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Tensions Rise Between Gamers and Game Companies Over DRM
Tootech recommends an article at the Technology Review about the intensifying struggle between gamers and publishers over intrusive DRM methods, a topic brought once more to the forefront by Ubisoft's decision not to use their controversial always-connected DRM for upcoming RTS RUSE, opting instead for Steamworks. Quoting:
"Ultimately, Schober says, companies are moving toward a model where hackers wouldn't just have to break through protections on a game, they'd also have to crack company servers. The unfortunate consequence, he says, is that it's getting more difficult for legitimate gamers to use and keep the products they buy. But there are alternatives to DRM in the works as well. The IEEE Standards Association, which develops industry standards for a variety of technologies, is working to define 'digital personal property.' The goal, says Paul Sweazey, who heads the organization's working group, is to restore some of the qualities of physical property — making it possible to lend or resell digital property. Sweazey stresses that the group just started meeting, but he explains that the idea is to sell games and other pieces of software in two parts — an encrypted file and a 'play key' that allows it to be used. The play key could be stored in an online bank run by any organization, and could be accessed through a URL. To share the product, the player would simply share the URL."
I just bought two copies of GTA IV (pc version) for me and my girlfriend, in the hopes that there would be some cool co-op. After installing 'Rockstar Social', and having to get a damn 'Games for Windows' Live-esque account, and having to register account after account and confirm this after that after serial after serial, I said, well, Fuck. It. In the trash they go, and $40 down the tube. Shoulda looked at the reviews first I guess.
Overreaching DRM and poorly written interfaces upon interfaces are the death knell for PC gaming. I am sorry, but they just keep getting worse, and worse and worse. Albeit the gaming experiences might be improving, the overall software experience is absolutely terrible. The amount of disneylandish crap pc game devs are pumping into games to mimic the consoles is absolutely infuriating, and doesn't seem to be getting any better.
I'll say it. I love PC gaming, but it is definately an industry that will die if they don't all get together and streamline some of the bullshit. Steam is the closest thing we have, albeit still is one more interface you have to use to get to another interface to start/load/join a game.
Back to Q3A and CS 1.6.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
If the big names go away and leave the PC gaming industry, that would be good for PC gaming as a whole. We would see indies take over and fill the vacuum with original IP, and not just another FPS sequel.
Piracy? NWN1 did something which did well at stopping piracy in the long term, and that was eventually chucking the CD-ROM DRM and requiring a valid and unique CD key to play multiplayer. No matter what, the pirates will be cracking the game anyway, might as well just keep them from using network services which legit players would use. This is a simple DRM mechanism, and it does an excellent job long term.
Already, the big names treat the PC platform like crap. Might as well just show them the door, let them have the uber locked down console market, and let Blizzard, ID, and indies with something original to write take over.
"Alternative to DRM"? No, this is just another form of DRM.
I like what Steam offers. I think it's a fair trade. I'm still not going to call it something other than DRM.
You know what the "alternative" to DRM is? Not putting fucking DRM on your products!
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I hearing about this, the death of PC gaming, for years now. People keep spouting PCs are dead platforms for games. BS. Which console was it that had WOW, EVE or Starcraft II? Which System let me buy FO3 GOTY edition for $2.50 and GTA IV for $3.50? Oh wait, that's right, none of them. When Consoles can match my PCs performance (look at Mafia ii PC compared to either console version) or price, then i will look them up.
Don't forget:
DRM writers can write drivers; they can be cracked.
DRM writers can use hardware dongles; they can be virtualized.
DRM writers can demand use of servers; the servers can be emulated.
DRM writers can download items in pieces; the chunks can be put together via snapshots of a filesystem and memory.
For every item, there is a counter. Every dime spent on more Draconian DRM means a dime less spent on making the game suck less. And to me, some of the big PC companies which sell DRM with a game attached needs to start spending their cash on quality of releases, not new DRM schemes which will get cracked anyway.
I personally hate how Starcraft 2 works. You must connect to battle.net even to play single player. There is no LAN play.
