Slashdot Mirror
Game Industry Vets On DRM
An anonymous reader points out an article at SavyGamer in which several game industry veterans were polled for their opinions on DRM. Cliff Harris of Positech Games said he didn't think his decision to stop using DRM significantly affected piracy of his games, accepting it as an unavoidable fact. "Maybe a few of the more honest people now buy the game rather than pirate it, but this sort of thing is impossible to measure. You can see how many people are cracking and uploading your game, but tracking downloads is harder. It seems any game, even if it's $0.99 has a five hour demo and is DRM-free and done by a nobel-peace prize winning game design legend, will be cracked and distributed on day one by some self righteous teenager anyway. People who crack and upload games don't give a damn what you've done to placate gamers, they crack it anyway." Nihal de Silva of Direct2Drive UK said his company hasn't noticed any sales patterns indicating customers are avoiding games with DRM. Richard Wilson of TIGA feels that customers should be adequately warned before buying a game that uses DRM, but makes no bones about the opinion that the resale of used games is not something publishers should worry about.
I think piracy is unavoidable in a non-subscription based model like most standalone games. The target audience (teenagers) sees themselves as poor, or actually is poor, and is thus unwilling to pay for something they can get for free. Others undoubtedly resent the fact they are being asked to actually pay for a game, and so are willing to crack them. :P
I would like to see the demographics on who *does* pay for games and see if I am write, or if people of all ages are cheap bastards
Now the MMO world has it much better off, since you need a subscription to actually play the game at all. Of course that undoubtedly leads to a lot of problems with stolen CC numbers and the like, so perhaps you are no further ahead. By requiring a CC number to even register, they of course limit their potential sales massively as well.
Sadly I think this is going to lead to games which are free to play, but contain targeted in-game advertising down the road. I don't want to see how badly that warps the game designs we see as a result.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
even if it's $0.99 has a five hour demo and is DRM-free and done by a nobel-peace prize winning game design legend, will be cracked and distributed on day one by some self righteous teenager anyway.
Huh? What's to crack if there is no DRM?
Pirate the whole game, I can see that happening, but that's cracker-lackin!
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Then just see it as a 'service' for the people that do buy your game to not use digital restrictions. Those are your customers, not the ones downloading it. They probably wouldn't have bought it even if it was impossible to download anyway.
What they should discuss is the negative impact on legitimate customers rather than on piracy...
For one example, I legally own *two* copies of Red Alert 2 yet I have them both no-CD cracked. Why? Because I don't want to have to go find the CD each time I want to play and worse still the game even supports playing back Audio CD while you play but yet that requires you to juggle the RA2 and Audio CD constantly just to get the damn thing to work!
The best thing to happen to DRM has been Steam. They have a fairly healthy level of DRM or at least the Valve games do... I hear Bioshock 2 has Steam + "Games for Windows" + SecureRom? What the heck? And an activation limit on Steam?! ... Well Steam *used* to be good for consumers before they started letting publishers do whatever the hell they want.
I've bought a number of Ubisoft games over the years. That won't be true if their new releases start "featuring" a constant tether to the internet. Frankly, I'll stick with the CD checks (or Steam). Steam isn't my favorite, but at least it doesn't force a constant connection to the publisher's servers to play a game!
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
"The security measures used to restrict the unauthorized use of this software may cause your computer to experience partial or total loss of functionality, and may conflict with other software or hardware you may have installed on this machine"
It's true enough, and worse is that they are not going to be responsible for restoring your system if it does in fact get hosed.
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
DRM, nowadays at least, isn't so much about piracy but more about killing the used games market. Of course they'll tell you it's about piracy, but it really isn't
The games pirate you...
Sorry. Had to be done.
"It seems that we are at the age where life stops giving us things, and starts taking them away..." Indiana Jones
I generally download my games, and if they are good I buy them. So I never have problems with DRM, and I do still support the companies. Net result: a huge pile of unopened dvds (even in the original wrap), and no problems with any game.
"...and is DRM-free ... will be cracked and distributed on day one ..."
Why? If it isn't DRM'd, there's nothing to crack.
For my games, the ones I bought, I always download the no-cd cracks since I hate having to find the bloody disks whenever I want to play.
(Especially if I'm using my laptop, I really don't want to drag around a load of extra junk.)
Also, I've had some DRM schemes make the games slow and laggy or even mess up my cd/dvd burners ability to make disks.
(For the trolls that want to go off on that, I back up and archive to disks, really.)
As to the average user, they have no idea that DRM is even there, much less possibly the root of their problem. They tend to assume it's a virus or something.
That, and SACD. Still locked down.
It seems any game, even if it's $0.99 has a five hour demo and is DRM-free and done by a nobel-peace prize winning game design legend, will be cracked and distributed on day one by some self righteous teenager anyway.
A DRM-free game doesn't need a crack.
Just pointing that out...
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
The trend is that the average age of gamers is now in the 30s.
