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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...
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.
"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!
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?
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.
Considering the fat sacks of cash Valve is raking in from Steam? Not likely.
Besides, the customer base is large enough that they COULDN'T shut Steam down without a class-action lawsuit. They're already on shaky ground, legally terming it a "subscription service" to bypass various first-sale laws. Even if they won the suit, they would have lost millions in attorney's fees. It may have been possible several years ago, but Steam has a critical mass of users. While that's a good thing for Valve, in that it makes Steam the de-facto digital distribution system, it also puts some restrictions on them. Namely, if they piss off enough of their users, they'll get sued, big-time.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
have you heard what happened in a first big tournament with $5k prize just 2 days ago? Players repeatedly lagged and in a showmatch Korean pro dropped TWICE in a best of 3 match. Do you think that they had a shitty connection?
Thousands of people watched it live, you can imagine how much of a fail that was.
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
With you on that. I've bought all 4 previous versions of Civilization and was eagerly looking forward to buying Civ V until I read about having to install Steam crap. Having gone through a hideous experience years ago with Steam just to get to play Half Life 2 which I'd bought and paid for I vowed never again to buy any game with Steam or DRM. And I haven't. They can whistle if they think I'm going to buy Civ V. I'm not going to pirate it though. I'll carry on with Civ 4 or not bother at all.
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."
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.
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
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 like my physical media.
For music, and movies, and so forth, anyway. It gives me freedom, to some degree. For instance, my collection of CDs is reasonable (500+), and some of them haven't been MP3'd yet. But worse, some were MP3'd years ago, at a low bit rate because when your player only has 64Mb of storage (yes, MEGAbytes - a Diamond Rio 500 - look it up!) you have to compromise a little.
I'm now slowly going through them and re-ripping at a much higher bitrate. In that scenario, having media wins.
However, I'm racking my brains trying to think why I'd want the media for games.
I had the media for games a while ago, and it was a PITA. I then bought the iD Complete Pack on Steam - every iD game up to that point. I still had my media for old iD games like Quake III and Quake III Arena, but installing via Steam was much easier. No mucking about with CDs, no hunting through packaging trying to find what the serial number's written on... And no having to find and download the patches, then install them - sometimes in a specific order.
With Steam and no physical media, I just download, copy the serial number, and go!
It's not like a re-install from original media would allow higher quality. Just more hassle.
I did once have an attachment to the original media for my games. Not any more. Not since I had to rebuild a machine and had to go off finding patches, hunt for lost manuals with serial numbers in them, and deal with scratched media. When I had a brand new machine later on, I just shuddered at the thought of the pain and time the physical media route would take. Then I saw the Complete Pack on Steam, and got my wallet out.
I can still just about see a point to having the media for music and video materials. But that's partly because backing up virtual only media (especially video) can take terabytes once you've got a reasonable collection. And partly because I'm loathe to do any encoding at anything but a very high quality level, as I've learnt my lesson!
I suspect that by the time I'm halfway through re-encoding my CDs, I'll be contemplating whether it's not just better to go looking at how much they'd cost to buy from Amazon or wherever... It may not stop me from re-encoding, but it might convince me it's not worth buying the physical media for my new music purchases any more...
Sad but true. It'll be the end of an era.
One final sad thought on the end of eras... I remember when albums had two sides. But right now it looks like I will have to explain to my children (well, my mates' children) that we once bought songs in bundles called Albums, on which the artists had sometimes painstakingly arranged songs into a specific order, for a certain effect. And that part of the pleasure of listening was to play the album, in order, to get that effect.
Ye gods, I feel old now.
Consoles are different story of course. They last much much longer relatively speaking before they are cracked.
The console or the games?
Games for Xbox360 are cracked same day they are released (some times before, depending on retailers)
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
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
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.