightest. A check of any torrent site shows that.
As you rightly said, it's about control. This claim that "honest people subsidize thieves" is absolute nonsense as:
A) Despite the claims to the contrary, most people wouldn't buy the games they pirate anyway (when I did it back in the day it was for the collecting). Also people should be grateful for piracy as they're preserving these titles.
In ten years time, if you want to install Spore for example, will you even be able to install a legitimate copy and get it authorized so you can actually run it? The pirated version will still be around and you'll be able to still use it. DRM like Securom which requires online activation conveniently puts an expiration date on the games you buy. If you can't play them in ten years time, you're only choice will be to buy new games, which is exactly what EA and the like want. Once again, it's about control. Piracy is just a red herring.
B) If piracy ended tomorrow, prices would NOT drop. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a rube. These are folk in the money making business. Look at Starforce protected titles. Uncrackable when they came out. GT Legends took TWO YEARS to crack. Yet the game came out at the exact same price as everything else within that genre. Actually $5 more here.
The reason games are cheap on Xbox Live is nothing to do with piracy, and everything to do with market exposure and standardization. On XBLA games are released pretty much every week, promoted well on release etc... The points system sets down a very rigid price structure.
It's more that than anything else. It seems rather than DRM being the selling point, it's convenience and standard pricing. Stats from the like of Valve have shown that when a game is put out at a cheaper price, sales increase far beyond what was expected.
It would appear that the folk behind Xbox Live have figured this out when laying out the service. It's better to sell 10,000 copies at $10, than 2,000 at $30.
Look at Steam last Christmas. Bioshock sold an astronomical amount due to it being reduced to $5. Left 4 Dead also did the same when Valve reduced the price. So much so they said how surprised they were.
Copyright infringment is stealing. Disturbing the peace is murder. Driving without a license is embezzlement. Any other minor crimes that we can rename to more serious ones?
The same is true for almost all musicians. Almost no musicians who go with a standard record label ever make any money at it either. Which percentage is higher?
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Except its none of their business who owns a particular license after the first sale.
Incorrect. The sole purpose of DRM is to give publishers control over a copy of a work after it has been ostensibly sold to a customer. (Its effectiveness in achieving this purpose is a separate question.)
It is laudable that you would only choose to use this control for legitimate purposes, but that does not make it the fundamental purpose of the scheme.
Furthermore, even if, in your benevolence, only intended to use DRM for this purpose, you would still stifle all uses of your work unforeseen by you. Would you have a problem with a legitimate buyer of your work using it on an emulator to enjoy it again twenty years from now? I suppose not. But if the current legal climate persists you would make a criminal of him.
No. DRM is a naked play for control. An attempt to sell something but still act as its owner. Your good intentions do not change this.
Can you substantiate this claim? I can't imagine how any cost burden is placed upon you or your legitimate customers by people who aren't your customers copying your work.
I suppose you mean that the costs must be defrayed over a smaller number of copies due to some imagined lost sales. But the question of what your costs would be if people who obtain your work illicitly obtained it legitimately is meaningless. If you attempt to discover the answer to this question experimentally by shackling your actual, paying customers with DRM you'll never know what your sales would have been without it. Much more importantly, you may or may not achieve your goals relating to those who aren't your customers, but you will certainly abuse those you claim to be attempting to protect.
The choice is yours: punish your customers out of a sense of moral outrage, or align your perception of who your customers are with reality. Either way, you, and only you, must live with the consequences.
-Peter
Many people that have been burned by a shitty game will pirate before buying. As piracy increases, so do sales.
I recall reading a blog post from one of those indy devs, trying to figure out how much a "pirated copy" is really worth. I believe the final guesstimate was about 5% of the price. (which is to say, 1/20 pirates may buy your game if it's good)
However, you also have to factor in evangelism. Most pirates are very vocal about being pirates, and can offer unbiased opinions on whether a game is shit or not. I know some pirates that downloaded Fallout 3, and they've tried to get me to download it. I prefer to buy my games, so I'm waiting patiently for it to show up on Steam for $10. Ultimately this is an extra sale.
Those same pirates told me to avoid UT3, and go with Section 8 instead.
I've read the comments here with some interest, though I think they parrot a lot of conventional wisdom about DRM and piracy that is, at best, unproven. And is, most likely, quite wrong.
I never say DRM can be unbreakable. Of course. But I AM saying you can make a system where the prices are low enough and the protection is strong enough that it's not worth pirating. For example, XBox Live. And it works beautifully.
As for rights. I don't like having to put locks on the games/books/songs people own. But hey, in a democracy, we all get what the worst of us deserve. If DRM is the price we have to pay for creators to be able to afford to create, place the blame where it belongs. Pirates. I think there's room to worry about the rights of EVERYONE.
Finally, I've been getting the comment that people who pirate will never ever buy a game. I've never seen one bit of hard evidence to prove this. Not all people who pirate are identical. I promise you that if the price is low and the bother of pirating is high (again, XBox Live) some people will buy the game who might otherwise have stolen it.