What this has to do with DRM is the fact that, at our age (yes, I am in my 30s) what we have the least is time - at the point in your life where you do have a decent income, money is much less of an issue than when you're a teen - if all I have is 1 or 2 hours a day for gaming I don't want to have to jump through extra hoops to play a game and I sure don't want to see my gaming time wasted because my Internet connection is down or the gaming servers are down and the games requires remote authentication (something that adds no value for me).
The second point is that, when you actually work for a living you can relate the true value of money to the time it takes you to earn it. The cost of a game is then more than a mathematical figure, it's measure in how long do you have to work to pay for it.
The third point is the increased awareness of the value of things that comes with age. To put it simply, a game fulfils one's need for entertainment and escapism and bad games cost twice as much as good movies and 3 times as much as good books and yet have less entertainment value.
That said I still pirate games, and in the end it boils down to 1 reason: ...
- There is no more try-before-you-buy for most games anymore - the age of Game Demos is gone. I don't want to waste my hard earned money (and I do know how hard it was to earn that money) in a game just to take it home and discover that it sucks, it has too many bugs or it refuses to run in my system due to DRM. I've had plenty of situations where I would buy a game and it would either not work properly, turn out to be little fun or exceptionally short even though gaming sites had been hyping it to no end. At this point (after 20! years of gaming) the gaming industry and the gaming press have shown me again and again that they are not to be trusted
So what I do nowadays is I download the game, try it and if it works ok and I like it, I buy it. Just recently I got X3:TC and bought it as soon as I found out that the game maker had removed DRM in the latest patch (in fact I even got the Gold edition since I trully believe they deserve the money).
Game publishers are simply greedy. Rental Model or Sales model pick one.
You want DRM, the right to restrict your customers from reselling their games, then pick a rental model where your customer pays X amount per time unit Y.
You want to make +$60 per game sale off your customers then get rid of the DRM and don't try to prevent your customers from reselling their games.
Don't mix the two because it isn't working and legit customers being driven away. If game publishers came up with a fair model then more customers would go through the official channels. Instead they're trying to rip customers off by selling them something for a lot of money which they don't own.
I personally prefer the rental model and here's why:
- Game Publishers aren't going to change and will continue this BS anyway.
- You're not putting down $60 just to find the game sucks.
- The more you play the game the more money they make
- They have more incentive to make games fun rather then BS you into buying something that sucks.
this is all well and good till they turn the god damn server off- I loved ravenshield but can't now play the iron wrath expansion over lan because the server has been turned off. Ubisoft thereofre will never receive another dime off me as i cannot trust them to keep my access to games on, if i pay i want to be able to play when and how i want not some snotty jumped up non game playing executive who is probably sleeping with his PA.
From summary:
Cliff Harris of Positech Games said he didn't think his decision to stop using DRM significantly affected piracy of his games, accepting it as an unavoidable fact.
That was an argument FOR using DRM?
"I have a rock that keeps away shoplifters, it only cost me $ton_of_money annually, and I use it to knock customers on their head every time they buy something. Now, the rate of shoplifting is the same both with and without the rock, so I see no reason to stop using it."
It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
Don't allow users to even see the screen without making receiving a certified letter from the publisher with a secret code. Don't let the user even play the full game. Force them to download large chunks of it from your server after releasing only half of it on disc.
Store integral parts of every level on a master server that can only be accessed by pausing the game and entering the secret code.
It will sell trillions of copies!
Living in Korea, I see the sort of extreme example of piracy run rampant. Korean companies scarcely consider the idea of a game that isn't online because it would be universally pirated that very day. They'd never see a dime from it.
I teach in a private academy where I see lots of kids with Nintendo DS's; I never see real games in them. They universally use this R4 chip that has all the games loaded on it. Because of this, Nintendo barely considers them a market. Meanwhile OS bootlegging is so prevalent, that people no longer even expect a legitimate OS with a new system. Microsoft even jacked the price up on Vista when they released it here to try to bleed some of the losses out of the few remaining customers.
I don't support DRM or prosecuting old ladies, but I also think measures to prevent piracy must be taken in some capacity lest it irreparably warp the industry like it has here in Korea.
Well no shit. Last time i check the population is growing, not at a standstill or decline. So us older folks who grew up in a non DRM gaming environment to what we have now are the ones that avoid that shit with a plague unlike our younger counter parts who most of which probably have no clue what DRM is. If they do, they don't give a shit, they're having fun playing their game one way or another. It wasn't their money if they bought it and they become a "rebel" once they hack it and have bragging rights to their friends to sound uber cool!
However, this doesn't justify DRM's methods of preventing piracy. I think this guy has it right: http://www.metacafe.com/watch/yt-mt4BpnfAN-o/how_anti_piracy_screws_over_people_who_buy_pc_games/ :D
Enjoy!
Sometimes, the answer is to just destroy it all.
become productive and do some coding!
Said the guy trolling on Slashdot....
