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Shadow Warrior 2 Developers Say DRM Is a Waste of Time (arstechnica.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the waste-of-time dept.

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.

17 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. The Witcher 3 by carbs77 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Didn't the Witcher 3 also not have any DRM if you got it through GOG?

    1. Re:The Witcher 3 by carbs77 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Although I would like to add, good to see more developers/publishers who see that DRM is a waste of time and only hurts legitimate customers.

    2. Re:The Witcher 3 by Plus1Entropy · · Score: 2

      Yep, both Witcher 2 and 3 had no DRM.

      --
      Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
    3. Re:The Witcher 3 by Mashiki · · Score: 2

      Witcher 2 had DRM for about 48hrs, and then the developers removed it because it was hurting legitimate customers.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    4. Re: The Witcher 3 by Skinny+Rav · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What is either a coincidence or perhaps a trend, both CDPROJEKT RED and Flying Wild Hog are Polish companies.

      Piracy used to be rampant in Poland, partially because people were too poor to spend $60 on a game, but partially because some games were never published in Poland and thus unavailable legally. Publishers of localised versions were using most outrageous DRM solutions - as a result many games I bought 10-15 years ago are unplayable today.

      Guys running game companies in Poland today suffered these issues when they were kids, which might explain their stance.

    5. Re:The Witcher 3 by Barefoot+Monkey · · Score: 4, Informative

      Witcher 2 had DRM for about 48hrs, and then the developers removed it because it was hurting legitimate customers.

      It was an awkward situation. CD Projeckt (a publisher, and the parent company of CD Projekt RED) distributed The Witcher 2 in Poland and internationally through GOG.com. But they needed the help of international publishers to sell retail in other parts of the world, so they signed up with Bandai Namco and Atari to publish the game elsewhere. (Apparently Polish laws make it nearly impossible for them to handle international distribution themselves, which is the main reason they registered their subsidiary, GOG.com, outside Poland)

      Anyway, although CD Projekt is firmly anti-DRM, one or both of these other publishers decided to slap DRM onto the files that they distributed, more because of internal policy than any practical reason. The DRM broke the game and made CD Projekt look like hypocrites, so they quickly released a patch to repair all the files broken by the DRM, which inevitably disabled the DRM in the process. I believe the publishers who broke the game sued them for fixing it, but CDP won that case. Unfortunately Bandai Namco won another lawsuit forcing CDP to make the game more expensive for Australians instead of making it the same price everywhere.

      If you bought The Witcher 2 from GOG it never had DRM in the first place, and no matter where you bought the game you could go to gog.com/witcher/backup to redeem a complimentary GOG version for yourself.

  2. i don't even care about this game by Jazoray · · Score: 4, Insightful

    but i do want them to have my money now.

    1. Re:i don't even care about this game by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No, it's just regular marketing. They're attempting to build goodwill and get a bit of free advertising through a press release that they're taking the apparently newsworthy step of not treating their customers like thieves. It'd be a scam if they took money and then never delivered a game or shipped a student's half-finished project or something

    2. Re:i don't even care about this game by GrpA · · Score: 2

      The original game was nothing special IMO. Sure, it was fun, but it lacked behind others of it's era. The Remake, however, was on another level. Some brilliant script writing, an engaging story and more humour than the original. It truly was something spectacular. I vividly recall the bitterly sad ending and hoping there would be a cutscene to save me from the misery of the constant loop around the finale. I mean, how often do you sit there, through 20 minutes of scrolling credits, just hoping something will change?

      SW2, on the other hand, not so great. Script writing was so-so and poorly written. It's not quite a turd, and is still a lot of fun, but lacked in the storytelling that made Shadow Warrior a classic.I was disappointed but would still give the game my support even if I knew that before I purchased it - for a start, it's half the price of most other games and can easily run for a lot longer.

      So while I recommended the first quite vocally, I'm a little more reserved on SW2. However, in light of the announcements that they are doing the right thing by their fans and removing DRM, it does push me more towards looking at the better aspects of the game rather than the ones I didn't enjoy so much.

      --
      Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
  3. Games are a luxury article by gweihir · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.
    1. Re:Games are a luxury article by Darinbob · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They treat games like necessities because there is a set of gamers that treat it that way. They'll jump through all sorts of hoops to get access to the games, signing up for special accounts on the publisher's web site or even paying for that right, and then end up playing the game for a week at which point there's another must-have game around the corner. Game publishers are generally not aiming at the discerning consumer market segment, they're too busy raking in the profits from this year's Assassin's Quest #27.

  4. Slashdotters are 2%ers, don't pay. DRM don't work by raymorris · · Score: 2

    > 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.

  5. Vote with your Wallet! by Gussington · · Score: 2

    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.

    1. Re:Vote with your Wallet! by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 2

      These guys may not be exactly unique in eschewing DRM, but it's great that we see more people talking about it, and that a lack of DRM is a positive marketing bullet point. Indie game developers like me can simply make an executive decision about releasing multiplatform and without DRM since we have fewer strings attached. It would be great, though, if larger companies and publishers were to join the party as well, not that I'm holding my breath.

      It's certainly true that you'll always have a piece of your revenue pie cut out by piracy, often a fairly large piece, but I still think that the ill will generated by DRM isn't worth it. Instead, focus on making excellent games, and figure out a way to reward your paying customers instead of punishing them. Try to win over your current non-paying non-customers and convert them into paying customers.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
  6. Re:Slashdotters are 2%ers, don't pay. DRM don't wo by 50000BTU_barbecue · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "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.
  7. Good for them by penguinoid · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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
  8. Re:security makes something difficult by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 5, Insightful

    > 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.