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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."
The user has the key. The user can retain or share the key, or just share the material unencrypted. As for remote DRM, even if you bloody well upload large parts of the game's code remotely it's just security through obscurity. As well as a source for nusiance and flakiness/unplayability.
Emotions! In your brain!
Crap like this is why I put my money where my mouth is and buy from Good Old Games. NO DRM, NO limits on installs, easy and hassle free, and even works perfectly on x64.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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
Well, if the original FO3 was an indication, it shouldn't be bad. They made shitloads of cash, despite the fact that only the frontend launcher was protected... and using it wasn't mandatory.
The DLC also was unprotected. Sure, you (or someone else...) needed to use Games for Windows Live to purchase and download... but some digging in your user profile will find you the data files. You can simply copy those directly into the game's data directory, and you now don't even need to sign into Live to access them!
In fact, this is -required- for use of things like "fose" - which is kind of like a trainer except that it extends the game's scripting engine (and is used by any mod of decent complexity/elegance - see FO3: Wanderer's Edition for instance.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Game companies will never let you resell a game you don't have on a disc. Unlike with games printed on physical mediums, there is no chance of a downloaded game being unplayable due to scratches, and there is no "shiny newness" that a game that wasn't resold has. Either used copies would be cheaper than new copies and there would be no point in buying new copies (which I can't imagine game companies allowing), or game companies would make the used copies the same price as new copies and it would be a moot point. This will not catch on.
I bought a copy of Neverwinter Nights when it came out and... well, they actually did with the game the very same thing the article is suggesting.
You have your CDs with your serial, which you use to install as many times as you want, and Bioware actually allows you to store that Serial in their servers, protected by a password.
Do you feel like sharing youre game? Just lend your CD key to someone, which could just mean to lend them the password for your account with bioware. Also, if you lose the damn booklet in which it came printed, or if you're just not at home, you can always retrieve your serial from their servers, provided you remember the password.
Now THAT's what I call value.
On an unrelated topic, they also ported their game to linux after a while. You didn't even have to buy it again! Just download the installation package for linux (yes, download, for free, from their servers), use your windows serial and you're all set. Suffice it to say it worked like a charm.
Say you will not use an aways on drm, use a more well respected company's aways on drm... And yes I know of steam's offline mode but RUSE is an RTS. Offline mode would be pretty much useless.
Ruse sucks - so you don't have to waste any time on it (was demoed on steam)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
God Almighty, I thought that damn thing was gone forever.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
Download caps may hit games hard some day with drm systems and any kind of on live system will run of that fast 5 Mbps can hit the comcast 250 gb cap fast.
How well does the Ubisoft system work with dial up or satellite internet. For one thing any thing like on live is out for them.
"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!
Personally I really like how Starcraft 2 works. I no longer need to carry dvds/cds or a dvd-player. I don't need to worry about using 'other methods' for obtaining a game I've bought before. I just need an account, a password, maybe a battle net authenticator, and I'm good to go! Can play anywhere. And I feel warm and comfortable.
So, key parts of SC-2 security I guess:
- the client is freely downloadable, in full, as many times as you like
- since multiplayer is a major part of how it works, that takes care of the drm
- we have an account, that we can use anywhere we like, on any computer
Of course, the campaign bit isn't really secured by this method, so there are still some pieces missing from the puzzle for that, but for multiplayer games, which is I feel the most interesting to me, there doesn't seem to be a major issue?
Realistically, something is your property insofar as you can control it; my car is my property because I have the keys and can do what I want with it. (It helps that I legally own the car as well, but legal property rights do not guarantee that things won't be stolen.) If someone does steal my car, then legally I still own it, but realistically I don't have it anymore.
Copyrighted and publicly released media such as video games are legally owned by the copyright holder(s), but realistically, they are 'owned' by either everyone or no one. Once something goes on the Internet, any privately held control over it is basically nullified. Anyone can copy it and redistribute it to anyone else. The 'owners' can come close enough to actual ownership by not releasing the media or information, but once that happens it is, for all intents and purposes, public domain.
That's why I think the term "digital property" is an oxymoron. It can't exist because of the nature of the Internet, which is the unbiased sharing of information from one computer to another, and no DRM garbage will change that.
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
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.
But, but, it's "imaginary" property. How else are we going to illegally download movies, music, and games, if we start giving it physical properties?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
I loved Ruse in the open beta.
That DRM was the only reason I didn't pre-order the game and was not buying it.
If they dropped that I'll buy it as soon as it's confirmed to work just fine offline.
Of course no one else cares about that, but it was annoying to really like a game and also not be able to play it because the DRM was retarded enough to make buying it not an option. Steam I can live with.
"...simply share the URL".
<sarcasm>No, I don't see how that could possibly be abused.</sarcasm>
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
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.
Only if it's their games. If it's a third party publishers game you're still screwed because the publisher can simply say there isn't a problem and deny the refund..
I stopped getting tense after MechWarrior4. When that stupid game didn't work in any CDROM drive I owned due to DRM, I stopped buying new games for PC. I only play old games or open source games, both of which I have plenty.