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Personally I do not like MicroTransactions. I feel like I am being Nickle and Dimed the entire way. However I do recognise that this is a way of getting people to "buy" the game rather than pirate. I would suggest that both "buying the game" and MicroTransactions can co-exist. ie I would LOVE a gamemodel where you could do the following 1 - Free Download - MicroTransations automatically turned on 2 - At any point in time the user can chose to "Buy the game" at the normal sticker price and will get access to all "MicroTransaction" content. Of course, when significant additional content (ie expansions) are added, this is not a microtransaction, this is another standalone product that has its own cost and microtransactions. This would NOT eliminate piracy, but it would take a significant step towards more user friendly business model and should enouch more people to play and buy (and no more f'ing DRM)
Then stop doing it. DRM has a development and/or licensing cost associated with it. If using is the same as not using it, then don't use it, and you'll save that money. It's very simple to do a value proposition when the value is zero.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
That is why I do not own a gaming PC anymore, just a normal console. For the view times a month when I have time to play.
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
Could a dongle-like thing which handles an integral part of the game (e.g. rules or AI characters etc) be used as a way of allowing full functionality only for physical owners? Of course this will cut people out who don't have a serial/parallel/USB port but on the other hand doesn't come with the problems associated with resale.
Of course, the dongle will be cracked as soon as the game comes out. But make it sufficiently complex (perhaps it could handle some processing?) and cracking could be put off, maybe for long enough for publishers to take notice.
(Nitpickers: I know that the dongle could have an accumulator, dongles are not in fashion, not all ports are equal, such a solution could be prohibitively expensive in cost or labour and so on. Consider the principle...)
DRM, that is Digital Right Management, is actually three evils in one.
First of all, many publishers view DRM as a way to manage (read increase) their rights while reducing the rights of the consumers, i.e. restrict the resale, activation limits, remote killswitches etc.
Secondly, many legitimate consumers find DRM annoying - they purchased a product but cannot use it as they see fit - be it that cannot transfer their music CD to their MP3 player, or play that game without contacting the publisher's master server.
And thirdly DRM is an excellent excuse NOT purchase something, but rather obtain it illegally. After all, stealing from a "nice company" does feel wrong. Screwing some corporate morloch that does its best to screw you feels much less wrong.
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
A better model then DRM could be to show the user how much the developer has lost due to piracy.
This number could disappear if the user owns a legitimate copy.
Pirates could be prompted how much they believe the game is worth.
That's it, no wierdness or making it difficult to copy the game whatsoever. However, there is that text which informs the user how much longer it's going to take to get the funds to develop the next game, or how long the studio is going to last until the funds run dry.
All this shouldn't be intrusive, so it won't give any motivation to "crack" the game.
Hell I beat mass effect 2 before it hit the store shelves. Sad that we've gone from worrying about virii in the pirated 0 day releases to worrying about the legal copys DRM screwing things up.
Well, since we are talking about DRM, I should mention Good Old Games.
Basically, they sell "old games", without any DRM whatsoever, and that are 7/Vista/XP compatible.
And although they have some fairly "recent" titles (Painkiller, for example), I don't recall seeing any of their games on the P2P networks. Or any cracks. Oh, right, they don't have anything to crack to begin with :)
Oh and the games are dirty cheap as well. And legal.
I think that the person that mention that this should be about beneficts for the legitimate client is right.
In the GOG case, I can install the game wherever I want, when I want, no activation or "phone-home" or whatsoever. And they really provide a "value added" service: some games aren't available anywere else (even P2P networks), and they have gone the extra step of making them playable on the modern versions of Windows.
So the publisher cashes in their older titles, instead of clinging on them and not doing anything with them (like actually selling the games) and/or chasing whoever dares to mess with it, i.e. fan-made remakes, reverse engineering and things like that, GOG cashes in with the nostalgia of the clients, and the quality of the majority of the offerings, and the clients cash in as well, being able to play quality games for low-low prices, and not having to worry about if SecureRom will break their Windows.
Just a quick mention of Steam. I like the concept, and they are doing some things right. But I hope they don't let the publishers run wild with the platform (the Bioshock 2 "protection" seems insane! DRM on top of Steam and validations?!).
"A sysadmin is a cross between a detective, a police officer, a gardener, a doctor and a fireman"
I actually stopped buying many games because of the very poor quality information on the back of game boxes - specifically to do with what's required for local LAN gaming.
If you go back to the days of Red Alert 2, for example, it was possible to buy one copy of a game but install it on multiple PCs on a local LAN so that you could invite a friend over and enjoy a LAN gaming session. However, whereas whether you could do this or not used to be on the back of the game box, these days there is no mention of it - I suspect because now no games really support it, the games company preferred option being to connect to their games servers (e.g. Steam).
