Developer With 90 Percent Piracy Rate Dislikes DRM

[Logan Frederick]

Developer With 90 Percent Piracy Rate Dislikes DRM

One PC game studio is using its high piracy rate as a reason to improve the industry's business model to battle illegal downloads.

After realizing that 90 percent of the players of Championship Manager were running illegal copies, Beautiful Game Studios manager Roy Meredith learned to adapt the company without resorting to customer-repulsing digital rights management.

Meredith commented, "That's not just a number in the air, we can measure it and we know that there are a huge amount of pirated copies."

"There's a real issue around DRM," he continued on games he's personally played where DRM hindered his fun. "I'd love to defeat pirates, but actually, with all this mess on Spore and Football Manager, which I haven't been able to play this year... I spent about three hours trying to go through this registration process and I really want to play it but I've got other things to do with my life."

Pirates can be beaten, or at least curbed, by providing better customer service [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/87805] and support as Valve does through Steam or using a subscription service a la World of Warcraft.

"One is to compete price-wise," suggested Meredith. "We haven't got to pay royalties to Sony or Microsoft, so we can go into territories and price compete."

Source: Computer and Videogames [http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=204136]

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[fix-the-spade]

Any word on just how they adapted the business?

I suppose if you can track player numbers that gives you a good platform to swing for advertising money, but I'd still like to know exactly what they've done.

 

[neoman10]

good for them

 

[Angron]

Meredith commented, "That's not just a number in the air, we can measure it and we know that there are a huge amount of pirated copies."

err, how?

this isnt the count how many people are downloading it off pirate sites is it? not all are getting illegal downloads...

on the other hand, if they made a real, good game then people might pay for it...in my opinion the game isnt even worth torrenting...

ive seen this game in the No1 sold game in Game, Gamestation etc for ages, they must have the whole world playing it to be No1 for so long AND that only counting for 10% of games...

 

[fix-the-spade]

err, how?

this isnt the count how many people are downloading it off pirate sites is it? not all are getting illegal downloads...

They will know how many proper copies of the game have been sold, just compare that to the number of copies connecting to any online content servers. The difference is your pirated number.
At least, that's my theory.

You could do a similar thing with a spyware program in the game's code that reports back to a computer when it is installed. Number of reports vs number known to be sold.
Of course no developer or publisher would ever do a thing as underhanded as that...

 

[Zer_]

Meredith commented, "That's not just a number in the air, we can measure it and we know that there are a huge amount of pirated copies."

err, how?

this isnt the count how many people are downloading it off pirate sites is it? not all are getting illegal downloads...

on the other hand, if they made a real, good game then people might pay for it...in my opinion the game isnt even worth torrenting...

ive seen this game in the No1 sold game in Game, Gamestation etc for ages, they must have the whole world playing it to be No1 for so long AND that only counting for 10% of games...

It is also possible they implemented integrity checks for some game files. So if someone is using a cracked EXE of sorts they would probably know.

 

[Bretty]

ChampMan in my mind was one of the best Football team Management games out there. I hope they can keep creating such stellar titles!

I personally have never had a problem with DRM though. Unless it tells me to turn daemon tools off, and even then thats what YASU is there for?

Over time developers will get a new chain of thought on piracy protection in much the same way Valve has.

 

[mrhertz]

If the times are in favor of pirates, surely something has to be done.

People are missing what DRM means. Just because EA set a DRM with very scrict rules in the beginning, many people today still think that: DRM = ONLY what EA did.

You can set stupid or better rules. EA modified it´s DRM, based on adjustments that came from what they thought it would be, and what it really is supposed to be.

You can´t simply expect people to bring a solution, once they are only players, not business men. So its simply for them to state "DRM is no good", and dont provide a real suggestion.

People want software as it is, but dont wanna pay for it. So how can you explain to them that someone invested 100.000 dollars on a production, and want it profitable, and want that quickly cuz the world doesnt stop spinning.

We came to a stage where if nothing is done to push pirates as far as they can, the companies will simply move to consoles and then how will you use that latest hot video card?

If anyone just wants DRM out, out of nowhere, go work, and see how good it is to be stolen.

 

[Angron]

They will know how many proper copies of the game have been sold, just compare that to the number of copies connecting to any online content servers. The difference is your pirated number.
At least, that's my theory.

You could do a similar thing with a spyware program in the game's code that reports back to a computer when it is installed. Number of reports vs number known to be sold.
Of course no developer or publisher would ever do a thing as underhanded as that...

It is also possible they implemented integrity checks for some game files. So if someone is using a cracked EXE of sorts they would probably know.

yeh you both have good points, i just thought it odd that he says thats not just the number on the air...i also thought i remebered him saying he figured it out but didnt say how, but that may have been a different article...silly me