I won't buy anything. I just download and play. Arkanoid and my 2005 P4 are gteat.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
The indie humble bundle was an interstig experiment.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Unfortunately, many publishers really ARE stupid when it comes to DRM. They think it is a fight they can win. Also they get focus on the wrong thing. They want to reduce piracy at any cost, rather than focusing on increasing sales, which is what matters.
Even if you could make a 100% uncrackable DRM it wouldn't be useful is said DRM was so invasive that nobody was willing to purchase you game. You've have stopped piracy, but killed sales. It would be like a store so determined to eliminate shoplifting that they sealed all exits except one and had armed guards strip search all customers and employees. It'd probably work but nobody would shop there so in the end it would be worse than doing nothing at all.
I'm quite sure the reason Ubisoft is changing is because their DRM has probably cost them sales, as well as costing a good deal of money to administer. I know I'm two of the sales they lost. I was planning on getting Assassin's Creed 2, since it looked like the first one but with the annoyances taken out. Also Settlers 7 looked interesting. After hearing about the DRM, I wrote them off. I didn't pirate them, they've been cracked despite the "server side processing" shit, I simply played other games. There's no lack of good games out there, I lack the time to play them all so if they want to be assholes that's fine, I'll just spend money elsewhere.
What publishers need to concentrate on is DRM that is non-invasive. I'm not saying DRM is worthless, I'm sure there are people who are cheap and won't pay if they can easily get away with it, but you want to make it so that the DRM doesn't hurt legit users, but actually helps them. Steam is a good example in that regard. If you get a Steamworks protected game, it is to your benefit not to crack it. Reason is when you register it on Steam you get all updates automatically from good servers, and you can redownload it as you please, again from fast servers. It actually improves your experience, makes things easier. So even if someone doesn't care about doing the right thing, the easy of use, their laziness, can convince them to pay.
If companies wise up and start focusing on increasing sales, by making things better for legit users, rather than trying to decrease piracy, I think it'll go a long way.
This isn't a software engineering problem, it's a social engineering problem. DRM can help to some extent, but it can't possibly be a complete solution and it can't be strong enough to approximate a complete solution without causing a host of problems. There are a few key points:
This suggests that the best approach is to use weak DRM then do everything else through social and design factors. It will be as effective as possible in curtailing casual copying, and it won't piss off or drive away your potential paying customers over a futile effort to spite the people who were never going to pay you anyway. At worst, an increased reliance on social and design factors to prevent copying will be equally effective while not pissing off your customer base. If done well, it may be much more effective.
DRM is not a magic bullet. If it was, it would have been working for all these years in which production houses have been erroneously treating it as one. Careful use of DRM may be part of the solution. But it cannot provide a complete solution. Over-reliance on it can do a lot of harm by damaging your customer satisfaction while failing to adequately address the problem of unauthorized copying. It's a bit like the guys taking the abstinence-only approach to sex ed - there's plenty of proof to show that this "solution" only makes the problem worse.
What general gaming public?
I'm fairly certain that if you check the actual statistics of games being sold (the part that matters to publishers), you'll find that the vast majority of sales and games are coming from DRM'ed games.
Just make the game free and charge for the online game play in a micropayment fashion.
DRM also costs money in and of itself. If it is your own, you pay someone to develop it. If it is third party, you pay a per copy license fee. Either way you pay someone to implement it in the game. The more complex and tricky the DRM, the harder the implementation. Some extreme ones, like the Cubase protection, does dongle checks on almost every operation, even opening menus. Lots of extra coding to make that happen.
Also of course if the DRM is invasive, it may cost sales. I won't buy Ubisoft titles with their new DRM, too invasive.
What it comes down to is that an economic analysis needs to be done on any DRM. Weigh how many more sales it is likely to generate vs costs. Then choose something intelligently that makes more money. That may be no DRM, it may be something non-invasive like Impulse::Reactor, but is probably not these insane high cost, high maintenance DRMs.
Just let them go to consoles?
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.
To be honest, there really isn't the chance of a used game being unplayable due to scratches if you're going through official channels. EB games, etc, all warranty against scratched-to-hell used copies, and the time it has been an issue they didn't bat an eye. Even when it is a major problem, disk resurfacing is easy and cheap. With digital media, other than booklets there isn't a downside to the secondary market.
They should setup a system that will allow you to re-sell your game for ever decreasing value, but the publisher takes a fixed cut. Say you buy a download game for $50. You could then re-sell the game through 3rd party interfaces, but the publisher takes a fixed $30 cut. It would maintain a price floor, and a publisher incentive, but still give used game owners a reason to get out there and push the titles.
The ______ Agenda
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.
All Steam games get cracked, a little tidbit the article failed to mention.
There have been numerous $20 DRM-free indy games that were pirated just as much as everything else.
There is no reward for companies that go DRM-free. The people that pirate do so because the pirated version is $0. Good will does not convert pirates.
The only solution is remote processing. Don't let the client have all the code.
the best solution is to move some of the code to the server.
The chunk method can keep pirates at bay but an effective implementation would be cost prohibitive. Games just aren't designed to be broken up into a hundred pieces.
MMOs and web games are the future of pc gaming since they keep so much code server side. That and casual games that are purchased by demographics that have low piracy rates.