I don't necessarily want to be able to buy one copy of a game and install it for simultaneous play on multiple machines, but I also think that it's a bit extreme to be expected to buy a copy of the full game for each machine in order to do it - the classic recent example of this I came across was "World In Conflict Complete Edition" which, no matter how much I tried, wouldn't let me do local LAN play with it.
Many years ago I used to download cracked games from Usenet and hand them freely out to friends. But for the sake of paying out a few pounds (by the time the games get to the budget labels) compared to the problems with spreading viruses and having to explain to a lot of those friends how to install the games and get them working, I just stopped doing it.
As Cliff Harris says in the article, people will always copy stuff that costs any amount of money, sometimes only because of the "prestige" of being the first one to do it. So it's about time games companies realise this and stop with the alienating the honest customers - i.e. give us the play features we want (like LAN play facility) and stop with the restrictive DRM mechanisms.
It's truly ridiculous, in these days of optical drive-less netbooks, that a game that can be fully installed onto a hard disk still requires you to carry around the game disk with you, especially as if that disk gets damaged in transit, you have to pay for a replacement copy.
Nowadays, I still game a lot but I either play Open Source/free games or buy them on Good Old Games where optical disks and DRM are not a problem.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
"People who crack and upload games don't give a damn what you've done to placate gamers, they crack it anyway."
He's right. A while ago somebody joked here that no one would ever crack the bad games. However, there are many games where you wonder why someone would bother, but the pirated versions are still there.
Nihal de Silva of Direct2Drive UK said his company hasn't noticed any sales patterns indicating customers are avoiding games with DRM.
That should read:
Nihal de Silva of Direct2Drive UK, whose business model is resale of DRM-laden games, said his company hasn't noticed any sales patterns indicating customers are avoiding games with DRM, because the opposite would promptly put Direct2Drive out of business.
I buy games (wish I had more time to actually play all of them). I will not buy a DRM-ed game though because DRM is annoying and it isn't really a purchase but a rental.
DRM isn't about piracy in any industry, gaming included. Pirates will pirate, DRM or not. Publishers are trying to kill the second hand game market with internet checks and they're succeeding. They have no issues with annoying their paying customers by loading viruses on their computers and performing internet checks in the process of making an extra buck.
This is all great, and I'm glad some developers are coming to these realizations. However, I have one irk about the wording in the article:
"It seems any game, even if it's $0.99 has a five hour demo and is DRM-free and done by a nobel-peace prize winning game design legend, will be cracked and distributed on day one by some self righteous teenager anyway."
He mentions "DRM-free", and then says it will be "cracked". If it's DRM-free there is no cracking involved. It's just distribution at that point. Otherwise it's not DRM-free.
Just a little pet-peeve of mine thats all.
Harris bemoans the fact that, regardless what effort he puts into a game, someone will crack it. But, he's attempting to learn the wrong lesson.
It isn't that people (/ consumers) are intrinsically fair.
It isn't that crackers are acting out of some noble desire to rid the world of DRM.
The lesson here is simple: DRM doesn't work. There's no real ROI on it, so don't put in on games and make it difficult or unplayable for your paying customers. Period.
mmm... yeah... You see, we're putting the cover sheets on all TPS reports now before they go out...
Here's the thing: annoying "anti-piracy" measures NEVER work. They only interrupt the pirates momentarily - do you honestly believe there won't be 20 groups of hackers racing to see who can crack this protection first, from the moment it exists the pressing plant (and maybe before)?
Older anti-piracy techniques have included: special floppy formatting (that messed with anyone who had slightly misaligned read heads), dongles (more for app software, but still an existing measure), getting the player to enter something from the manual or code wheel, keeping the CD in the drive, installing special DLLs or drivers, special background processes, online activation.
All of these initiatives have not only failed but placed an expiry date on the games "protected". Modern OS doesn't support the anti-piracy files? You can never play it again. Don't have the manual, dongle or code wheel any more? Activation server taken offline? You're screwed. Want to install games on your laptop but don't want to carry 30 CDs everywhere you go? Tough shiat (unless you can locate a crack, of course).
Meanwhile, the people who pirated the game and never had any intention of ever buying it? They might have needed to wait an extra day for the game to be cracked, but other than that it's nothing to them. The people who are affected are the people who bought the game - and they're getting pissed off. Pissed off people don't pay you money for your products. It's like those stupid anti-piracy ads on DVDs. People who buy the DVD get pissed off because they can't skip the "stop being a dirty pirate" ads. The people who download the rips will NEVER see the ads in the first place!
Piracy has been the boogeyman of software ever since I got my first computer in 1983 (ZX Spectrum FTW!). Since then, the games industry has grown from a small, hobbyist industry into a multi-billion dollar industry where new releases can outsell Hollywood movies.
If the PC market has problems compared to the consoles, the industry should try removing some of the barriers they place in front of their legitimate customers (DRM, incomplete games that need patches to become playable, unnecessary DX10 requirements, stupidly high minimum specs, etc.) instead of whining about people downloading a few copies. Especially when some people only turn to the pirate copies after having major problems with the legit version.
