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DRM Drives Gamers To Piracy, Says Good Old Games
arcticstoat writes "Independent retro games retailer Good Old Games has spoken out about digital rights management, saying that it can actually drive gamers to piracy, rather than acting as a deterrent. In an interview, a spokesperson for Good Old Games said that the effectiveness of DRM as a piracy-deterrent was 'None, or close to none.' 'What I will say isn't popular in the gaming industry,' says Kukawski, 'but in my opinion DRM drives people to pirate games rather than prevent them from doing that. Would you rather spend $50 on a game that requires installing malware on your system, or to stay online all the time and crashes every time the connection goes down, or would you rather download a cracked version without all that hassle?'"
I certainly agree. I accidentally bought a game with DRM and online activation that I couldn't return (brick and morter retailer while on holiday). I'm allergic to installing that crap on my system, so I figured out how to bypass it with a modified exe. Why go to all that effort? Because I should control my system, and nobody else. I won't go so far as to pirate it, but I can understand why some people would.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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Once I install a game (legal or not) the first place I go is GameCopyWorld to see if there is any DRM removal patches.
Then I kept doing it because I'm cheap. Guess they got to me in my formative years.
The whole Blu-ray bullshit, too.
I have a blu-ray player, but I run Linux. Playing Blu-ray in linux is difficult and error prone.
So I download the movies instead. I would happily buy them legally if I could pop them in and just play them in linux.
And the fact that the bluray rips are available with little to no effort on all the pirate sites would suggest to me that the copy protection isn't working anyway.
...DRM is bad for consumers.
I absolutely agree with them. With the big budget games I've bought previously, I've also tended to download and apply cracks to be on the safe side - not just in case their DRM screws up my system, but also to get rid of needing the disc in all the time. There has always been temptation, though, to simply screw them over like they've screwed me over in the past, and get a pirate copy of the game.
I personally have re-bought over a dozen games I previously owned from GOG.com - they've made an effort to create automatic installers for all the older games, and it's a lot easier than breaking out the discs again. Particularly for some of the larger games, like Pandora Directive, which came on 6 CDs.
But I didnt need the 10+MB flash video set to auto play so it starts a) wasting my bandwidth; and b) blaring out of my speakers before i've even got down to the part where it says "make sure to watch the trailer down below."
It's obnoxious. Some of us are on metered internet these days!
People are willing to pay for things, but not for a worse end user experience.
As long as the pirates are providing a better product, they are going to win. I can't justify choosing to spend money on a worse experience. Can I get the option to pay for a valid license but then use the pirated install?
They have messed up DRM so many times and so many different ways, nobody has faith in it. In the end, the paying consumer suffers every time. Require internet for single player mode? What do you mean my media will no longer play because you turned your server off? And your secretly installing root kits?
While I don't personally install pirated games (too concerned about what else may come with it), I could see why people would if they really wanted to play game X. For me, there are enough other games typically that I'll just pass and go buy something else. I think the overboard DRM etc stuff does nothing to stop people from hacking it eventually, and just stops consumers like me, willing to pay for it, from buying the game(s) at all. And then there's also a certain about of ill will you feel towards the companies who do it -- maybe not a tangible, but I think it impacts my thinking and spending towards those publishers.
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
DRM only (marginally) benefits one party, and it is intrusive to varying degrees depending on the method used. It does strongly resemble malware those respects. If I got a piece of malware on my computer that required that I connect to the internet or worse, pop a specific disc into my computer every time I ran the program, I'd be pretty pissed.
A little off topic, but did anyone see they recently added Realms of the Haunting?
Dungeon Keeper II - loved the game and bought the game. The problem is it won't actually succeed in doing the stupid copy protection CD check anymore or run properly on XP without two cracks to get it to run - so that's what I do. I'd even considered buying it again at one point but gave up after a fruitless attempt to track it down.
If DRM is a result of the publisher's distrust in me, then my boycot is a result of my distrust in them.
Registration servers down, requiring the disk be in the drive, etc...A quick trip to TPB for a cracked file and I can play with no hassles.
Retail games:
* are dangerous. They can cause damage to your computer.
* are inconvenient. You can't back them up easily, they have ridiculous requirements like online activation or always online connection.
* don't work. They're made by hurried people who are trying to rush games out the door to grab your green.
Pirate games:
* are safe. The providers are out for kudos. Nobody gets kudos from a malware loaded or bugged release.
* are convenient. You can back them up however you like very simply. Restrictions described above are not in effect.
* work. People spend a great deal of time manipulating the game to work in the modified state, often better than how it was shipped at retail.
I am a big fan of GOG.com, but I am not so blind to fail to notice that this whole article is just an advert for them. It is hardly "interesting to see them coming from an online game retail business" when that retail business is dedicated to non-DRM games!
I agree that intrusive DRM will drive some people to piracy, or at least stops people (like me) from buying the products (FU! EA). But I am not convinced that the number of customers lost would be more than the number gained by preventing casual piracy. DRM will never stop the dedicated pirates, it is more aimed at people who do not identify themselves as pirates but who just loan their discs to their mates.
I can't stand DRM, and piracy is too much of a PITA to bother. Games are not that valuable for me to pirate, hack, crack...whatever. No, I'll just go back to my old games I used to play 6+ years go. Still plenty of replay value in them.
Life is not for the lazy.
Every cots package I buy either wants to sell me more shit via in-app crap, calls home constantly or is just annoying and a waste of time. I purchased some games for a present that required online activation..a year later I went to install it and the activation failed because the *reseller* of the game went out of business.
WTF even newer nero was loaded chalk full of crap the last time I looked... People need to stop being greedy and paranoid... I am doing my homework from now on before buying anything... Rediculous.
If people were "against" piracy but felt driven to avoid DRMed products, wouldn't they buy the product in question and then pirate a DRM free copy?
I mean, the dilemma "Would you rather pay money and get a broken insecure piece of crap, or download a working cracked copy for free?" is a false one. You can pay money and then crack it. You can pay money, ignore your legally bought copy, and then pirate a copy. DRM might justify anti-DRM circumvention or piracy as the quickest means to do so, but it doesn't justify not paying in conjunction with however you choose to dodge the DRM.