Valve will eventually go broke, for a sufficiently distant value of "eventually". Much bigger and older firms have gone under; in their heyday, talk of such companies as Woolworth's going under were met with similar scoffing.
Right now, Valve may have the golden touch with their games. Eventually that will pass. The core team that's so excellent will either move on, or retire, or be forced out. The new blood won't be as good. They'll still be good, for awhile, but eventually they'll hit a slump. Even then they won't die right away, people will still buy their stuff for awhile after it starts sucking. But eventually they won't be able to go back to their wells anymore, they will have poisoned them so heavily. (Star Trek, for example, was fairly effectively run into the ground to the point they had to reboot the whole franchise.)
Similarly, Steam may be awesome now. In time, something better will come along. Valve's management will (sooner or later) push to "monetize" Steam heavily, and degrade its usability significantly. Or they will decide that they're a game company, and Steam supports the competition, so they'll spin it off, and without Valve, Steam becomes just another content delivery service. Or Steam will simply eventually become too big and heavy to easily make changes to it, and it will coast along on its inertia, until it gets passed by.
The question is how far into the future this will be. If it is eight decades from now, well, by that time, only archivists and historians will probably care about (say) the original Half-Life. And they will have a legitimate beef, but they also will be few in number, and thus, this is a small problem. If Valve disintegrates five years from now, then it's a big problem, because millions of people will have Steam accounts that disappear.
And make no mistake: If Steam collapses because Valve goes under, there won't be anyone left to sue. Instead, people who owned games via Steam will be creditors, along with the banks and the mortgage holders, etc. in the bankruptcy liquidation. Unfortunately, bankruptcy law puts the general public at the end of the line in such situations. So most likely, your games will simply disappear forever; you get in line for your share of the refund money, and by the time the line rolls down to you, there isn't any left. (Otherwise they wouldn't be broke.)
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.
without them the property market would collapse.
without copyright laws the digital market would also collapse.
Most software including video games is developed under the assumption that the government will ensure that the producer is the exclusive seller.
Take away that assumption and most software wouldn't be developed. Wall Street investors would simply pull out of the software market.
The global economy would likely go into a depression from the shock. This is a multi-billion dollar industry after all.
There would just be a big hole where there was once a thriving market. Supply would not meet demand. Most software companies cannot use the Red Hat model since most software does not require support. Intellectual property laws make sense from an economic perspective. It's well established that certain types of intellectual work will only get developed if the government offers protection to the producer. The best evidence of this is the poor selection of GPL'd games and industry-specific software.
Nothing can completely prevent piracy forever. That's not the point.
The point is, Steam at least presents a scenario where if we ignore all moral, legal, and financial reasons, and reduce it to the raw functionality, I'd prefer Steam.
By contrast, almost all other DRM schemes are exactly the opposite. I prefer not to have physical media which can be scratched, so even in its most refined form (console games) where a game can pretty much be treated as a physical object to be bought, sold, lended, rented, etc, I'd still rather have something I can download immediately, back up, and otherwise save from physical harm.
I don't know how many people think like me, but if you add the relative convenience of Steam (click, buy, download faster than a torrent, sometimes start playing before it's even done downloading, no searching for cracks, no worrying about viruses), I would guess there's a large swath of gamers who might consider piracy, but would rather use Steam.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
It still requires internet access. That little fact makes this new DRM scheme equally draconian. I swear, these new "product managers" who have never touched a game in their lives are ruining PC gaming.
They need to give the whole product to the buyer just like they did during the 90s and early 2000s.
It's pretty easy in my case. I know I will never purchase something with online DRM. If I see a game I like, I always check for DRM:
Online DRM = pirate
No online DRM (i.e. DRM-free, or a simple DVD check) = buy
If all publishers decide to go with online DRM, I'll pirate everything. If they come to their senses and decide to release DRM-free games or use DVD-based copy protection, I'll buy everything just like I used to before this whole DRM shitfest began.
Some DRM has been effective at delaying piracy.
AC2 could have lasted a lot longer if they had some programmers that were security experts. Their idea was sound but the implementation was spotty. But it still stayed uncracked far longer than most games.
A big company like Ubisoft or EA could make a pretty nasty always-on DRM system. If they could boost sales it might be worth it. I wouldn't personally support such a system but I could see the rational behind the investment when pc piracy rates are so high.
For small and medium sized companies investing in DRM is a waste of limited resources.
I bought Half Life 2 in a store back then, I can't even play it anymore because of the DRM. For me Steam failed, and then I bailed. No thanks! I support Indie developers now!
Greenman gaming lets you trade games back in when you're done with them.
https://www.greenmangaming.com/
No DRM or Copy Protection has ever in the history of computer games survived uncracked for more than a few days! - Those days of 'exclusivity' does not do anything for sales vs. piracy so continuing to waste money on DRM and the like is stupid, plain and simple. Mind-boggling stupid.
Just make a great game, offer it inexpensively and make it really easy to install and play, and I'm sure people who like it will pay for it. But appear as a greedy MAFIAA-wannabe, make the game really hard to install, requiring hoops, leaps and bounces, semi-impossible to play (requiring online servers, validation and other crap) and sell it for a fortune, and you can be guaranteed that piracy will be rampant and nobody will pay out of their conscience.