DRM, CD/DVD-checks, password tests etc only affect the paying customer and as seen in past games it even can do harm to the game itself. The guy who uses the cracked version will never be annoyed by DRM, will never have to search for the CD/DVD and will never need to look up a password.
Also: Illegal downloads don't equal missed sales. Those downloads are for free, and the kid who downloaded it probably never would have had the money to buy those 100 pirated games on his HD anyway. He maybe would have been able to buy one or two, and perhaps he even did!
Because obviously, a story where several people who make games for a living give in-depth views about DRM, is less important than a story where a random blogger writes his thoughts on the subject.
Vets? Seriously? Someone thought that word is the proper word in this context? Perhaps "bets", but wow... I want to say I can't believe someone let that pass, but I can believe it. Monkeys.
To many, piracy is a sport. To others, hoarding pirated wares is a sport. Don't even play them, it's just a bigger e-penis. The rest of us just buy/play games normally.
Twinstiq, game news
You're confusing "ripoff" with "gamble".
That's because gambling is more often than not a rip-off. Case in point: state lotteries, where a $1.00 ticket has an expected value of 50 cents. Possibly the only forms of organized gambling that isn't a rip-off are casino blackjack, in which basic strategy and card counting reward the skilled, and casino poker, in which players are just renting a table, and a skilled player can clean up.
and you won't see any offline single player games.
How much do mobile data plans cost in Korea? Or do they not have handheld video games there?
Anybody who wants to pirate the game, can. There'll be a cracked copy available for download within days. DRM is not going to force anybody to pay for a game if they would rather have it free.
So the pirates are all playing their games without DRM. They don't have to make sure there's a disc in the drive... They don't have to wait while it phones home... They don't have to worry about how many times they've re-installed the software... They don't have to install extra security software to protect the publisher's revenue stream... They don't have to worry about the DRM servers shutting down, or their account getting banned, or somebody else stealing their key and being unable to play their game...
And the paying customers, who shelled out $50+ of their hard-earned cash, have to deal with all the DRM crap.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
... thank the pirates for the no-CD/DVD cracks as I'm damned well not going to carry around a pile of CD/DVDs just so I can play a damned game that I bought while travelling.
Internet access required is even worse as I regularly visit locations where there is NO internet access, so I guess that Ubisoft lost a customer although I can't really think of any MUST-REALLY-GOTTA-HAVE-IT Ubisoft games coming up anyways. Always REQUIRING internet access and cloud saving is a VERY VERY bad idea. The ability to play w/o internet access would be MUCH less onerous, and I don't see the value in cloud saving UNLESS they ALSO have plans to eventually remove the internet access AND cloud saving requirement ow you're just temporarily renting the game until they decided to end support for it. i.e. How many of you still play old games, say Planescape Torment? Now Interplay is long gone, so how would you feel about not being able to play that game because it wanted to talk to some server about starting up and then again when you wanted to save. Not to mention games that have game save bugs that 3rd party tools fix if the dev is unwilling or slow to release a fix plus would Ubisoft really go fix your saved games for you or would they just pile more cruft on the "client", which is what this really is. It's an MMO, but not really. It has all the baggage of one, yet not the dubious value of one plus I can see their next move, charge for save slots, etc. on a monthly basis.
And then there are the companies, e.g. Egosoft that historically have removed copy-protection from their games(X2, X3: Reunion, X3: Terran Conflict) amongst other, in which case I, generally, wait to install and play the game until they have released their CP removal patch.
DRM doesn't stop ALL piracy (obviously), but that doesn't mean it doesn't stop ANY piracy. Using the argument that DRM is useless because people will still pirate seems as flawed as the argument that laws against murder are useless because people will still murder each other (no, I'm not comparing pirates to murderers, it's a reductio ad absurdum).
I'm as much against DRM as the next guy (gog.com FTW!), but I think the argument that publishers should drop it because it doesn't stop ALL piracy is fallacious. Better arguments are about the impact it has on paying customers and the potential things like internet activation have to stop people being able to play their games altogether when (not if) the servers go dark; that is my #1 reason why I avoid Steam.
Which country might that be, and how much does immigration cost?
And am seeing more and more people change their decisions as they are impacted by DRM on software they actually purchased, but can no longer use.
Those flash cards are just waiting to get lost or misplaced. When I got my daughter a DS, I got an R4 (clone). When she gets a new game, I hop over to one of the pirate sites and download the ROM to put on her R4. That way all her games are in the unit, and all the original cards are safe in the closet.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Just a tip. No one wants to jump through hoops, even if the game is 'locked down' it will still be pirated and cracked. I'll slap a shiny $100 bill on it. Also who's going to pay for my bandwidth since I only get an alloted amount each month. Maybe I should send them a bill if I'm stuck downloading the content that should have been on the disc.
Om, nomnomnom...