Personally I have no problem with piracy, knock yourselves out, but DRM isn't driving anyone to piracy who isn't already okay with piracy from an ethical standpoint.
Which I think the developers know and don't mind much at all.
If I play it on a console I don't get malware on my PC.
I didn't buy Starcraft 2 because of the whole "you don't own it" issue.
I try not to buy games on Steam because the more games you buy on Steam, the more you stand to lose if Valve decides to cut your account off. If they cut you off because of a dispute over one game, you lose the ability to run all the games you "own". At least with other DRM schemes I don't stand to lose everything over one game, I might lose it but I can still run my other games.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
...then my boycot is a result of my distrust in them
A lot of people say that - and not just about DRM - but in the end just go out and spend the money on the DRM infestation anyway because they don't want random warez possibly infecting them with something perhaps more offensive than DRM.
Certainly there has to be a fundamental change in customer service philosophy from the game companies, but I don't think pirated games or non-existent "boycotting" will do it.
Sadly, simply selling games cheaper, DRM and all, would probably eliminate a huge percentage of the pirated game "problem". $50+ for a game? Obscene.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
DRM for the DLC of Dragon Age Origins has been preventing users from playing the game since Friday. The verification servers are having an issue preventing authorization. Still no fix in sight.
Meanwhile all of the pirates are playing without issues.
Someone should tell Valve. I don't think they have noticed a big impact on Steam yet.
I have a friend who couldn't play some game -- I believe it was Assassin's Creed 2 -- because his internet is so unstable that he's lucky to have an uninterrupted connection for more than 15min. Unfortunately the game's DRM required a constant internet connection, and he got pretty fed up and decided to return the game. After a while he got around to trying a cracked version and was able to enjoy the full game without any interruptions. I think he just went straight to downloading for the next game they came out with, because he didn't feel like doing any research to find out if it had the same draconian DRM.
Then again, GoG's point of view is kind of skewed. The great majority of their games are cheap, making them easy impulse buys. Since they're mostly older I bet the majority of people buying them are nostalgic adults who're willing to pay for something they remember as being really great. I kind of doubt the lack of DRM factors much into the decision for most buyers.
Too much DRM drives people to piracy, not enough allows it. You need to make it just difficult for the average person not to be able to copy it to their friends but not difficult enough that it will accidentally cause problems. You have to make it easier to be a paying customer rather than a pirate. That's all. Acting like DRM-free is the way to go is naive though.
As a legitimate consumer, I hate DRM with a burning passion because I'm the one getting punished for the actions of pirates, while pirates get to enjoy a DRM-free experience. I want to believe this is true, but unfortunately, I cannot let myself engage in argument from consequence logical fallacies nor indulge in confirmation bias. I look at the evidence, and the evidence (to my knowledge) says that DRM-free games get pirated at about the same rate as DRM games.
Someone please prove me wrong.
My life story:
- I don't pay money for games with DRM. (And I do not pirate either).
- I agree downloading everything is stealing. The reason I am not entirely against piracy is because when I look at the money I spent the last 10 years on games, I spent around $1000 a year. The reason I spent 'only' $1000 a year on games is because I can not afford to buy more. But of all the games released during those 10 years, I probably bought less than 1% with that budget. I really think that kind of money should get me more games since I can't afford to pay for them anyway. I understand not giving away everything for free so as to give people an incentive to spend money, but why keep games away from people who have already spent all they could? Especially when what they spent was a quite large amount of money. This situation makes me think software is overpriced. For the past year I completely stopped buying regular price games (i.e. $40-$60).
- Games have no content anymore. I miss games where you could do almost everything, had plenty of options... If a game about spaceships was released in the early 90's, you had dozens of ships to choose from and hundreds of weapons. Plus a huge map, with dozens of galaxies, hundreds of systems and thousands of planets. You could probably explore both space and planet surfaces. The same game released today: "5 spaceships! 20 weapons! Hundreds of combinations!!!" and no planet exploration of course...
And look at all the FPS games released in the last 5 years - all CoD clones (and CoD was probably a clone of something else). Each new FPS game could improve on the old ones, for example: multiple bullet types (i.e. HP, piercing, tracer.,.) could be added, or I don't know, the option of customizing the pockets on your tactical vest... But no, each new game has to be like the previous ones. What's the point of even buying new games then? Oh yeah, the minor changes in gameplay.
Don't even get me started on modern health systems... Makes you wonder why PS3 fanbois complain GeoHot enabled cheating.
All these things put me off games in recent times.
Get me games with no DRM, games that are sold for half the price of today's games, and most of all games with loads of content and I'll start buying again. Guess what: right now, I buy my games on GoG. All games are less than $10, no DRM and since they're mostly 90's games they have lots more content than the CoD generation of players could ever dream of. The graphics aren't as shiny though, but I'm here to play, not watch a movie, so I don't mind the tradeoff one bit!
But get me a real game, with content, and I'll gladly pay $100 for it. Hell I might be willing to pay $200 if there's loads of content! With a game like that I'll have fun for ages, so well worth the investment.
According to Capcom the PC follow up to Street Fighter IV ,Super Street Fighter IV, was canceled because of lots of piracy. But the sales of SFIV were excellent on the PC. OTOH, there is a vibrant modding community giving away for free costumes and pallet swaps that Capcom charges $1-$3 a pop for...
Put another way, DRM == Control
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"Independent retro games retailer Good Old Games has spoken out about digital rights management, saying that it can actually drive gamers to piracy, rather than acting as a deterrent.
So which came first? The DRM or the piracy?
Whilst I, along with probably everyone else here, dislikes DRM, it probably doesn't mean much to your average consumer. They're more interested with playing their games than worrying about malware being installed or finding cracks to get the game working (which may also cause malware to be installed).
So as long as the DRM doesn't destroy the game, such as always requiring an internet connection when your connection is unstable, and in general rather "user friendly", I don't see it as a disincentive to most people. And yes, it does provide some disincentive against piracy since cracks rarely exist within a few days of a game's release, not to mention having to trawl through comments to ensure a pirated copy will actually work.
This is one of the reason why I shifted my gaming activities to PS3. They can put any kind of DRM crap and limitations on my console as long as it works as intended.