And as many have mentioned already - money wasted on DRM is money not spent on making the game itself legendary, and that's a huge mistake!
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Out of interest, what has happened to stop you playing HL2? My pre ordered boxed copy is still working fine on steam, and I've gone through at least 3 PCs in that time.
I don't have the bandwidth to install, decrypt and update the game before I can play it. I realize this is part of Steam, but when I bought the game Steam was new and I didn't know this. Back then I also had uncapped access. Things change so fast in 3rd world countries.
Owning the original discs, but not being able to use them as expected, makes me feel sad and cheated.
I think I'll get a cracked copy, do you hear that, Steam?!
Parent is right.
I've lost out of more or less a generation of games.
I stopped pirating after in my last year of uni, then realized that the drm was too intrusive.
I'm stuck playing civ 4 (all expansions, all paid) and a few steam-games, like defcon, some hl-mods and portal.
DRM has basically been a wedge against cultural proliferation, and as such it sucks much more. I almost cry, when I realize that there are games, that I would love to play, but I just will not install them on my computer, due to digital rights management. Bioshock, spore, assasins creed 2, company of heroes, silent hunter 5 and many many more.
DRM is the reason i buy music anymore, i got a sony-infected cd and apparently hadn't turned off auto-play after adding a new dvd-drive.
the people who do install this fit the description:
Because they deprive the world of cultural enrichment. They do so without regards to the fact that promoting cultural enrichment is the very reason they have copyright in the first place.
Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah
I don't have the bandwidth to install, decrypt and update the game before I can play it.
...
I think I'll get a cracked copy, do you hear that, Steam?!
So you don't have the bandwidth to verify it legitimately, but you do have the bandwidth to download a cracked copy?
I've got a fever and the only prescription is more COBOL.
I hardly even play non-free games anymore. Excepting the Avernum series, one of the last commercial games I bought was Age of Empires II.
Seriously, I'd advise people to give Battle for Wesnoth or Widelands a try, or some of the free rogue-likes. There are some real gems in open source gaming, and they allow you to stick it to DRM without the slightest bit of piracy.
Believe it or not there are people in this world that still use physical mediums to transfer data. It's possible to actually buy a disc that has a game (or games) on it, install them from the disc, and them play them all without permission from an outside source.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
I don't think you understand how piracy works in 3rd world countries.
I used to be a gamer. I have a large stack of boxes of purchased games sitting in my attic. The newest one is from around 2003. By then, the industry's complete disregard for their customers put me off buying anything more. I don't pirate games either - I bought games in the past because someone who pirated them recommended them, and I don't want to give the industry any free advertising. I play some open source games, and some flash games, but mainly I just do other things in the time I used to spend gaming.
So, DRM has lost me as a customer. That doesn't mean it was a bad business decision, but since introducing DRM costs money it means that they need to gain two new customers to make up for the loss of me - or one if they keep the prices the same. So does DRM increase sales? Take a look at any torrent site, and you'll find DRM-free versions of all of the most popular games for free, so it looks like the people who pirate are still doing so. The net effects of DRM seem to be:
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
In countries where there are real consumer protection laws (pretty much all developed countries but the US), if you buy a game in a store and it doesn't work in your machine, you can easilly go back and get a refund (in the UK the magic words are "Not fit for purpose" and "Trading standards").
However, it's almost impossible to have your consumer rights respected by an online trader, especially one not based in the same country as you are.
This is why I don't buy games online anymore (unless we're talking about stupendously cheap stuff like those from GoG).
Steam is even worse in this respect since in effect your ability to play the games you buy is tied to their good will (if they "loose" your account with all your games in it, what can you do?)
If what happened to GP had happened to me, I would have gone back to the store and gotten a refund, only loosing a bit of time but not being $40 out of pocket.
So true. All the people that claim they would buy software if it was DRM free are just sitting on their high horse. It just doesn't happen.
When my net connection is down, I have zero problems playing my steam purchased games in offline mode. So, the answer to your question is, yes.
just want to say i am with you, All the DRM crap has put me off PC gaming, i do still game a bit with the 360 or the wii though, but even there i have some DRM policies (I passed up AC2 on the xbox because of the shit they pulled on the PC version)
People, what a bunch of bastards
They don't guarantee it in the legal sense, but Gabe Newell did state in a forum post that they can patch steam to disable the authentication requirement, which would allow everyone to copy and play their purchased games.
Honestly though, it's going to be a cold day in hell when Steam dies an unexpected death. In the digital delivery world, compared to the rest of the computing industry, Steam is so damn big they'd name their testicles Microsoft and Google.
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
Yes. Very true
Because if the general public doesn't care about something, then NOONE cares. Ever. At all.
I decided I wanted to play Bioshock. Yes, it's a few years old, but so what.
Living in Germany, I can only buy a censored version. I am over 18 and want to play the game as it was intended to be played. Steam not an option, then.
Looking for physical media, I realized that SecuROM is still used with the DVD variant. I refuse to install any such thing on any machine I own or maintain.