- Jeff Vogel
Spiderweb Software
Fantasy RPGs for Mac and Windows.
http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com
If the contract says otherwise, then they didn't sell it to you as people commonly understand the concept. That's the basic assumption behind the doctrine of first sale.
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Not if their contract says otherwise
Contracts are not allowed to override basic legal rights.
It's more that you have to "polish" more to get people to buy it.
Take any game that spawned a genre. Usually, they don't come with too stellar graphics or controls. Even for the time it was created in. But they were genuinely new. Lemmings didn't have such omfgwowzomg graphics, even for its time, but it was something NEW. In a sequel, when you can't live off the new car smell of the game anymore, you have to pump resources into eye candy.
And eye candy costs. You have to hire more and maybe better artists. You have to streamline the code because you're now dealing with way more graphics overhead. You have to work on balancing and streamline the interface or else people will go "yeah, better graphics, but $annoying_nuisance_of_original is still there, basically the same game".
In short, you have to throw a LOT more money at sequels than at originals. Mainly because the "new game" bonus doesn't exist.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Why is it so damned hard to understand? You want folks to buy, yes? Then give them a good value for their dollar!
Why is it so damned hard to understand this position has no validity in the least. If this position were true, piracy for iPhone and Android would simply not exist. The simple truth is, piracy is flat out killing Android and even with the major rooting hoops for iPhone users, piracy is very much alive. Even more insulting, most quality applications on these platform provide extremely high bang for the buck. Hell, even many applications which have many hundreds, if not thousands of man hours still cost $0.99, or not far off.
The simply fact is, according to a recent UK study, 60% feel they are entitled to steal anything IP related they want, if for no other reason then they feel they are entitled to do so. And yet despite this unjustified self entitlement, piracy is killing small developers and FORCING prices to be higher. Which brings us to the second lie often used to justify piracy. High prices, just like every other product, are often a reflection of fraud and theft. Pirates steal and justify it by claiming they do so because prices are so high. In reality, prices are often so high because they steal.
The simple truth is, piracy is seriously destroying the commercial potential of Android. Because of piracy, using the App Store for a scaled basis of comparison, even the largest of Android developers are making, at most, 1/8th what they should be making. Many others are simply not making anything despite having huge pirate install bases. I can't stress it enough, piracy absolutely is hurting developers, deters others from entering the market, and forces costs to remain high.
So next time you hear someone justifying piracy because of high prices, kick them in the nuts for being an idiot.
The next time you hear someone justifying piracy because no one gets hurt, kick them in the nuts for being an idiot.
The next time you hear someone justifying piracy because viral is helping, kick them in the nuts for being an idiot.
The next time you hear someone justifying piracy because of DRM, kick them in the nuts for being an idiot.
The simply truth is, pirates are nothing more than selfish, self serving, self entitled, idiots, who are hurting everyone.
The next time a pirate goes to work, I hope they don't get paid...after all, no one got hurt and nothing was stolen. That's EXACTLY the same as piracy. That's how piracy makes developers feel because that's what pirates do to developers. And if it were not for these idiots stealing everything they can touch, there wouldn't even be a need for DRM. These douches are creating all the problems which they then use to justify creating these problems. So go on, have you kicked a douche pirate in the nuts lately? If anyone deserves it, they do!
Aaawwww, shove it up your ass!! You an all the other citation Nazi's who will not allow a single item or point you disagree with to be made anywhere, anytime without an impeccable peer reviewed source, properly cited and referenced.
A curse on Wikipedia and the [citation needed] meme. It would all be very well if the meme people actually promoted critical thinking, healthy scepticism and proper fact checking. But as it is, the meme just promotes the petty and frankly groundless rebuttals typified by the parent post. Instead of actually bothering to critique specific points in the grandparent, the whole thing is simply tarnished with the [citation needed] brush in a fairly transparent attempt to outright dismiss it.
Considering that the meme originated on Wikipedia, it's not surprising that its purpose has twisted beyond its ostensible meaning. [citation needed] was always just another example of the stonewalling, wiki-lawyering and petty bureaucracy that thrive in that institution. From there, it has moved smoothly into the mainstream as a general purpose discussion terminating cliche. I have never seen actual honest debaters of any kind ask for citations in this way. Its a rhetorical technique, not an honest rebuttal.
There are points in the grandparent which could have done with some justification. Maybe. The one about the 60% feeling entitled to "steal" IP. The Android and iPhone being sunk by piracy was pretty speculative. Android developers (?!) making 1/8 less than iPhone developers. It would be nice to have all these things confirmed, but I'm not going to dismiss the entirety of the post and lower the tone of the debate by jumping up and yelling; "[Citation Needed]!! [Citation Needed]!!! Unless you can prove it to me, it's not true!!!!"
So, take your tricks back to the playground or some other net forum. Adults are talking.
May the Maths Be with you!