1995: "I don't want to install a pirated game, who knows what malware came with it?"
2011: "I don't want to install a non-pirated game, who knows what malware came with it?"
I generally download a game, try it for a day, then go buy it or get rid of it depending on whether it's good or not. Any legal system that says this is wrong needs to check its premises and not bother me until they have done so.
DRM didn't drive me to pirate games, it drove me to give up gaming entirely.
Even on a console, the hassles were just too much.
Game publishers think they're in the game business. They're in the fun business. If they figure out how to sell hassle-free fun on any of my several mainstream computing platforms, I will give them money. But the longer they fail, the less likely they are to ever interest me again.
Do you remember GOG's stunt a while back where they acted like they were shutting down but then just redid their website? And that this is an ad for them, as previously noted. I refuse to buy from them after such a ridiculous stunt.
How many here have bought a game and cracked it after purchase anyway, while otherwise still using it legally (aka, not giving it to a friend or anything, just keeping it on the shelf))?
Completely agree, the amount of hoops you have to jump through these days to play a legitimate game is astounding, it's actually less effort than getting the cracked version. In fact, recently I bought Bulletstorm and couldn't get windows live games to work, so I had to download the cracked version to play the game. I'm happy to support People Can Fly because they gave me Painkiller, but honestly, that's ridiculous.
Though none of these problems arise when using Steam, love Steam, if I can't get a game on there, I just don't buy it.
"DRM, Baaaddddd"
"Free, Gooodddddd"
Can we just mod every DRM post as redundant since there are rarely any original arguments. It's always my daily Groundhog Day moment.
DRM that works can reduce losses from piracy. Or maybe I just imagined all the forum posts about the "friend" who pirates everything but buys PS3 games (well up until recently).
Ineffective and DRM free games get pirated equally. Just look at what happened to world of goo:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/11/acrying-shame-world-of-goo-piracy-rate-near-90.ars
GOG is pulling the Slashdot free advertising lever.
...that's your problem.
all rpm and deb based distributions are shit for package management.
The $0 price is the underlying motivation.
DRM lowers the value of a game, as it turns the game into rental. One could argue the recent trend to shorten AAA single player games and sell AAA games in DLC-sized pieces further reduces value. It makes little sense, then, that in the face of these things AAA game prices have risen against market forces.
On the other hand, lots of cheapo, simple games have been selling like hotcakes because their value is priced appropriately.
Developers of AAA titles should simply sell their AAA games at a reasonable price. If they want to charge more or add DRM they should do so in a way that adds value to their products, much like Valve does with their big titles. If big name developers and publishers continue down their current path, however, they're going to completely alienate and lose their customers, and piracy will be the least of their problems.
I wouldn't say that DRM drives people to "pirate" the games, per se, but it definitely does drive them to look for the ability to bypass the DRM for games that they own. I always look for a DRM hack for any game that requires the disc to be in my PC. My monster rig is up on a cabinet for proper cooling and the DVD drive is in no way convenient to access. Add to that the fact that swapping discs all the time is the best way to get them scratched to an unusable state.
Not only that, but I've had several games that actually would not run on my PC until I circumvented their DRM. I've even bought one game that I've NEVER been able to play. I believe it was Space Rangers 2, supposedly a surprisingly good game, but I'll never know. I paid $40 for it at a retail store, took it home, and the early version StarDock DRM fully prevented not only that game from running, but several other retail purchased games from operating properly. Took me 3 days to get it off of my system, and I've since thrown the disc away. I bought Battlefield 2 + all the expansions through the EA online store, and I think it took 3 months for me to get it to let me actually log in without crashing. When people who actually paid retail money for your game STILL have to "steal" it in order to play it, something is horribly, horribly wrong.
Try using Test Drive 2 unlimited when the servers are down or full... and enjoy the pain... (soft so lame that I won't even bother finding a crack, and I bought 2 license thinking it would be nice to play on the lan at home).
TRY TO RUN TOCA RACE DRIVER 3... starforce version is not compatible with windows 7... therefore without crack you can't use your genuine software...
This fun never ends...
Pirate are accused of stealing... while no money change hands... why aren't soft developper also accused of stealing when they take the money but don't deliver ?
I play on the couch anyways so saying goodbyte to pc gaming wasn't a big deal. A combination of Steam/GFWL annoyances and developers focusing on consoles made me switch over.
You put the game in the console and play it. What is the problem?
Oh, we drive you to piracy with our slow bloated crushing DRM
And then sweep you up in the civil suits and threatening letters we send
Don't say the games we make are awful and bad...
And you will not pay a cent after you played that pirated copy you had
See, the developers won't make our product that sells as good
As last years model, even though we copied it as best we could
So, it's no longer our business model to please the masses
Now take the position while we give it to you up the... Error 402: PLEASE CHECK YOUR INTERNET CONNECTION TO CONTINUE PLAYING
Some friends were leaving my house, and two were talking about DRM.
B & N: Yadda, yadda, yadda...
B: They're just punishing paying customers!
C (has just walked over): Who's punishing paying customers?
Me: Your mom.
Looks like Rockstar is losing their interest in the pc anyways.
As part of the collective that makes up the gaming marketplace, we really have no one else but ourselves to blame for the continuing existence of DRM. If we don't buy the games, Big Gaming makes no money and is forced back to the drawing board. Piracy is a response to TWO things: unreasonably high prices AND artificial tactics like DRM designed to protect those unreasonably high prices.
We don't need laws or lawyers or politicians to stop this greedy behavior. All we need are education of the market and effective boycotts. The "market" can't fix everything, but it - WE - can damned well fix this. I am not a Libertarian, so sorry if that sounds like a Libertarian refrain.
I don't mind DRM in, f.e. iOS too much because basically it doesn't cause problems. It doesn't really restrict copying (I can install as many times on as many devices as I like), and I have a backup of the software on my computer. Basically, the stuff works.
On the other hand, I bought a gave from GameTree, and it just wouldn't activate, no matter how many times I tried. Every time, it says I need to be connected to the internet. I have tried the network at my house, at school, at the library - it just won't work. I think they have tried to support me, but they don't know why it doesn't work either. This after downloading a freaking 6GB disk image! At any rate, my only realistic option to getting it working might be to find a pirate copy - but I am wary of that (who knows what Trojan could be hiding inside).
