DRM vs. Unfinished Games

Rod Cousens is the CEO of Codemasters, and he recently spoke with CVG about how he thinks DRM is the wrong way to fight piracy. Instead, he suggests that the games industry increase its reliance on downloadable content and microtransactions. Quoting: "The video games industry has to learn to operate in a different way. My answer is for us as publishers to actually sell unfinished games — and to offer the consumer multiple micro-payments to buy elements of the full experience. That would create an offering that is affordable at retail — but over a period of time may also generate more revenue for the publishers to reinvest in our games. If these games are pirated, those who get their hands on them won't be able to complete the experience. There will be technology, coding aspects, that will come to bear that will unlock some aspects. Some people will want them and some won't. When it comes to piracy, I think you have to make the experience the answer to the issue — rather than respond the other way round and risk damaging that experience for the user."

Comments

Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[localman57]

Maybe I'm naieve or not understanding, but what will stop the pirates from unlocking/breaking/pirating the downloadable content? Aren't you just moving DRM from the front end to the back end?

Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces?

[commodore64_love]

I'm okay with Little Pieces of DRM if the game is like Firefox where you buy a stripped product, and then pay micropayments to get various addons. The product would still be "complete" and usable but minus the optional features/sidequests.

What I would Not be okay with is if I was playing Final Fantasy 12 or Zelda Twilight Princess and suddenly a popup says, "If you want to enter the final dungeon, please type in your credit card number. It will be charged $10." That would piss me off.

Please insert coin

[nomorecwrd]

I have several funny and interesting posts in this matter

Please insert coin to see the first of them.

Dear game industry

[cowscows]

Folks have been telling you this for years, but many of you still don't seem to get it, so I'm going to repeat it yet again. People who don't want to pay to play your games are never going to pay to play your games. Either they'll find a way to play it for free, or they'll go find something else to spend their time on.

The average age of the gamer has been continuously increasing, and a bunch of us who grew up playing games are adults now and still playing. We're out of school, we work for a living, we have some disposable income, and we're willing to spend a portion of it on games. There are more people able, willing, and interested in spending money on video games than ever before. Worry about us more than you worry about the people who aren't interested in paying for your product. You'll never make any money off of them.

Now if the industry has grown itself too fast, or you've let development costs get too high, or whatever you've done to make your businesses unprofitable...well that's your problem, not mine. Blaming it on people who don't want to pay for your product will not get you any sympathy or extra profits. Sorry.

Re:Dear game industry

[natehoy]

You need to reread the snippet you quoted, very carefully this time, and go for comprehension of what was said.

People who don't want to pay to play your games are never going to pay to play your games.

People who want to play the game but are unwilling or unable to pay for it are very much included in the "people who don't want to pay to play" category.

The problem with DRM is that it takes a lot of us who were formerly in the "willing to pay to play" category and, because of the restrictions imposed by draconian DRM solutions, puts us in the "no longer interested in risking spending more time getting the game working than we spend actually playing it" category.

I have not purchased a game in some time (Myst: Uru was my last game purchase), and after having to go out and find and purchase an old DVD player because the game refused to play on a DVD drive capable of burning (lest it be copied, I guess), and dealing with SecuROM and a reinstall of my OS so I could burn music CDs from music I had purchased, and God only knows what other dumbfuckery I've had to cope with over the years, I decided I had had enough of having my system fucked with every time I wanted to spend $60 for a few weeks of entertainment.

I'd love to try a few games out here and there, and my wife and I used to be heavily into puzzle-type games (Myst series, Obsidian, Sanitarium, etc), and I used to enjoy an occasional FPS LANFest, but eventually I decided I pretty much needed a separate computer from the one that did my finances and email so I could reload the OS after each game to wipe out the latest crap introduced by the DRM. And, of course, that meant buying another $175 copy of Windows XP because, guess what? It had DRM too.

I decided bicycling and kayaking sounded like more fun.

Re:Dear game industry

[cowscows]

You're misunderstanding what I said. Say someone wants to play a game but doesn't want to pay for it, for whatever reason. Maybe they're a kid with no money, maybe they're just a cheap bastard, or maybe they think that by pirating games they're somehow 'sticking it to the man'. Whatever, doesn't matter, they've got three options. They can:
1)Decide to pay for it.
2)Decide to pirate it.
3)Decide to not play it.

If you take away option 2, then that does not force them to choose option 1. I would argue that they're much more likely to take option 3 before they take option 1. Factor in the fact that it's really hard to actually take away option 2, and as a developer/publisher, you're pretty much just throwing money away by trying to take away option 2.

So yeah. Some people are going to play your game without paying for it. Get over it, go worry about something you can actually control, life goes on.

Do this instead :

[unity100]

Sell us an ENGINE with one storyline/episode, in FULL.

put out new storylines/episodes as time goes by, and sell those to us, as DLCs.

do not sell us half finished, half assed games to rip off money like base swindlers.

Re:hmm

[HeckRuler]

I have to disagree. I hate DRM as much as the next guy, but saying that managing the digital content of the game based on who has the rights with a registration code ISN'T DRM is bullshit. Mailed registration codes, code-wheels, codes in manuals, all of these are forms of DRM to keep pirates from casually sharing stuff. This conflict has been around longer then you, and didn't start with Steam and Battle-net. I remember that we were essentially locked out of "Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Simulator" because we lost the booklet somewhere. That's DRM restricting the use of a program I paid for. ok, a program my father paid for.

Without web2.0, the internet, the cloud, dongles, or the latest buzzword, doesn't mean it isn't DRM.
The problem with DRM is that it makes using the content a pain. Finding the booklet is a pain. Running steam is a pain. Registering software on each new peice of hardware is a pain. Submitting to a full body search is a pain.

It DRM was painless, for now and forever, then I really wouldn't have a problem with it. Well... I'd argue that the poor need to be able to steal it easily.