Slashdot Mirror
Shadow Warrior 2 Developers Say DRM Is a Waste of Time (arstechnica.com)
zarmanto writes: Ars Technica reports that one particular game studio might finally get it, when it comes to DRM'ed game content. They're publishing their latest game, Shadow Warrior 2, with no DRM protection at all. From the article: "We don't support piracy, but currently there isn't a good way to stop it without hurting our customers," Flying Wild Hog developer Krzysztof "KriS" Narkowicz wrote on the game's Steam forum (in response to a question about trying to force potential pirates to purchase the game instead). "Denuvo means we would have to spend money for making a worse version for our legit customers. It's like the FBI warning screen on legit movies." Expanding on those thoughts in a recent intervew with Kotaku, Narkowicz explained why he felt the DRM value proposition wasn't worth it. "Any DRM we would have needs to be implemented and tested," he told Kotaku. "We prefer to spend resources on making our game the best possible in terms of quality, rather than spending time and money on putting some protection that will not work anyway." "The trade-off is clear," Flying Wild Hog colleagues Artur Maksara and Tadeusz Zielinksi added. "We might sell a little less, but hey, that's the way the cookie crumbles! We hope that our fans, who were always very supportive, will support us this time as well," Zielinski told Kotaku. "...In our imperfect world, the best anti-pirate protection is when the games are good, highly polished, easily accessible and inexpensive," Maksara added.
Didn't the Witcher 3 also not have any DRM if you got it through GOG?
but i do want them to have my money now.
with Lo Wang.
KSP came with no DRM and while I used their demo, I wanted to try out the real thing(since I am on Linux) and it was pretty decent so I then went and bought it. They didn't have to twist my arm, I just wanted to support a company that got that DRM sucks. I've probably brought them 10+ customers from that fact alone.
I remember copying 5.25" floppies with a simple copy protection removal program in the 80s. DRM and it's ilk have never been effective and never will be effective. If you build something good, people that can afford it will pay for it. People that can't afford it will get a pirated version. If you build something expensive but mediocre, the scales will tip towards "pirated".
Build good games and your payed to pirated ratio will be excellent. Build shitty games and encumber them with DRM and, yeah, everyone is going to pirate it.
The DooM beta ran on Wine, but the final version had Denuvo as well as the DRM Steam provides, and consequently doesn't run on Wine. Linux gamers need to reboot into Windows, which costs over a hundred dollars, as well as your time on its constant updates and reboots, as well as your data with the current spyware editions.
DRM is probably the biggest single factor keeping Windows afloat as a platform. Windows has no interesting Windows-exclusive APIs.
While brain-dead publishers act as if they are a necessity, and apparently make decisions as if they were, they clearly are not. Hence the only thing a degraded quality (in the form of DRM and a higher price) gets you is less profit. Economics 101, but it seems that is already too difficult for some people.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
you are missing the point. I share some stuff because together we can make something better we all can use.
I don't share other stuff because I can handle it on my own and want to do it in my own way.
I can make money from both. Closed source pays per copy sold but open source produces free source code I can use to sell services.
Knew this about 15 years ago, have never bothered with DRM and used to feel sad for those developers that spent their time hunting out pirate copies too.. Just a clear waste of time, the AAA only have DRM because of the publishers greed, they corrupt art for profit.
> If you build something good, people that can afford it will pay for it. ...
> I remember copying 5.25" floppies with a simple copy protection removal program in the 80s.
You had $5,000 to spend on a home computer, yet you pirated/stole the software. Most Slashdot readers are in the top 2% richest people in the world. They are "people that can afford it", and most of them do not pay for it.
> DRM and it's ilk have never been effective and never will be effective.
This is certainly true. It didn't work in the 1980s, it doesn't work now. The music industry spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to get DRM to work, then gave up. The vast majority of music today doesn't have DRM because DRM doesn't work. Mechnical or electronic locks can't prevent people from ripping you off. Self-centered slimeballs will always find a way to rip you off.
I know nothing about this game but will buy it on principle. If a million others do the same it will send a clear message to the RIAA/MPAA types that DRM is pointless, and good content will always beat good DRM at making profits.