To paraphrase the author, "What I will say isn't popular..." ... here on Slashdot, but I'm going to say it anyway. DRM in and of itself does not drive people to pirate games. I say this as someone who used to courier gigabytes of warez a month back when a 14400 baud modem was considered lightning fast, and the only way to get "0 day" warez was to download them from Europe and take advantage of the fact that their day started before ours.
People pirate software because they are cheap, unethical bastards. I swapped warez because I was a kid and my parents couldn't afford to buy me all the new games. I justified it to myself because a lot of the times the games sucked, and I would have been upset if I had actually spent money on the games. However, even as a punk ass, thieving teenage kid, I still bought games from studios that put out quality products because even back then, I understood that studios need support to stay in business.
DRM being a source of piracy is a load of crap. People are stealing because they do not care. They should just come out and admit it. They couldn't give two shits about the coders and project managers, marketing people, game testers and everyone else who is trying to make a living by putting out what they hope will be fun, enjoyable, entertaining software. Sure, there are some flops. Sure, it would be nice if you could "try before you buy", but lets face it, that is not and cannot ever be a viable business model. It takes too much time and effort to get a game out the door. A company can't put out a half assed game and tell the public, "If you like this, buy it and we'll keep making it better." Look how much people whine about DownLoadable Content (DLC). "It should have been included in the first game. Damn game studios, nickle and diming me death." Look at how people whine about WoW "Damn Blizzard, expecting me to pay every month. Those servers should be free damn it!"
It's really easy to put the blame for a-moral, anti-social behavior on the others. It takes some real strength of character to look at yourself in the mirror and acknowledge that you are ripping someone else off.
Frankly, I'm sick of it. In theory geeks should be some of the smartest, most enlightened people around. In reality, they're just as a-moral and pathetic on certain subjects as "Joe Sixpack" and the rest of the stereotypical personifications of lame behavior that they rail against on a regular basis.
Before people go nuts on this post, realize that I'm not saying I support DRM, or root kit like behavior, or software phoning home. I'm saying that using those as an excuse for piracy (the gist of the article) is a load of crap. If a person does not like DRM, don't support publisher. If you buy a game, and want to download a no-CD crack, or download a modded exe to get rid of some phone home behavior, I believe that is your right as a consumer. Go on with your bad self, DMCA be damned. But don't pirate a game, and try to justify it as anything else besides outright theft.
This guy said it right. How many times do we hear some gaming company releasing a game with new and enhanced security measures only to be cracked in UNDER 24 hours, and this is despite a team of genius programmers working so dang hard to put in place some sophisticated voo doo code to prevent it from being cracked. If a thief really, really, really wants to break into your home, HE WILL BREAK INTO YOUR HOME! Why do gaming companies assume that most people are criminals? I tend to think people ARE willing to spend their hard-earned money on a good game because I tend to believe that most people are honest and not liars and thieves, and if the game is good, they're willing to pay for it. DRM only serves to encourage pirating because there ARE the hackers that see this as a challenge to prove that they can crack it. I will NEVER buy a game with DRM. I am also an aspiring game developer, and I will NEVER EVER use DRM because that will only serve to piss off fans of my game, and why in the world would I want to do that? There will always be people that pirate just like there will always be people who steal cars or whatever. Why assume upfront people are thieves? I lock my door at night, but I don't have a dang tank in front of my front door, and even if I did have a tank, they could always find another way in. It's like why don't these game companies get a clue--I WANT TO SCREAM, GET A CLUE!
Bull, DRM doesn't drive anyone to piracy, people use it as an excuse to steal. I think DRM is a pain in the ass and I can understand people who won't buy games that use it, but you don't have an innate right to own a game. If you don't like it don't buy it. THAT is your choice. Theft is theft. Stop trying to justify it in some lame Robin-Hoodesque "fighting against the man" BS.
I play console games because of worry of what PC games will do to my computer. (And because I swap OSs periodically and don't feel like reinstalling or having games that only work when running Windows)
I gave up on DS games because frankly, the enfored stylus control system ruined many games.
I'll happily play the 360 over the Wii to not have to deal with a clumsy stick based interface. (That said, Nintendo was smart enough to give you the CHOICE on how to control Super Smash Brothers and Mario Kart)
Nintendo thankfully provided us a slider on the 3DS controlling the 3D effect. (Tried it at Wal-Mart, apparently I'm immune to 3D, I get double-vision and an instant mild discomfort. I was really looking forward to having a 3D camera, hopefully the next system does 3D in a different manner, I had no problems with the Virtual Boy.)
Many otherwise good games periodically lose their fun with enforced mini-games. (There's at least a handful of games that are NOTHING but mini-game collections out at any given time. If I want to play a mini-game, I'll find it myself. I like platformers but not FPSs. If I can't get any further in a platformer until I get through a shooting challenge, the game is going back on the shelf, or to gamestop where someone will buy it used instead of new. Annoying games make the jump from "original sales" to "resales" faster because of availability. Also, if you do this with 1 game in a series, why should I get any of the sequels?
Nintendo came up with a good idea in one of the recent Mario games adding an auto-pilot of sorts that would help the less skilled/patient with challenges, but why would you want to skip the gameplay you specifically paid for? I would however be more than happy to skip what I didn't go out looking to buy that's holding what I did hostage. (I'm looking at you, Mega Man 8 with your "jump, jump, slide, slide".
On the other hand, Bowser's Side Story is beyond me. (Apparently I can't properly blow into the microphone. It only registers once every few times and it's not due to any lack of volume. Experimenting with different sounds, hissing, yelling, solid tones etc hasn't helped.) There's no way around it. Minigames to unlock the Bowser battle are annoying as anything and have to be repeated every time I die at Bowser. (No save after the minigame and before Bowser.) The 1st DS Zelda was a pain in the butt despite being overly easy from the horrid controls. The 2nd with the train mini-games got put up. (Surely they learned their lesson after the 1st and will offer d-pad control, nope. I should have borrowed before buying, no more Zelda.) The World Ends With You, put aside almost immediately. If I can't see the screen and control at the same time, I'm not interested in your game. Why would Phantasy Star Online (in offline mode) not let me pause to use the bathroom? Mario 64 had extremely annoying parts (the slides) but you could choose to go after a different star. Don't have Sonic speed-run reflexes? Much of (the original) Sonic could be walked through. Don't want to deal with Chaos Emeralds? Don't bother. It only changes the ending. I never bothered with Boktai, why would I want to plan WHEN I play? The game is there for me, not vice-versa.