I contacted Steam support, looked around the web, etc. I tried _really_ hard to play by the rules.
Long story short? I bought a DVD and installed Bioshock from an age-old torrent that has been alive for a few years now. To add more irony to irony, the torrent download was faster than the typical Steam download and apart from a single .reg, I did not even install Bioshock. I runs happily from where I extracted it.
People... DO NOT MAKE IT HARD FOR ME TO GIVE YOU MONEY! You would think that should be obvious...
I had thousands of dollars in games that I actively played in my spare time in the late '90s. I maintained an entire system just for gaming. Now I have just a handful of old Loki games under Linux that I play, mostly turn-based strategy. DRM and the resulting compatibility and durability/backup issues with the vast majority of PC games just made me feel like I was being had. The balance of "gaming time" shifted from actual gameplay to troubleshooting, DRM-fighting, hardware-DRM-compatibility researching/installing, and so on.
Totally not worth it, and today I basically wouldn't game again if DRM ended tomorrow. It was a fun hobby that I found meaningful in some way until I finally ended up completely disillusioned, and once that happens, you can't really get it back.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
and to maintain dual Windows/Linux installs with latest OS versions and partitions full of applications and games.
DRM and serials and keys and activation actively ended my Windows partition. I eBayed off thousands of dollars in software, I stopped buying the latest version Windows and now just download the media and install whatever version is on the license sticker on my hardware and nothing more, and I do it in a tiny partition "just in case" I need access to Windows.
Basically, the hardware and software industries lost a customer that used to spend rather a lot of money on gaming hardware and on software of all kinds. Rather than continue to fight it all and feel cheated, I went 100 percent Linux. These days I'e started buying Mac OS X and installing in on PC hardware and paying for Mac OS applications instead. They're cheaper, the OS is better, and the DRM isn't as onerous.
I'm totally willing to buy software, but only if it's actually useful/usable long-term. DRM makes it useless/unusable or limits its utility to one or two installs that only work with a single version of Windows or a very limited and historically specific set of hardware.
I suppose what they want is for me to have to re-buy thousands upon thousands of dollars in software and hardware every six months. Not gonna happen. They should have been satisfied with once every 2-3 years.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
> and installed Bioshock
> not even install Bioshock
Yah, yah. You know what I mean :)
DRM is a scam where the Exec's pay for a piece of software that will do nothing after days or hours, that software will make the life of the paying customers worst. The Real protection a bussines need against piracy, is to calculate how much his game will really sell, and ignore the pirates. Just that. Any money put on converting the pirates into customers is lose money, and more lose money if make the life of the paying customers a hell.
-Woof woof woof!
It's all about customer satisfaction. Running the store they sell the DRM-secured software from gives them good enough reason to keep the experience painless. Someone like Walmart isn't going to give a crap about a video game publisher's drive-by DRM tactics unless you walk back in the store and complain, in numbers. They probably won't care very much about loss of PC software sales either, chalking it up to piracy or whatever. Steam needs some competition though, IMHO.
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.
What's that smell??
After that, the DRM requirements might change, but most stuff will continue to work.
Just as XboxLive on the Xbox1... oh, wait... Getting rid of old junk that doesn't make them money anymore is among the first things you can expect to see happen when a company get bought.
but I really can't blame them for trying.
I can.
I don't buy games unless I find a no-DRM crack *first*, because it's so fucking annoying.
I want my Cowboyneal
I think this is the key, isn't it? Whenever I use DRM it always feels like I'm actually renting and that I don't own the game.
Urgh; this is a tough one. On the one hand, I want to make sure that the makers of said games make money enough on their products to keep producing MORE games... and, similarly, I wish people didn't have such a compunction to steal! On the other hand, though, if DRM gets in the way of playing a game, it's almost just as bad (for both the player and the maker simultaneously.)
Smells like the truth to me. I've done the same, emailing Robin Walker (head of the TF2 team), and my friend once sent him a picture of a unicorn begging for an in-game item and received quite an amusing response.
How will people play Street Fighter IV 10 years from now?
Probably the same way people play SF1 now, sitting in the same room. Online play in SFIV is a bonus, it is very different from Assassin's Creed which demands online connectivity even in single-player mode.
He didn't say "no one" he said the general gaming public, who, if you look at purchase statistics don't seem to care about DRM enough not to buy the games that have it.
DRM only affects paying customers who play by the rules.
Not so. It effects me by having to spend another minute renaming the old EXE and copying the cracked one off the disk.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
The idea sounds fantastic because it preserves the principle of ownership. I could actually resell a game, or buy a used game. Which is exactly why no game devs will adopt it. They LOVE that Steam killed the used game market.
Really?I can't seem to get my Supreme Commander 2 working in multiplayer when my Internet connection is down. I'd like to play w/friends and my kids on my LAN. Can you help me? Amazing how many ppl argue FOR steam without understanding the limitations imposed by devs using that platform. I can't count how many times I've heard people say "Just play in offline mode" as though they had a clue.
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?