Is that the average age of the player or the average age of the buyer? A mom who has a child at 22 and buys an E10+ rated video game at 33 is likely to be buying it for herself but just as likely to be buying it for her child.
organized game weekends?
Not if dad wants the family PC kept at home so he can use it. I've seen several cases where people in a household share fewer PCs than there are residents. If there are multiple PCs, all but one is obsolete by gaming standards.
and laptops are becoming more and more common
Would you want to game on a PC with a Voodoo3? If not, then you probably wouldn't want to game on a PC with an Intel GMA. It's good for watching Good Morning America, but when it comes to gaming, it's more like Graphics My Ass.
www.slysoft.com
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
"...the resale of used games is not something publishers should worry about."
The resale of used games is our INALIENABLE RIGHT. If you worry about it, you've got more serious problems...in your head. See 17 U.S.C. 109(a) & (c).
I know I'm not the only example that matters, but I buy almost all my games on Steam these days. When buying on Steam, I check the listing for third party DRM.
If your product has third-party DRM on Steam, I DO NOT BUY IT. Period. No exceptions.
You can check this as well. There are a few where I was misinformed or the terms changed after purchase (Damn you Far Cry 2!!!), but I'd like to point out Borderlands, which I paid full price for and enjoy thoroughly, and the LACK of either of the DLCs, since they use third-party DRM over Steam's. I've heard that I'm missing nothing with Moxxi, but Zombie Island was very very fun.
The preceding comment is my own, and in no way construes an opinon of the Emperor of Mankind.
So, according to these -biased sources - DRM or the lack thereof does not change piracy rates. It is strange that the conclussion from such find is to continue doing it. If DRM does no effect whatsoever there is no point in adding it...
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Don't allow users to even see the screen without making receiving a certified letter from the publisher with a secret code. Don't let the user even play the full game. Force them to download large chunks of it from your server after releasing only half of it on disc.
Store integral parts of every level on a master server that can only be accessed by pausing the game and entering the secret code.
Well, it's not quite a certified letter, but if you accept the Battle.net Authenticator as the secret code you need to enter, Blizzard pretty much already does that. Sure, you only need to enter the secret code once per gaming session and not once per level, but that's close enough, I think.
And you forgot the part where you charge your players $15/month for the privilege of downloading the other half of the game.
It will sell trillions of copies!
Well, maybe not trillions, but World of Warcraft is up in the tens of millions.
And you thought you were joking, didn't you?
Try googling these words: "offline", "steam", "problems". You will notice many reports of "offline mode" simply not working. It happened to me three times in last two months. It works for few days or weeks and then you are greeted by the "Connection Error", and "Unable to Connect". I mean, unable to connect?! Steam is in "offline mode", what the heck is trying to do and connect to anything to being with!? Of course once I get to a wireless spot (I don't have internet where I live currently) and connect, my "offline mode" continues to work, for a few weeks at least. Yes, the offline mode requires internet connection if you run in it for more than few weeks or so. Try googling those words and you will be surprised how common this is. People got all mad few weeks ago when Ubisoft announced their 100% internet DRM scheme, yet Steam has had a similar thing going for years. I leave that discrepancy to be cased by the fact that Half-Life fanbois are not the brightest folks out there and anything Steam related is sacrosanct.
The proverbial "99c game" will be cracked because crackers crack. If it's 99c, it'll sell like mad, even if the game is horrible.
When the game prices are good, whether on gogamer or a steam sale, I buy the game. No game is worth $60 to me. Torchlight is the perfect example, great game, right price. I bought it when the price was higher and wasn't even mad when it went down to $5 on sale. On the contrary, I told friends to go pick it up!
Even games I've already purchased, I'll buy again if they're on steam and cheap. UT, Q4, CoH, etc. Just for the ease of installation factor.
--- Do you believe in the day?
There is no market for used PC games anymore. Nobody in their right mind will buy a used PC game anymore.
8-10 years ago it was as commonplace and safe as buying a used book.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I have never really minded game copy protection too much, until recently. I got a new game for Christmas (Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War II by THQ) and finally decided to install and play it a couple of weeks ago. It took over and hour and half and 5 GBs on my hard drive before I was finally able to play and by then I had about lost interest.
First it had to install Steam on my computer and I had to go out and create an account for that.
Then it had to install 4+ GBs of game on my computer which took about 20 mins, why don't games give the option of using content from the DVD anymore?
Then Steam had to download a bunch of updates before it would let me play, about 40 more minutes.
Then once I finally got the game started Games for Windows/Windows Live made me create a login which failed repeatedly from inside the game so I had to exit and do it from a web browser. More time wasted.
Then, after I got back in to the game and logged in to Windows Live and then told me I needed an update for that. But then, it failed to download the update, and refused to let me play the game without it. After searching around in forums and FAQs I found that I had to download a Windows Hotfix for XP to provide some download ability that Vista comes with by default. Finally, after manually installing a Hotfix and rebooting and installing the Windows Live update, after another half hour or so, it let me play.