Who wants to pay $30 - $50 for frustration when there's good games out there whose challenge is the gameplay, not bad controls or filler.
The hacking mini-game wasn't worth it to me in Bioshock, didn't matter, you could get enough ammo w/o hacking. (In normal difficulty, haven't tried others.)
A good $20 comedy on DVD will keep me laughing (happy) for ~ 120 minutes. A riveting book has no issues. (with the exception of cliffhangers in a series) Why should I buy a game that's as much frustration as joy? If the jumps are hard, fine. If the boss takes 100 hits to kill, fine. If the boss requires a DDR like minigame, the game's not worth playing. (Goodbye Ephemeral Phantasia) You don't need filler, I loved Portal and Braid. Neither was that long. Portal w
...how big piracy was even before DRM. People are attracted to piracy because it's free, not because of copy protection.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
tl;dr: nintendo fanboy likes comedies more than most games.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Hi, I'm a pirate and I disagree with GoG.
The bulk of the things I pirate are because it's free, and free beats paying for things. I just got done downloading Stargate Universe in 720p so that I could watch it in HD without commercials, and once I'm done typing this I'm going to go play a pirated game on my Wii.
I do buy things now and then, but DRM (or lack thereof) has very little to do with it. The things I do buy are mostly games where I want to play multiplayer, since MP generally isn't possible with pirated copies. It's with only a rare exception that I've purchased something in the first place only to pirate it due to DRM (a couple of old-school games with CD checks come to mind). Otherwise if I can be assed to buy something, the DRM in modern games isn't normally intrusive.
So I have to disagree with GoG. DRM is not why I pirate things, and of the like-minded people I know (keeping in mind that the plural of anecdote is not data), I don't know anyone who engages in significant piracy due to DRM. Most of us are just pirating things because it's cheaper than paying for it, be it in money or in time lost to ads.
I will give GoG kudos for distributing games without DRM though, it's an appropriate method of handling old games where there's little of commercial value for DRM to protect. But with that said even if they had every game in the world DRM free, I still wouldn't buy them.
In high school I used rosetta stone to learn Russian. incidentally, it was around the same time I started trying out linux. Due to teaching myself drive partitioning and my own inexperience, I really screwed up my hard drive a couple times. So I would have to re-install everything, including rosetta stone. I didn't know it at the time, but it came with exactly two licences, so the internet activation only worked twice. After the third time when I found that out, I ended up calling their technical support. After spending 30 minutes on the phone with a hard-to-understand foreign person, I still wasn't getting anywhere. He said I'd have to provide proof of purchase (which I didn't have, because the school bought the software) and maybe he'd be able to get me another licence.
I was pretty fed up at that point, so I decided for the first time to give piracy a try. It was perfectly ethical; I was just trying to be able to use the software that had already been paid for. I couldn't believe how simple it was, just download a small crack from the pirate bay, and everything worked perfectly. DRM was the very thing that introduced me to piracy. I personally still wouldn't take anything without paying for it, but I can easily see how someone might start pirating their media solely because of DRM.
Anybody want a peanut?
Congrats to you sir. I intented to write a post exactly like yours. You speak the truth and you should have been modded 5, interesting for everyone to see your post.
The sad fact is that most of the people support crap ideas like DRM being the reason to pirate software, content ownership is changing etc because they want excuses for stealing stuff. I wish they have a cool idea someday that is pirated as hell, just to see how they react.
DRM on many games effectively kills: "buy used, play, sell" scheme. Try to do it, with, say, Starcraft II, that not only requires online activation, but is bound to your account.
So those, used to pay for games, have to pay more. And since it happens in the name of "fighting piracy" this aspect of DRM is often overlooked.
...drives me away from reading it. Sorry.
...it's all about preventing used game sales.
DRM doesn't prevent piracy, never has, never will, and everyone knows this, including the game companies. The money that is lost to piracy is 99% imaginary money that was never going to be spent in the first place, so the game companies don't really care about piracy, even though that's their cover story for why they use DRM.
DRM does effectively prevent used games sales. When a used game is sold, the game company sees money trading hands that they think should be theirs. It's their end-run around the First Sale Doctrine. This is also the real reason you're seeing such a big push for books to go electronic; book publishers can't put DRM on a physical book, but they can on their ebooks.
Requiring to insert the original disk for playing is quite a good reason to download the pirated version.
Same thing goes for DVD-movies: ripping them from dvd is the easiest way to get rid of the slow and ignorant interface you have to navigate through, they often even don't allow you to skip the intro sections!
Next step is to download instead of ripping them yourself, since that takes some time and cpu power you'd like to use for doing something else (say playing games or watching a movie).
There used to be pirated versions that contained more crapware than the original, but now it's the opposite.
I know I've downloaded No-CD fixed .exe files for games that I actually bought. If that doesn't tell the game publishers something, I don't know what will.
I've been saying this for years: If you want to lose the "war on piracy", the absolutely best way of doing that is making the legal, bought copy less convenient than the pirate copy.
If one option you have is to go to a brick-and-mortar store, or order a CD/DVD online and wait for 1-2 days, paying some $50, then paying some more for DLC that really should've been in the main release, then spend 10 minutes entering a 243-character ID number badly printed on the inside of the case, half covered by some advertisement sticker, then have to enter your private details that they have no business of knowing, registering some online account, and having to have an active Internet connection every time you want to play, so the rootkit they installed can check you're legit, after crashing your PC a couple times and requiring you to uninstall a few perfectly legal and useful tools because it has decided they're evil...
Or, you go to some random torrent site, download three seperate releases because you know at least one is fake, but the other two are fine, have all the DRM crap removed, and you're up and running within a few hours and without all the hassle...