No, the error you're making is due to a lack of understanding about the subject matter you are commenting on. For computer games, profit is not measured per unit sale. The way game development works is that a dev is given an advance by a publisher to make a game. This is their budget, they have to pay artists, programmers, managers, etc. to produce the game. Theoretically the would also get a small % of game sales AFTER the publisher recoups their cost (advertising, promotion, the advance, etc.). The accounting used by game publishers is similar to that used by Hollywood - and game devs generally never get any % of sales due to that. So let's discuss who's "profit" you're talking about? The game developer studio? If they built it into their rates, and they budgeted appropriately, and didn't blow their budget, hopefully they get a profit via the advance. The publisher? Hopefully gross sales exceed all costs. This is not a "per box" basis. So DRM DOES increase profit for the publisher if it helps convert pirates to sales. That's another debate.
It does have DRM, but it's along the same lines as Steam's DRM is. You need to log into a Battle.NET account at least once before the game can be played offline.
As for the real name thing, the big thing was about it showing your real name on their forums.
Right now, SC2 (and WoW) support two different types of friends. The first has your WoW/SC2 username (and in SC2 an additional user code, which is a 3 digit number). This account type only displays your username to them, and whether you're online (or in WoW, playing that particular character) or offline.
The second uses your Battle.NET account name (your email address) and displays your real name. This one also displays whether you're playing any Battle.NET 2.0 game, which right now include StarCraft 2 and World of Warcraft.
Needless to say, if you use the first friend type, they never see your real name.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
As somebody that got screwed over by the DRM mistakes MS made on the Pitt I can assure you that it isn't unprotected. I was stuck buying them because MS fraudulently made me buy more points than I needed for the previous content and then lied about not being able to give me a refund. After that I haven't shelled out for a single MS product, nor will I ever if that corrupt behavior is deemed acceptable by them. FO3 was a game of much potential fucked up beyond belief by greed and incompetence. I'd be really curious to learn how it is that Assassin's Creed both of them, Prototype and Batman: Arkham Asylum are all relatively free of bugs, when FO3 seems to be completely infested with them.
Um, no DRM that works will not force a pirate to buy it, they have enough other games that they can crack, if yours really does stop piracy, then the pirates will just not play it.
The only way to 'force' someone to buy something is to hack into their accounts and steal their money, or use some form of physical threat against them individually(as in police at your door with guns).
And even that may or may not work, but we will soon see with Obamacare...
They use it because denial and delusion make people do stupid things. They think that it helps, when there's no compelling evidence that it does. If they're lucky, they can keep it from being cracked for the first month or two, most of the time that's a stretch, but it's the belief that it works and is profitable that leads them to do it. This is precisely why MBAs should be allowed nowhere near a company that's still in operation.
PS: Because of lack of Linux support (which they promised) I'll put Valve/steam in the sh*t tier category now. (pity I was willing to buy even more from them provided a native client)
[Citation Needed]
They've already said if Valve goes off-line, all the purchased content will be unprotected, allowing customers to do what they want with their purchased software. They've tested the system, and it works fine.
To be fair, Steam does actually add value too. I hate having to remember where all my CDs and DVDs are to play, or just in case I need to reinstall at some point in the future. If your computer goes caput, and you've lost or destroyed your original media, you're out of luck (unless you can prove you bought it, then pay a nice fee for replacement media and wait a couple of weeks if you're lucky). With steam, you can just re-download.
The DRM on steam isn't too intrusive generally, and you can play offline too. It's not perfect, some people have had nasty problems with it, I'll admit though.
And 12 years after unveiling what is still the best selling personal computer of all time Commodore International went bankrupt.
Just because you are successful now does not mean you will continue to be. Ask Blockbuster...
-Nick
My name is Obi-Wan Kenobi. You killed my master. Prepare to die.
I think that is my only concern, but in a longer term sense. What if steam should ever go away? I'm not overly worried about transient failures with my internet connection, but what about over the longer term if they go out of business. I'm getting to the point where I have a decent amount invested in Steam.
Will they provide patches to allow me to play without Steam should should Steam happen to go out of business? I already have a few games that required connections to corporate servers to play, and they are now 'dead'.
As to the larger DRM question and Steam's success, ALL DRM is restrictive, but not all DRM is overly burdensome. I suppose for that, everyone has their 'limit' as to what they deem to be too much of a hassle. I think the primary reason that Steam see's so much success is that they allow much more freedom than conventional DRM schemes these days. I can download any game on any machine at any time. I could also give them a pass. There are no limits on the number of times that I can install a game, or where I install it.
These publishers need to realize that no one will buy their product if it is cumbersome to get it working or if their DRM schemes impose too many limits on what people view as 'my game'. I would imagine they all saw dollar signs when they saw that they could easily put in certainly limits on a game to ensure a revenue stream, only to find it either killed sales, or caused even more pirating of their game.
I have to wonder if many of these companies don't have some sort of usability team that just uses the game (with DRM) to see if it's cumbersome or frustrating. It seems like a simple idea, but some of these DRM schemes are so bad, I can't believe they actually tried to use their own product in any sort of evaluation with all the DRM in place.
There are two problems I have with Steamworks.
1. You are at the mercy of Steam - with the EULA they are within their rights remove your access to games you have already purchased, or even start charging you an access fee to continue having access to those games - and your only recourse is you can cancel your account.