After all of that, I barely wanted to play, I tried one quick level and called it a day. This is not even to mention all of the new processes like Steam that I had running even after a reboot (which I proceeded to clean up). All in all, I think I will be avoiding anything that uses Steam or Windows Live in the future.
Nevermore.
If it's being cracked then it wasn't DRM-free now was it?
> But on the other side, you ignore something that should be obvious. All the hackers/crackers out there are not your friend. They laugh their asses off as you install the cracked game and they take control of your box.
You have to have some sense about what sort of cracks you use. After a while, you recognize the more trustworthy release groups. I've never been owned and I've cracked plenty of games I bought, though I wrote one keygen myself (I never distributed it, and I told the author how to harden it).
That said, it's enough of a hassle that I prefer to buy DRM-free games, like those made by PopCap. Even Dragon Age: Origins ended up with nothing more than a CD-check, so someone must be getting the message.
All the popular Piracy statistics relating to loss of profit are lies. It is only because Corporations ensure laws in their favor that organisations such as the RIAA and the MPAA can make the sort of claims for damages that they do. When a youth in India downloads Call of Duty and then leaves uTorrent running, that isn't a loss worth 500,000USD. There are many places and many individuals both within and outside the US and the developed world who literally cannot afford these games.
Becoming involved in electronic entertainment can lead to an interest in computing, a career and innovation for the industry as a whole. If not by Piracy how else would someone living in a third world nation gain the necessary skills to advance and gain employment, if they are never exposed to Windows 7 or Microsoft Office for example? Would they even be interested in computers at all if they are never captivated by Dragon Age? You have developers in Poland, and Russia who create amazing games for us all to enjoy. Anyone ever did a poll to see how many of them purchased every bit of development software that they used through their youth?
I have quite a few friends who's introduction to Computers, Programming and Development came through an interest in playing games. Has anyone ever done a survey to track someone who claimed to Pirate games in their youth, and whether they become paying customers as they get older and can afford it? Do they buy a Game Console...do they buy two?
We have a new Digital Divide being perpetuated by the top First World Nations through Copyright law and Trade Treaties. An insidious and growing division which keeps the latest advances in hardware, software and content within the territories of the First World and the United States in particular.For example take The iPhone which is thought to be one of the more innovative gadgets of our time.It almost single handedly brought the media connected touch screen smartphone to the market, and made multitouch the wow feature that it is today. Can you say that you are in the Tech industry if you've never seen one or used one? iPhone Application Development is a new field, and if you can't get access to an iPhone...you really can't be a part of that market. Yet the iPhone was locked to the United States and a few other choice providers for at least a year. The only way to access this hardware was by breaking the law....through Piracy. And yet through that Piracy you had developers worldwide starting to write applications, starting to learn about developing for the new and burgeoning mobile marketplace. In the little island of Trinidad a blog started up that followed the iPhone, linked to the latest applications etc. and it was very well followed. The blog owner even developed his own themes etc. which other iPhone users took advantage of. Should Apple pay him for that service,give him the cost of the iPhone back? Where is the Loss of Profit?
Does anyone remember Shareware? One of the quickest ways to get your games in the hands of potential customers. Would ID have been as big if it hadn't been for shareware? What went wrong? Now we have a BitTorrent network that can provide the ultimate shareware distribution platform, yet Publishers and Developers do not take advantage of it. Instead they spend Millions adding DRM, then fielding the Tech Support calls;legitimate customers have to fight with horridly slow download speeds through Direct2Drive, Steam and others during big releases. And all so that the money keeps revolving through the hands that, of course, truly deserve it.The customer gets left out in the cold, pulling wads of money from his pockets just for entertainment with more problems and frustrations. Loss of Profit?
When a Publisher decides to release a game Digitally only in the United States and ignores the Rest of the World...is it a Loss of Profit when someone in New Zealand downloads the game to play it? The Publisher has already made a decision that they don't want that sale, is it a loss of profit in that circumstance? Does that
-Gel214th
I stopped buying games when Half Life 2 required the DRM known as "Steam." I loved Half Life 1, but I play games on PCs never connected to the Internet. I would have loved to buy Half Life 2 but Valve didn't want me to.
Obviously they didn't miss my sale, or the thousands or millions of potential sales like mine that were never consummated. According to various websites (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-Life_2 ) the game has sold more than 6.5 million copies at retail and more than that directly through Steam. So obviously the DRM has been a profitable move for Valve.
But ... the game was first released more than five years ago, on November 16, 2004. After all this time, and all this profit, I don't understand why Valve doesn't let the Steam dissipate and finally allow OTC sales that work without Internet authentication.
Valve, this potential buyer is still waiting for you to do the right thing. After five years, why not loosen your grip a little?