Seriously, which option would a rational being choose? Ignore the legal and moral, because if you feel compelled to "do the right thing", that's not a rational decision.
Yes, I am exaggerating, but not really all that much. Fact is that for way too many games these days, the torrent is simply more convenient, less hassle, less invasive(!).
And, as I keep telling to game publishers, you can't change the pirates' side of the equation. You can change yours.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
How do you play in the real WoW economy (that is: on the real Blizzard servers, with all the legit players) using a cracked version of WoW?
Answer: you don't.
We, crackers, saw it coming all along back in the days: make sufficient part of the computation happen on the server-side and make your game depend on the Internet and it's "good game" for us. There's nothing we can do.
The day I realized that, 15 years ago, I quit the cracking scene in disgust and decided to work on the server-side.
Good luck to all the wannabees, I've got logic and facts on my side ;)
Right, and robbers attack banks because of cumbersome identification procedures and poor customer service.
I purchased GTA3, Vice City and San Andreas and played them all to completion, so I was really looking forwards to GTA IV. Problem is that I don't have a home Internet connection*. Now, over two years later, I haven't brought or played it. Every now and then I take a look online for cracks, but I haven't found any that will allow installation and play without an Internet connection.
I had also purchased and enjoyed Half Life and was looking forwards to Half-Life 2. Over six year later, because of DRM, I have not brought or played it.
I hope that one day these games will be re-released without the DRM. The publishers really should do this as anyone who wants to pirate them will have already done so by now.
* I work long hours, have a fast Internet connection at work; and can transfer files as needed. A home Internet connection would cost me about 300GBP (500USD) for the first year, which is too much just to activate a few computer games.
...nobody pirates World of Goo. People pirate because they're cheap, ignorant bastards. Use DRM as an excuse if it eases your conscious, but DRM free games see piracy rates in the 90% range as well. Which is amusing since you could have gotten a lot of them for a penny during a Humble Bundle pack.
The real problem is that developers and publishers are having real trouble making money from PC games more than for any other platform, and part of the problem is undoubtedly piracy. What they need to do is attract more paying customers. Ineffective DRM certainly isn't the best method for doing that, but not including DRM isn't going to work magic either.
For the paying customers it doesn't seem that DRM is a real turn-off. It's rather telling that the most successful games in recent years have had the most restrictive DRM. The relatively safe DRM on consoles seems to be attracting big bucks. And the anti-consumer DRM-encumbered iPhone has been a surprising success for game developers.
I think that some people just like teh challenge of getting around it aswell. I've got stuff before that i shouldn't of. just to see if i could get it to work...
I can't even be bothered downloading a crack these days, i just go back to playing all the older games from pre-2005 that I haven't completed yet.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I used to pirate games when I was younger, as I came from a poor family and didn't have a weekly allowance or anything. Now, as I'm older and can afford it, I still pirate games if there isn't a demo available. I'm still not exactly rolling around in dough and I'd feel terribly ripped off if I bought a game for 60 bucks, only to find that I don't enjoy it one bit. But if the game is good, I DO purchase the full, original copy despite DRM.
If the DRM is a hassle, I find a crack and don't give it a second thought. The weird thing is that occasionally, I've run into games that won't even run unless they're cracked - Portal, for me, is a good example. The official Steam version, which I bought, would crash periodically so I opted to play the pirated copy which ran without any problems.
What's up with the article's page autoloading the Witcher 2 demo? Bad form.....
If you're spending $300 million making a movie, how can your distribution people be outdone by some nerds with a flaky leaked copy? Making movies/games is a really competitive, cutthroat business but instead of their distribution people working out better channels for people to get their product more easily and of a higher quality than the pirates provide, they try and shut the pirates down. The problem is they can't, and their efforts only inconvenience their legitimate customers. I can buy your new album online? How very modern. Oh wait, I can't listen to it at work because of your batshit insane DRM? I'll just pirate it then because they offer a superior method to get the same product.
I mean shit, I have a disposable income that's just begging to be squandered on stupid media rather than sensibly put into a savings account, you just have to make it easy for me to give it to you. If I have a spare afternoon and I want to watch a movie, and the only ways the producers give me to see it is to drive to a cinema and put up with people whooping at the screen, drive to a store and buy a dvd or wait a few days for a dvd to be delivered, it's much more likely I'll get it from pirates because then I can stay at home and watch it on a whim. Using this modern thing we have. The internet. It's why Steam is so successful: rather than making me faff around with cracks for first day release version that I can't (but will need to) update, I can pay to have a version I know will work and will be up to date and which will typically download faster than the torrent. I'd pay to stream a movie in high quality just to avoid the grotesque comments on the pirate bay even!
Remember the good old days of copyright protection in games?
You'll be prompted to flip to a certain page/paragraph on the game manual, and enter the correct word.
Ah, the nostalgia.
It seems that as technology advanced through the years, with the arrival of the (faster and faster) Internet and more powerful gaming hardware, copyright protection thinks that it is obliged to keep up with the times and get more intrusive.
Screw that.
There will always be pirates, but pissing off legit, paying customers so much so that they have to resort to piracy to circumvent the intrusive DRM... is certainly no way to conduct a business.
How about the Steam model? That may work, but only for certain genres of games. Also, don't forget that players have the right to play offline, or *gasp* via a LAN connection (hear that, Blizzard?).
Want to reduce piracy to a minimum? Here are some tips:
1) Make a game with good gameplay that stands the test of time. Don't whore your graphics, because I'm sure after some years, we'd have moved on to better graphics. If your game is mediocre in gameplay, it will be forgotten.
2) Reasonable price. You can save a lot by cutting out the middle men and marketing BS (i.e. what the major game publishers do with events, teasers etc.)
3) Trust your customers. No DRM.
DRM in and of itself does not drive people to pirate games
Funny you say that, because I just read through about 20 comments that stated exactly that DRM drove them to pirate games. In fact, yours is the only one that didn't.