It's all crippled by choice, and is one of the more evil rights restriction methods out there.
how about the general gaming public's response:
we won't buy anything with annoying DRM. Really, the solution is to add more DRM? Not exactly a solution.
Steam is no exception, and is only tolerable because it has no competition in that aspect.
Once other companies wise up to the steam concept nobody will give a crap for it anymore either.
There's one more serious oft-overlooked problem with DRM. For every copy of DRM'd software they sell they spend money every time somebody calls or emails with an activation problem. There's an on-going cost of maintaining servers and software to keep giving permission for installs. Basically, over time, their profits are getting eaten away by their own customer service. Sadly I think it'll take a couple of years before anybody realizes the problem with this. Heh.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. They'll learn to blame poor sales on piracy and use that to justify more DRM, copyright lobbyists, etc. etc.
It's not just DRM that is the problem.
It is also the fact that many companies are now opting to host servers, rather than let you host a server. This severely prevents you from ever owning your game. Once the company decides to no longer host the servers... that game is dead.
Classic gaming will be a thing of the past. You will not own what you bought.
How will people play Street Fighter IV 10 years from now? Probably the same way people play SF3 online now, with hacked custom server code, that runs through an arcade emulator.
But thats not really owning your game if you have to hack it, write server code... etc
is it?
Actually, these companies would consider that illegal.
If the big names go away and leave the PC gaming industry, that would be good for PC gaming as a whole. We would see indies take over and fill the vacuum with original IP, and not just another FPS sequel.
What you will get is a flood of low budget - low risk - casual games.
Already, the big names treat the PC platform like crap
The big names have treated the single player PC gamer rather well of late: Bioshock, Dragon Age, Fallout, Mass Effect, etc.
As for iD, whatever the merits of Carmack's game engines, he hasn't released a genuinely innovative or significant PC game in the last ten years.
Personally, I have no quarrel with the way Steam is run. It offers me a great deal of convenience, some excellent sales, and the ability to download and play my games on just about any computer I want to. When I buy games digitally, I buy through Steam because I feel that they've done DRM "right", or at least well enough that I don't have any problems.
Steam's customer support has also been fantastic to me over the years. I sent them an email inquiry just this afternoon about a purchasing question and they responded within a few hours - on a Sunday. The response was polite, succinct, informative, and written in perfect English.
Valve itself has also done a great deal to command my respect. When I sent an email to a member of the Team Fortress 2 team regarding an issue with the game overlay I was having, I was put into contact with one of their programmers who examined some stack traces I sent over and helped troubleshoot the issue. Their executives also have a sense of humor and personally respond to emails frequently. Every single time I've contacted Valve and the Steam team, they've been respectful, helpful, and treated me like a customer rather than a criminal. As a result, I shop almost exclusively at Steam because I feel they've earned my loyalty as a customer. That is what I feel most software/music/movie companies fail to realize: if you treat your customers like criminals, they'll certainly consider acting like them.
You're forgetting the worst thing Blizzard is currently doing. Region locking. Someone with a US copy of SC2 simply cannot play with a friend in Europe as each copy is region locked to one online server. It's destroying the international pro-gaming scene which is what Starcraft is meant to be all about.
The reason they do this region locking isn't to prevent piracy either. It's so they can charge a different price in different regions. Maximising short term profits at the expense of pro-players support.
And clearly, no one cares about the environment because a vast majority of vehicle sales are coming from vehicles that run on gasoline/diesel.
What a load of shit. It's been proven time and again that "we" will not pay for anything we don't have to..
You might stand on principle against DRM, or only use piracy as a means of evaluating a product before playing blind date with fifty bucks, but you're in a very, very small minority. The majority is scum who will download the pay what you want Humble Indie Bundle off a fucking torrent. The sooner everyone can admit that piracy is a serious problem, and DRM schemes are often desperate developers pushed into a corner, the sooner we can work toward finding a good middle ground.
1. You aren't citing a source of this information. I'd love to know who is the authority on copyright infringement rates, they're usually wild estimates that are highly inaccurate.
