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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.
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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.
If DRM is a result of the publisher's distrust in me, then my boycot is a result of my distrust in them.
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.
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.
DRM only benefits one party, and that's the DRM software provider.
I'll give you partial credit, it's true that the absurd number of AV false positives leads to desensitization, but that blame rests squarely on the AV developers for purposefully flagging anything that looks like a crack or keygen (seems to revolve around API calls for the odd-shaped windows and chiptune playback). That said, viruses are a rarity on "official" pirate channels, since it only takes one infected victim to warn all the others and get the uploader banned (or plonked). Of course, for those getting stuff second-hand from public sites like TPB or old-school p2p such as Limewire, that social enforcement does not apply.
The alternative is to rely on mainstream web sites such as the GameCopyWorld and MegaGames, which have been publishing No-CD cracks for over a decade, and while they have accidentally posted infected files in the past (rarely), they are quick to remove them once identified.
Also keep in mind that today's viruses are usually benign - annoying, but non-destructive - they install some fraudware to run on startup, which either hijacks passwords/financial info, or tries to sell you a fake anti-virus to remove the infection (again stealing your CC info). It's not like the ones we used to write in the Dos days, since back then we didn't have the internet, thus no way to courier stolen data back to the author, so most viruses would simply append themselves to every EXE or COM file and slowly corrupt your entire system out of sheer sociopathic boredom.
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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.
l2 play games. dozens of hours is most definately a thing of the past. now they want you to spend $50+ for a game that you can completely conquer in 6-8 hours. back in the day games were created that took so long to complete you just plain never got around to it, now the company spends eleventy billion dollars on 16 minutes of cinematic footage that, if you're honest the vast vast majority of you press every button on your controller or keyboards to skip it. we need less "video cut scene designer guy" and way way way less "poorly trained sales/management types that think theres actually some kind of effective drm available on this planet/ greedmaster guy" and replace those with "guy who makes the character actually walk properly on the ground and not slide like gumby guy", "old timey manager that understands that you make a quality product and people will want to give you their money instead of having to trick them", and a S--t Ton more cowbell
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.
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