I understand all the comments above. Having the DVD in the drive to play a game is a hassle, many DRM schemes cause more problems than they solve, and finding the no-cd is usually easy. How about online purchases such as Steam? The game comes completely up-to-date with all latest patches, no need ever for a DVD in a drive, no DRM scheme is installed, and your games all stay conveniently forever in your library. On top of that, Steam has regular sales on their games, you can often find 6-month old games for 75% off. I hated Steam when it first forced me to have an account just to play HalfLife 1 which I had purchased on DVD. It killed the second-hand game market, any Valve game which had the serial number registered would not work even if you legally purchased the game second-hand. But I have been converted. It is incredibly convenient, and works flawlessly. I doubt I will buy shrink-wrapped PC games again unless they are on a super-sale. In fact, I have so many Steam games in my library, it would take me to 2015 to play them all.
of reading a PCGamer review that actually suggested using a exe stripped of DRM, because it would improve game performance noticeably. And that was back when Morrowind was first released. And DRM have only gotten more invasive since.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
After doing assessment I generally moved how I tend to do things over to Steam.
1. Steam has proven to be nice. I hate DRM, but steam is more than just invasive DRM. Its DRM that gets out of the way most of the time *and* has some nice things that are positive as well as negative.
2. I can buy a game, and put it on my PCs. Yes, I can only log in one at a time and play, but there is only one of me. Re-installing the game on machine rebuilds is easy and the games are patched for you.
3. I *actually* grew to like steam. I still hate DRM, but Valve and the people at Steam deserve serious pats on the back and kudos for actually making something thats good for game dev and for customers. I still regard steam as DRM, but its tolerable DRM, and its easy, and it stays out of the way.
4. Fair prices, AT least as competitive as any outlet, with masses of good value, special deals, weekend deals, and cheap back catalogue
5. 99% of people here thinking the cracks and keygens and exe's are better than DRM - wrong.
6. Malware is so bad, and security tools only shield you to a limited extent and can only shield you in limited ways.
7. Botnets, virii, malware has reached a level where its economic to infest your pc. The risk element is far larger, and thinking DRM is worse than the elevated risks means you should try and avoid both where you can, not avoid one over the other. Anyone downplaying the malware issue and current state of play has no idea what they are talking about and should promptly shut up.
If game devs build round steam, then I have no real problem buying the game from them and accepting its level of DRM.
The only think I'd like to see is the ability to buy more simple activations on games that have 3-4-whatever activations, and more friend packs where I can buy 4-8copies for friends and give it as presents.
We`re all equal
For one part because I've been looking forward to it, and even more so because the company respects me enough as a customer to not try and bog down my system with crapware. Such a perspective deserves to be rewarded with high sales numbers to prove a point to the gaming industry.
Most people pirate stuff because it's easy to get what you want.
The content industry has been reacting to this for years now by trying to make it harder. It didn't become harder.
The alternative, making their own offering similarly easily available, has somehow eluded them (for the most part).
Case in point: Steam (never used, no experience with it except reading about it here). Why does it work? Because it delivers.
Hassle-free, gentlemen, hassle-free.
Make it convenient for me to get your stuff. The pirates already did, and apparently people like shopping where it's convenient.
It can take a lot of shenanigans to get i76 running right, but the fans have put together a zip file with the appropriate tools and a launcher to help.
Here is the community thread for the launcher:
http://www.gog.com/en/forum/interstate_76_arsenal/updated_new_i76_arsenal_launcher_with_automatic_workarounds_2_versions
And a newspaper is shared before finished. It DOES NOT MATTER *how* many people don't pay. All that matters is how many pay.
If dropping DRM quadruples piracy but doesn't change the purchase rates, then you've saved the cost of the DRM licenses. If it increases sales by one, you've made a profit. 6 billion people may play your game without paying, but if the remaining 500 million pay, then you've made a stonking profit.
In my college days, downloading games and running the crack to get it to work was the only way I would play games. I just didn't have the resources to keep buying games that would fill up all of the free time I had. As I've grown up, got a job, a wife and a kid my gaming time has dwindled down to the point where I just don't want to deal with cracking a game, doing a huge download that just does not work or run the risk of getting a virus on a computer that's now a "family" computer. So for me, DRM worked I guess. It is just too much of a hassle to steal a game. I still could if I wanted to, but Steam is just so easy and I'd rather spend my time playing than all that other BS.
The natural place for information is in the public domain. We grant a temporary monopoly for creators to encourage them to create. The current continuously extended copyright system has badly broken this, and damages everyone.
As for the state of Slashdot, that is the nature of popularity. Shrug.
@#$#@$ Lightning dodging.
That you're a cheap, unethical bastard. However, this doesn't mean everyone is.
This is not Insightful, this is Arrogant.
Software piracy has been going on pretty much as long as there has been commercial software. DRM may well indeed be a contributing factor in today's climate, but it's not at the core of what makes people pirate software.
I believe quite firmly that the most significant reason that people pirate stuff is simply because they can... and that they know that there is exceedingly unlikely to be any negative consequences whatsoever.
The DRM is intrusive, the price is too high, and other often-heard excuses for piracy may very well be individually true about the products, but they are still little more than rationalizations that people utilize to justify their activities.
Most software... and computer games in particular, are a luxury, not a necessity. There is but one justification that I have ever heard for piracy that I do not have a problem with, and that is if it is otherwise unavailable in any capacity... such as if the game has been abandoned, or the hardware is no longer available so emulation is one's only option to play the game.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
...if piracy rates are about the same for non-DRM as for DRM games, what possible motivation would publishers have for not including DRM in their games? Yes, the cracks appear very quickly, but as long as the game is uncracked in the first critical hours of release, there will be some impact on their bottom line. So as things stand right now, there is a slight benefit to having DRM, and a negligible benefit to not having DRM.
In their place, who wouldn't make similar decisions?
If non-DRM games get pirated at the same rate at DRM games, what motive is there to produce DRM-free games? The pirates have been undermining our case that it would be in the publishers' interest to keep DRM out of their games, but right now we cannot make a reasonable case that removing DRM would necessarily result in more sales.
Thanks for the attempt to help, but it doesn't work on X64, nor does it really work on anything faster than a low end dual or a P4. it is starting to look like i76 is just one of those games that simply can't be played on a modern system which is a damned shame as from what I remember it was a fun as hell game and started the whole "cars with weapons" phase, ala V8 and Twisted Metal on the PS.