It also provides convenience and discounts and the slowly growing only alternative PC gaming platform to Windows.
I have an old account with a lot of games but I can't help pointing out the irony of tooting your DRM free horn on Steam forums.
The only thing I remember about the original...
"You had $5,000 to spend on a home computer, yet you pirated/stole the software."
Yes.. because they *had* 5000$. They *have* no more money. It's really not that difficult to understand.
Mostly random stuff.
I buy lots of game bundles and a few games on sale once I think the price is good enough.
SW2 MSRP I think is â40 and maybe it's worth that but I know it will be much cheaper, normally 6-12 months later you can likely get a 75% discount and eventually this too will likely be bundled. As such I won't be buying it now but I assume I will buy it when the price is right. However if it was "pay what you want" possibly with some lower price like say $5 then I could maybe had gotten it right now.
They would lose a lot of high value sales so maybe it's not worth it but if it was available for such a low price maybe some pirates would had bought it too, then again they sadly likely wouldn't had anyway even less so if it's DRM-free because they would see it as a weakness and just compare their "free" was $5 and "OMG it's DRM-free I can just copy it anyway!"
Socialist entitlement ruining everything.
steam makes it easy to fine and install mods
"You had $5,000 to spend on a home computer, yet you pirated/stole the software."
Yes.. because they *had* 5000$. They *have* no more money. It's really not that difficult to understand.
My current PC was close to free (Phenom X4 9850, HD 6950, mobo, RAM, monitor = free.)
I am getting close and closer to $5000 spent on bundles though .. And I don't even use the content :/
This means that if I want the DRM-free game, I can buy it from the developers instead of having to get it from TPB.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
> This developer doesn't get DRM
Actually you're the one who doesn't get it. The developers only have a _fixed_ amount of time.> That means they can spend their time:
* Making the game better (which benefits everyone)
* Waste their time on shitty DRM which will be "kracked" on day zero -- DRM only hinders honest people -- it doesn't stop the pirates.
You're right that DRM only stops people who don't know. But it isn't that hard to google a krack for your favorite game. Back in the day gamecopyworld was THE place to find the .exe without the crappy copy protection.
> and I don't understand why people dislike it.
You're probably too young to remember that when games used to come on CD-ROMS that there was always problems of compatibility. One CD-ROM drive could read the game, another couldn't. I had one game that copy protection prevented the cut-scenes from playing!? WTF. I downloaded an .exe with the copy protection remove and I could watch the cut-scenes. Go figure.
Also, games should NOT be installing a kernel driver -- who is going to verify that it -still- works with the next version of Windows??
DRM is just more crap that could wrong.
DRM wastes developer time when they could be making the game better.
DRM causes future compatibility problems.
> Maybe everyone complaining about it uses Linux?
Maybe you're assuming.
I've shipped enough professional games to know that DRM causes problems for legitimate customers. Conversely, not having means zero problems.
Any developer relying on DRM for sales has a shitty game. Make a better game and you'll get those sales.
--
redditard, noun, Anyone who down-votes something they disagree with regardless of how informative/interesting it is.
Haven't recent games released this year come with DRM that is yet to be cracked? It seems strange to make the statement that it doesn't work while for the first time since forever there is a solution for developers which actually does.
Well $5000 buys you a pretty good computer capable of playing modern games and should last for a few years before it becomes obsolete and unusable for gaming.
If you spent half of that money on games instead, $2500 would buy a significantly inferior computer.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Making the game better (which benefits everyone)
I'm not a game developer but I am a software developer and most things these days are easily integrated. I imagine that Unity and Unreal both have a plethora of off the shelf modules for doing DRM. Maybe I'm wrong about that but considering how many games have DRM it would be pretty absurd for this not to be the case. What's your experience with integrating DRM with your games in recent years? How long does it take?
Waste their time on shitty DRM which will be "kracked" on day zero -- DRM only hinders honest people -- it doesn't stop the pirates.
