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.

Comments

If more DRM = More Sales, lock the game down hard

[mykos]

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!

Re:Unavoidable

[TheRaven64]

Depends on the game. Kingdom of Loathing (which, admittedly, has incredibly low operating costs), is free to play and you can play it to the end (and though subsequent reincarnations) without paying anything. There are special premium items that cost $15. These give you some stat bonuses, but nothing particularly important. They're basically a way of rewarding players who donate to supporting the game. If you look at the people who have the most of these items, they are generally people who have been playing a long time and didn't need the stat bonuses that the items gave.

Someone got it right (at least for old games)

[holiggan]

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?!).

Re:Ubisoft

[hibiki_r]

This happens if you have the steam's friend system turned on by default. Turn it off, and it stops complaining.

Re:Unavoidable

[hitmark]

i recall a big name pc gaming mag suggesting people get a crack for elder scrolls: oblivion, as it would improve the performance of the game by as much as 30%.

i think that was something of a watershed moment for DRM in games...