Sadly I believe that unless someone can come up with a DOSBox style emulation that can give us a Win98Se with a MOR late 90s GPU included that many win9x games are gonna simply be lost forever. I know that one of the games that I practically lived on during that period, the excellent MechWarrior 3, is no longer playable as on anything but win9x you have a "bouncing bug" where vehicles will bounce 1000s of feet in the air before the game CTD, and I've run into serious show stoppers in plenty of other games of that era, such as memory access crashes because Win9x didn't protect the memory like a modern OS and therefor it was easy for games to write out of bounds.
Hopefully someone will come up with an emulator strictly for the Win9x era, as the win2K era games can be played with WOW and DOSBox takes care of the DOS era so that is the one era we have left with no real workaround. Considering this was to many the "golden age of PC gaming" with so many excellent games being released it would be a damned shame if they went the way of the 8 track simply for lack of decent emulation.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
1) These rights restriction systems barely slow down the crackers, they'll come out with a brand new, elaborate, "uncrackable" rights restrictions system and it'll be cracked in a day or two. Anyone who wishes to pirate the game can and will.
2) Everyone else, they can either buy the game, have to register it, have crap installed on their computer which may or may not interfere with the CD-burner or DVD drive, slow the system down, destabilize the system. This also reduces the range of OSes it'll run under -- it probably won't run in "Windows version current+1" due to rights restrictions, and may not run in wine while it otherwise would. If you mod your computer, or get a new one, you may or may not be able to reinstall the game you've paid for and "own". Or get it for free, install it, and play it.
I think Cory Doctorow may have been the one to say that DRM only punishes paying customers.
You contradict yourself, you say the DRM will brick your PC forcing a reinstall. If hardware is bricked you cannot reinstall anything on it (without pulling out a soldering iron or some alligator clips at least.) Which, in fact, IS possible, we got a computer into the surplus store I worked at once where the BIOS had been damaged, it would start to POST but no booting, no BIOS menu, and would not run any of the BIOS-recovery procedures (we did plenty of diagnosis, it wasn't just a bad IDE drive or something hanging the POST.)
I think it'd be fair to say the CD-ROM would be bricked though.
It has amazed me for a while now how much corporations SPEND money and programming time to add DRM to a game when it adds headache to their end users.
It won't read in their CDROM, or it adds something that makes the OS unhappy (and doesn't remove it when you uninstall). It forces you to be online the entire time you're playing the single player version. It forces you to have the CD in while you play. Or some other BS.
If I need to download a nocd or other cracked exe to enjoy my game without the headache then I'm really more likely to download the entire game and not give you any of my money.
If a big company would finally say screw this crap and just put out decent product that worked because they spent their time focusing on (imagine this) the product then I think the customers would show their appreciation for that. I would even go so far as to advertise "No DRM" on the box. Of course you're always going to have some piracy, but that's something you're always going to have.
I don't have a problem with serial numbers or one time online activation, those kinda of things are non-intrusive.
So far as I have noticed, every tool you have mentioned is for Windows.
Have you tried playing this game under Wine on a Linux machine? For the multi-core problems, you can build Wine without threads support which will confine it to one CPU. There are probably easier ways to arrange that as well. Wine also gives an option to select which version of Windows you are presenting to the application, from Windows 2.0 (not a typo) to Win 7. Generally, any behavior Wine exhibits that differs from the way that the relevant version of Windows would have behaved is considered a bug and fixed.
I have no idea if that would work for this game but I generally have excellent luck with Wine and Windows games though for most, you do have to crack the DRM simply because Wine won't allow programs to install Windows device drivers or otherwise to sink their hooks into the guts of the system. Something like the Sony rootkit wouldn't work under Wine for that reason. If you are concerned about other malware you can create a separate restricted user account for Wine that doesn't even need to have network access.
If you don't have a Linux system handy, trying this out would be as simple as booting from a live CD. Knoppix would be a good one to try.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
...for all those people on Pirate Bay downloading GOG games? I know there's a forum post somewhere at GOG where the new justification (once DRM is no longer an easy excuse) is that the games don't come with physical CDs and manuals, so they don't want to waste their money on a download. Good grief.
The sad truth about copy protection in all of its forms is that it only hassles honest users. Pirates are never deterred or hindered. In fact, pirates welcome each new copy protection scheme as a challenge to be overcome in an enjoyable momentary diversion.
In contrast, copy protection all too often prevents honest customers from using the products they pay for. SecuROM, for example, rendered the Atari version of the game Armed Assault unusable with the very first 1.08 patch. The only way that honest customers could continue playing the game was to download a cracked version until the 1.12 patch stripped away the copy protection completely and made the game completely diskless. Many honest customers had the exact same experience with Neverwinter Nights and NWN2.
Requiring constant internet connection is a non-starter for those customers suffering with unreliable ISPs like Comcast. Limiting re-installation is completely unacceptable, period.
All customers have fundamental rights when purchasing a product that the product::
- Is fit for its intended purpose;
- Matches its description:
- Is of satisfactory quality to function for a reasonable time without defects.
Copy protection simply has a very high rate of violating these rights with no deterrence or hindrance to real thieves.
The real consequence of copy protection is not honest customers resorting to piracy after paying for a copy of a game. The real consequence is lost sales to honest customers like us who research games before we buy and refuse to purchase games that are highly prone to either never work right or stop working.
- Cardhu
"DRM Broke Dragon Age: Origins For Days": Ars Technica reports that a server problem with the DRM authentication servers has caused Dragon Age: Origins players to be locked out of any saved games that include downloadable content. The story is here on Slashdot.
"Gamer Banned From Dragon Age II Over Forum Post": A Dragon Age II gamer banned from BioWare’s forums for an allegedly inflammatory post has been locked out of the (singleplayer only) game for the duration of the ban. This story is also right here on SlashDot.
The question is - why does anyone in their right mind pay for any products with DRM? If the majority of the public would simply act in their own interest and boycott DRM products, DRM would abruptly disappear.
- Cardhu
... from xkcd.com: http://xkcd.com/488/
... from xkcd.com: http://xkcd.com/488/