2. Steamworks completely removes your rights under the First Sale Doctrine. Once you have started using a Steamworks game you no longer have any rights whatsoever to transfer your license to another user.
It is one thing to sell Steamworks games through Steam, but when they are selling these products at retail, without warning that they are denying the end user a right that they otherwise have with any other retail product... and still want to charge full retail price while selling such an encumbered product.
Sorry, having my patches sent to me automatically (along with advertising for other games I might enjoy) is not worth me giving up my rights as a consumer.
-Nick
My name is Obi-Wan Kenobi. You killed my master. Prepare to die.
And Steamworks enabled games won't let you resell the game even if you have the disc.
-Nick
My name is Obi-Wan Kenobi. You killed my master. Prepare to die.
To me there is no comparison between consoles and PC's when it comes to gaming. PC gaming will ALWAYS win out to me from a performance and control standpoint.
I am a gamer... a well off gamer who likes the full gambit of experience but most importantly be able to set the controls the way I like. Halo was an excellent example for this. PC gamers wiped the floor with the xbox counterparts when xbox live allowed PC gamers to play against Xbox'ers. There wasn't a single Xboxer in the top 100 players.
PC gaming will never die. If labels leave, new competition will take up the market. Xbox's and PS3's ARE computers at this point. That's what they are. Hell both of them can run linux or windows. In fact, gaming today is heading TOWARD PC gaming, just in a controlled manner they call "consoles".
This is just like the RIAA and their fight toward controlling the environment. Focus on your customers, focus on the experience and you won't have to worry about Pirating! The people who steal generally cannot afford it, or wouldn't have bought it anyway. Stop focusing on these people as you'll NEVER beat them. It's a challenge, a game... to them to break your scheme. Every single DRM has been broken within two weeks, the only exception being BlueRay which took a little bit longer. Stop wasting resources on this.
The publishers that use DRM made the mistake of declaring war on people who love the sport of breaking DRM. It's gotten to the point they create executables that let you break the DRM so anyone can do it without any tech knowledge at all.
SHOW me a single reputable study (REPUTABLE) that shows piracy is hurting publishers. This would be a study that connects pirates who would have bought it if it had DRM. Any study that it's entire source set is that of a college campus is going to have skewed results.
Buying a game is like buying a car. DRM is like the key to that car.
If I buy a car, I do not expect to have a significant percentage of the cost of that car used to make the key. Especially when the justification for that is that the key cannot be copied by key-cutters and third-party garages.
Yes, this make the car more "secure" - for a while - because official keys cannot be fabricated without the manufacturer's co-operation. FOR A WHILE. But there isn't a car in production that has an "uncopyable" key, or that can't be broken into without any key at all - the fact that manufacturers can make a key in the first place tells you that.
However, in blocking out this "unauthorised key copying" industry (some of which is actually legitimate - not everyone who takes their keys into a key-cutting place is intending to break into someone else's house), the manufacturer is spending more time designing more and more elaborate keys (all of which can be copied "unofficially" at any garage within a matter of days of the car being produced), charging me more and more for the privilege (by moving some of the value of the game into the cost of the key itself), and in the process giving me a car that I can't always drive, sometimes won't open, that I must NEVER lose the keys to (because in a couple of years it'll be almost impossible to get an official key ever again, and in the meantime the only option for replacement is to buy an entirely new car direct from the manufacturer in order to get "another" key) and where the key weighs 12 kilos, cannot be put onto a ring with other keys, and comes only in flourescent day-glo orange (just in case someone wants to run off with it to make it work on another car of the same model) - with holographic iris-identification-over-IP built in to the key just in case you try to lend your car to someone else.
Software copyright infringement is a problem. So do something about it that a) hurts the people doing it to you and b) doesn't hurt the people who aren't. Current DRM solutions do NEITHER of those.
And Steam subtracts value as well, because with those CDs and DVDs you have trouble with can be resold if you decide you don't have any use for them anymore. Steam takes away this right even for games you have purchased the CDs for (if it uses Steamworks you have no resale rights).
-Nick
My name is Obi-Wan Kenobi. You killed my master. Prepare to die.
It's funny how many people are worried about what will happen when there's no more Steam but fail to realize that most games that have been around for a decade or more require workarounds to play today anyway because of advances in technology. So those games you bought back then are just as worthless now as games on Steam will be on that day in the distant future when it shuts down. Why aren't you guys up in arms about that?
Rob
The only games that I would classify as troublesome are old DOS games, and even those are easily played in DosBox.
The benefit to older games is that they are easily virtualized with advances in computing power.
I actually play my old MOO2 game, on my MAC, in a dos box game bundled into an .APP. If anything, advances have made these games even more portable than ever before.
What we're talking about here is a missing piece of the puzzle, not due to age or newer systems because the older components can easily be recreated virtually, but actual missing pieces of the puzzle that prevents a game from being played at all.
I used to game when there was no DRM and if I wanted to pirate it was as simple as copying floppies. I bought a game every months or two and rarely pirated.