I don't think you understood my point. I used to be a pirate, back in the days when CDROM was all the rage and it took time to find the correct pirated copy of the game and sometimes I got viruses that required reformatting my gaming pc. I still did it, but looking back it was an incredible waste of time. Considering the sophistication of some of the cracks I used, I'm guessing it took a hacker a considerable amount of time breaking the DRM for the game as well. All this extra effort to play a game makes it less likely for people to circumvent legitimate ways of playing it. It's not about not knowing how but rather what one's time and frustration is worth.
So to sum all that up; if a game costs $20 and it takes several hours to get a pirated copy, why bother? If the game costs $50 then it might be worth it. And that goes for making the crack too. I don't think a hacker will bother breaking DRM on a game retailing for $20.
I'd reply to the rest of your comment but I think we have enough to converse about already.
Think globally but act within local variable scope.
Finally a game I feel safe buying, assuming it's any good. DRM has done nothing good for my computers. You essentially have to clone your computer, install the game, play & finish, then restore from your clone to be sure the DRM hasn't hurt anything.
> I imagine that Unity and Unreal both have a plethora of off the shelf modules for doing DRM.
Nope and nope. They don't waste their time when:
a) Other people already provide solutions (e.g. Denuvo, etc.)
b) they could be working on improving their toolset instead.
> What's your experience with integrating DRM with your games in recent years? How long does it take?
Depends on which platform. On consoles you (usually) don't have to do anything.
On PC: Anywhere from minutes (Steam) to days.
Also, DRM causes you to re-test *everything*.
> I used to be a pirate, back in the days when CDROM was all the rage ... Considering the sophistication of some of the cracks I used, I'm guessing it took a hacker a considerable amount of time breaking the DRM for the game as well.
Before I became a professional game developer I _cracked_ games on 8-bit (Apple), 16-bit and 32-bit (PC). "Cracking" took anywhere from minutes to hours.
> I don't think a hacker will bother breaking DRM on a game retailing for $20.
Incorrect.
We do it for the challenge -- the price of the game is irrelevant -- although the price will tend to reflect the difficulty of protection employed. One would naturally expect a $60 game to have better protection then a $20 game.
The _fastest_ way to motivate a programmer is to tell him he can't do something.
Well the amounts are arbitrary as everyone has different resources available to them...
At least when i was a kid, i could afford a half decent computer and some pirated games *or* an older computer and a bunch of old games to play on it. Many people are worse off than i was, and ended up with old hardware and a selection of used (often being thrown out) or pirated games.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Hey people, I found the UbiSoft shill!
Or was it EA?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I buy my games, don't worry. But I, and only I decide what games are worth my money. You insert always-online DRM into your games? Or anything else that I do not agree with? Then I will have to do without your game and you will have to do without my money.
It is that simple.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
> Then I will have to do without your game and you will have to do without my money.
> It is that simple.
What an unsual comment to see on Slashdot. If you decide you don't want it (won't buy it), you're deciding you don't want it (won't have it). It seems the more common sentiment on Slashdot is "I don't want it (won't pay for it) and I must have it (so I'll rip off the creators and take it ilegally."
Your idea that you won't take something without paying for it, won't rip people off, seems rather old-fashioned for Slashdot. I'm gonna guess that you're old, probably over 30?
I don't think you understood my point. I used to be a pirate, back in the days when CDROM was all the rage and it took time to find the correct pirated copy of the game and sometimes I got viruses that required reformatting my gaming pc.
This is what I have to do with DRM. DRM ruins my machines. I just play old games that I own with no DRM. I got annoyed by Mechwarrior4 not working in any CD-ROM drive I owned (like GP mentioned).
We may no longer be kids having to scrounge around for hardware, but there are still plenty of kids out there today in the same boat that we were.
For many working people especially those in reasonably jobs, we have more money to spend on games than we do time to play them.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
yeah, easy to say if a billion dollar GPU manufacturer has already bought a lot of keys for your game securing a large part (if not all) of your investment.
One CD-ROM drive could read the game, another couldn't.
I believe that was related to SecuRom. Not only could it f*** up the game in question, but it often also broke other stuff on the system such as burning etc because it was twisted so deeply into the guts of the OS (IIRC, including optical device drivers etc)