2. You're falling victim to the common fallacy that 1 copyright infringement = 1 lost sale. This is simply not the case. I've only ever seen infringement to hurt bad games, the ones that even with massive publicity cannot survive. I've bought many an indy game simply because myself or a friend got it free and thought it was cool. Yep, betcha didn't see that one coming, did you? Because it NEVER, EVER HAPPENS in the minds of morons who can't see beyond this simple fallacy.
3. Yes, because a requirement of a consistent internet connection is gaming friendly. Do remember many games lasted for well over a decade because people could play them with their friends on a LAN -- even without the internet. When you require something that is, at times, as difficult to obtain as an internet connection (even such a seemingly simple requirement) you instantly kill that and your customer base will quickly get annoyed, very annoyed, at random outages when your servers fail (yes, everyone has outages, even you) or when they're playing a SINGLE PLAYER GAME and their internet cuts out because their ISP sucks ass (like most in the USA do) and suddenly their game tells them "oh hey you damn pirate, gtfo!" and closes. Thanks so much for thinking of your paying customers.
The simple solution for you is to stop worrying about these "pirates." The customer is always right, and your loyal, paying customers are getting fucking tired of telling you to STOP DOING THAT. When it's clear that "piracy" leads to a reduction in offensive DRM and higher accessibility to games, even those who would pay to buy your game won't. It's simply not worth the aggravation imposed "for the good of the game."
I think this post is the best advert for free software that I've ever read...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
But how much of those pirated copies are actually a lost sale? Most people that pirate software do not intend to buy the game if they are not able to get a pirated copy. The irony is that most pirated copies actually work better due to the removal of the obtrusive DRM. For a lot of legally bought games that required the CD/DVD in the drive I installed a no cd crack so i would not have to juggle the discs ll the time. You hear a lot of issues with DRM failing on some system configurations which makes the game unplayable for people that legally bought it. DRM hurts sales instead of improving them.
I sometimes play some of the oldies I have for years. This will not be possible with the current games. If the publisher no longer want to support it it will no longer be playable.
DRM does not improve sales
So, adding DRM costs money but does not give any return for this. Then you say:
The point is numerous quality developers are having their necks wrung by piracy, and their quest for a way to guarantee profit - to them - is worth the relatively small number of customers that refuse to purchase their products due to DRM.
So, DRM does not improve sales and, you agree, harms them (although you say by a small amount), but game developers are doing it because it is a way to guarantee profit?
I don't see your logic here. You have something that increases costs, doesn't increase sales, but still somehow increases profit? The profit from selling any product is the per-unit price, minus the per-unit costs, multiplied by the number of sales. You've agreed that adding DRM drives up the per-unit costs and decreases the number of sales (albeit by a small amount), but you still somehow contend that DRM increases profits?
Oh, and developers are not having their necks wrung by piracy. The number of pirates is completely irrelevant. Here's a simple thought experiment: would you rather 100 people bought your game but no one pirated it, or 1,000 people bought it and 10,000 people pirated it? The only thing that matters from an economic perspective is the number of sales. Reducing piracy is only important if it increases sales - as an end in itself it is meaningless, except perhaps from an emotional or moral stance.
If your DRM scheme reduces piracy by 50%, but does not increase sales, it is pointless. It cost you money, but you got no return for it. If it increases sales (which you've already agreed it doesn't), but not by a large enough amount to cover the costs of adding the DRM, you get no return from it.
Your argument sounds like someone banging their head against the wall and then telling people that they have to do it because they have a headache.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Pretty unlikely, since PCs have both larger installed base and far lower cost of development than any console. They are also technologically superior, so the most ambitious games - especially complex simulators and strategy games - simply can't be done on anything else.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
if they are looking at piracy rates of 90% on a DRM-free title and DRM can cut that down to 80%, that doubles the amount of income they're making on that game, which probably does a lot more than doubling their profits
This is a fallacy. There's no guarantee that those missing 10% now paid money for the game. It could easily be that simply less people are playing the game. It could even be that the total number of players dropped by more than 10%, in which case you're actually worse off.
If you want a meaningful comparison, you have to compare the actual numbers of people paying for the game when all other factors (marketing, attractiveness of the game (admittedly impossible to determine)) are equal.