I'm sure I could easily pirate the game but ... why bother? One factor I never hear people talk about when they discuss DRM is how DRM sours the whole game experience. The game itself becomes unattractive if tainted with DRM. Imagine if you were eager to see the movie Avatar in the movie theater but you learned that at every theater where it is showing you first had to swim through a foul cesspool before you could reach the line where you buy tickets and enter the theater. All of a sudden, you're not as eager to see the movie after all. It's a natural reaction of the human mind to compensate and tell itself, "You know what? That movie probably sucks anyway. I'm a lot less eager to see it now, even if they removed the cesspool."
Do you get it, content publishers? DRM doesn't just suck in and of itself. It actually taints the content.
the problem with games is that they are often shit or same-ol', same-ol' , so people don't want to shell out for them until they've tried it. It's the same with music.
I download music for free, and listen to it. more than 95% of it is shit. the good stuff, I end up buying eventually.
As for the second-hand games issue, well people dont want to buy something that they see as being worthless after the purchase. So if you DRM your shit so that it has no value when customer tries to sell it, you've just gone and reduced it's value when you try to sell it (although you will refute that of course, and there are some stupid customers who are still willing to pay for it).
I think it is obvious there is a larger pattern here.
'Content providers' - music companies, movie companies, game companies, TV/entertainment companies, book publishers (really any business involving creating and delivering bits) - were hit hard when the internet allowed people to share the content between themselves. Napster, BitTorrent, et al have given people a taste for free/cheap content, and as a result the genie is out of the bottle.
We are shifting from a centralized market to a decentralized market. The established 'producers' do not want the consumers to also become producers themselves - yet due to their actions (trying to put the genie back into the bottle as it were) - they are making it more and more desirable for the consumers to take matters into their own hands. Be it indie record labels, shoestring DIY movie makers, youtubers, and others, they are all on the leading edge of this wave.
This has caused overall profits in most of these industries to drop, as 'consumers' are now not willing to pay premium prices (e.g. to buy a whole album of songs - of which one or two are worth listening to, buy a hard cover book, when they would rather have an eBook - so they can take their whole library with them) - instead desiring smaller units at a more reasonable prices. As a result many so-called 'industries' are trying to figure out how to monetize the new medium...'software as a service' and subscription services seem like a plausible solution - but these companies have to realize that the quality of the experience has to be worth the cost to the consumer or they will go elsewhere. With technology changing and the capabilities of various software and hardware tools improving to the point where anyone can afford to produce 'professional' quality movies, games, music and other applications, the companies that specialize in those fields will have to either find compelling reasons to have consumers pay for something that can be found for free or very cheap.
We are in the middle of a sea-change. When it is over, the business landscape will not look the same as it did in the last century. For starters there will be more cottage industry since the infrastructure needed to do high quality work - particularly in areas that primarily create/manipulate bits - will be minimal and available to almost anyone. The entertainment industry, publishing, gaming, and software industries will be drastically altered. What does survive will have compelling content/technologies that make people want to pony up the cash to gain access. All the rest will be decentralized, cheap and highly available.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
He didn't use "encounter" but "come across" and, much more importantly, he can't mean "heard about" because he explicitly mentions himself not having any trouble playing, which implies immediate experience.
I notice that indie developers tend to have a much more down-to-earth and grounded opinion on matter in the world of gaming, including on the subject of DRM. This is because these developers are often truly passionate gamers themselves and can see from the gamer's perspective how DRM looks and will be approached. They recognise that DRM can only be damaging to a game in the long term (just look at Spore's absolutely appalling secondary sales) and that it does very little to combat piracy.
Major publishers such as Activision, EA and Ubi Soft, however, take a more financial look at the pros and cons of DRM. For them, DRM is not a moral issue. If they decide not to include DRM, it is to achieve better sales or, most recently, better PR. Has anyone noticed recently how much good coverage a game gets if a game is reported to be without DRM? For example, the fuss that EA made when they announced that Sims 3 would be coming without any kind of DRM beyond a standard disc check? Sins of a Solar Empire? Good Old Games? Prince of Persia? It's like the bio food craze that came about as a result of the media frenzy over genetically modified foods.
Unfortunately a number of less than honest companies have been jumping on this knowledge - 2KGames (shame on them!) recently announced that BioShock 2 would not be using SecuROM to activate the game. Deceit by omission as it turned out, as it was actually requiring activation by GFWL. Worse still, it turned out later to be an absolute lie as SecuROM still requires the game to be connected to the internet to check the date.
My view is that DRM does not have a future in gaming, except perhaps in rentals. It's already died its slow death in the music industry, which was the first industry to make heavy use of DRM. There are two types of gamer - those who collect and those who do not. DRM contaminated games are worthless to both, as any gamer will eventually want to sell their game or keep it. DRM makes both impossible. There's a whole craze about Steam at the moment because people have bought into the bullshit that it's the "future" of gaming, but just wait - the problems with blocked and stolen accounts, censorship, violation of free trade agreements and the excessive traffic that Valve has to put up with will eventually kill it.