I carried this thorugh the CD check era and simply used no-CD cracks. When no CD cracks limited me from running the latest cersion of some games or palying online, I stopped buying games. Anymore it's rare that I buy new games. I deal with the DRM in Steam for HL2 because I only play it online with DoD mod. That's really the only game I play anymore. It's cheaper since I don't need to upgrade my computer or buy new games, and easier because I don't sweat having to circumvent the latest DRM so I can enjoy my games how I want to play them.
I now waste a lot less time on video games and spend more time doing fun active things, so in a way DRM has improved my life by pushing me away from wasting time and money on video games and computer upgrades.
1. If you actually have a copy of HL2, you shouldn't need any bandwidth at all to install it.
2. Decryption requires very little bandwidth.
3. Updating a game has nothing to do with DRM. If you think that the DRM forces you to update HL2, then you're wrong. You can tell Steam not to update HL2, then play it offline.
Rob
However, if you think about installing your game on a friend's PC or sharing it with others then please don't do it, okay?
(emphasis added)
..., well, it works for me
True, though it seems like the number of these that aren't used as a client end to a hosted service somewhere are dwindling. Either that, or they still require the ability to "phone home" to make them usable. It's just a bad situation. I get why publishers want DRM, and I get why gamers don't.
Only in countries with broken IP law.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Not if its halflife 2 you cannot. There is no (legal) non-steam version of that game.
I don't think legality plays much of a part.
I also have to concur. I emailed the Portal team, telling them how I had solved a puzzle different from how they had intended the user to do the puzzle. I received a positive response. It was nice, considering the amount of e-mails they receive.
Anyone who's paying attention already knows that all DRM is crackable for people who are sufficiently cheap. In fact, I'm inlined to believe that excessive DRM only posses a "challenge" for players to crack. Instead of just having a game to play, there's the game of cracking the DRM, with the reward being you get to play a game.
I think social-hacking by game makers would be a much more effective and affordable approach. To do it properly, they'd need some kind of carrot and stick approach. Here's an example, let's say the game takes a good old CD key. When it boots the first time it tries to authenticate with a server. If the server is found, and the key is valid and never before used, the loading screen displays something along the lines of "Thank you for purchasing this game. Your money allows GAME_COMPANY_X to make the best games possible." If it connects and the key is valid but not new, they could select a message based on how recently the key was used by someone else. If very recently, they could splash "It looks like you may be borrowing this game from a friend. We approve of sharing, but hope you'll love this game enough to purchase your own copy." Or, if the last user hasn't loaded in a while, it could display something friendly about reselling the game.
Meanwhile, if the server finds the key is not authentic, or is being used by lots and lots of people at a time it could display "You do not appear to have an authentic copy of our game. We do not believe in punishing people who play our games, so we will not record your IP address or in any other way violate your privacy, but do know that our developers must be paid to produce games of this quality. So, if you like the game, please buy a legal copy or share one with a friend."
My wording might be incorrect, but I think a simple scheme like that might go much further towards encouraging players who like the game to buy it while removing the fun of cracking from those who just like a challenge. Also, if I do purchase a valid copy and for some reason my key is being used by other people or I'm not on a network, I can still play the game and the message itself may even be positive. E.g. we can't authenticate you, but please enjoy our game anyways, and please play a legal copy.
The only problem with this kind of idea is that to CEOs it doesn't look like you're doing anything. They won't realize it's probably more effective at reducing theft than any DRM they can dream up.
I didn't say it didn't subtract value - I'm not a Steam apologist. However, the secondary PC game resale market now is basically dead in the water due to CD-keys - without them, you can't do much at all online. It doesn't matter that you legitimately bought the game second hand, games publishers generally won't honour that purchase with a new online prescense.
What I'm basically saying is that if you want to play online, resale of PC games has basically been crapped on already... it's exactly the same in the console market too.
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.
Wait until you lose your account or they shut down their servers...
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
When are people going to learn that if you don't like something a company is doing then don't buy their products. If you keep bending over, they'll keep sticking it in. I think if everyone could keep from getting the newest versions of whatever game software for a year - you know, like maybe just hold on to Madden 10 for now and leave 11 alone for a year - they will have to adapt. By adapting, I mean they would have to give into the demand of their customers. If there is no demand for game software with DRM, don't buy it - they will not make it anymore, I guarantee it. Demand doesn't mean you keep providing a constant revenue stream and then bitch about what you've bought. If you keep buying products like this why would they change their course of ever "improving" DRM technology. You don't just keep buying shit you're not happy with and then bitch about it after the fact. C'mon, people have to be smarter than this.
AAAUGH!!!! The chink in the armor. How could I have not seen it??!!!
See? Now you know precisely how hard it is for us thieving bastards in stark contrast to consumers. It's like, a lot of work or something.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
Had I not spent my mod points earlier this very day, it would be insightful for you.
This severely prevents you from ever owning your game. Once the company decides to no longer host the servers... that game is dead.
But it worked so well for software and music...
1) You control the hardware, hence I can keep old hardware to play those games. I still have my NES in working conditions. I don't control DRM servers.
2) Technology advances are inevitable, DRM isn't.
3) If you want to play Genesis games, you have to write 1 emulator for all those games. If you want to play a DRM'ed game, you have to write a crack for each one.
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