Indie RPG Veteran: "Being Nice" Prevents Piracy Better Than Draconian DRM

[Tom Goldman]

Indie RPG Veteran: "Being Nice" Prevents Piracy Better Than Draconian DRM

Spiderweb Software's method of preventing piracy is to be nice and do the minimum.

Some organizations say piracy is Spiderweb Software [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/107255-Piracy-Outpacing-Sales-by-4-1-Says-U-K-Game-Body], the best solution for publishers is to not obsess over piracy and just "be nice" instead.

He gives two examples of poor experiences with his own over-protective methods that were simply wastes of time and money. The first involves the fact that Spiderweb sells both games and hint books. These books started out in physical form, but even after the PDF format and digital delivery methods became big, Vogel stayed with physical booklets simply because of his fear of piracy. He was afraid that digital hint book files would be spread around, hurting his income stream.

However, three years ago Vogel got fed up with the cost and space requirements of the hint books and made a go at PDF downloads. Not only that, but he made the download link easy to find. Spiderweb's hint book sales rate stayed practically the same, making him regret the "monolith" of hint book boxes still in his garage.

The second example is related to DRM in regards to his games themselves. Until recently, Spiderweb's games used a method of unlocking the full version from the demo that Vogel overtly trashes today. The demo would randomly generate a number that had to be sent to Spiderweb, which would allow Spiderweb to send back a registration key. The issue is that the system was overly complicated and confusing, sometimes driving customers, credit card in hand, away from the order page that may not have had the number handy. Vogel says the system was "unprofessional at best, and deranged at worst." People were still cracking his games, but meanwhile Vogel was spending much of his time explaining to honest customers how to buy them too. "Might as well have just made a big pile of money and set it on fire," Vogel adds.

With Spiderweb's latest release, hardcore [http://www.spidweb.com/avadon/index.html] DRM schemes we've seen elsewhere aren't such a good idea after all?

Vogel's point is that, in his experience, developers and publishers should put the minimum barrier in place so that honest people will need to buy a game, but not also get totally confused about how to do so. His advice is: "Whenever you find yourself starting a sentence with, 'I don't want people to pirate my game, so I am going to ...' you are very close to making a big mistake." Crackers and hackers will crack and hack your game no matter what you do, so why make things harder for paying customers?

Vogel finishes his thought by saying: "In the end, the ability to be nice is one of the best weapons you have." For Vogel, after 17 years in the fairly niche indie RPG business, it might be advice worth listening to.

Source: The Bottom Feeder [http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2011/05/final-answer-for-what-to-do-to-prevent.html]

Permalink

 

[Phlakes]

It's such an old principle. People respond better to rewards than punishment.

Flies and honey and all that.

Although it's not really a reward, but it's the same idea.

 

[Wing Dairu]

...and so was the Extra Credits team vindicated.

 

[gigastar]

Itll be interesting to see how that turns out in the future.

With a shit-ton of luck, maybe EA and Capcom will pick up that DRM is not always a good thing.

 

[RanD00M]

This is what CD Projeckt Red believes, and from what I've read on /v/, who seem to hate games by the way, most of them are going to buy it instead of pirating it, which is something special.

 

[Fatal-X]

This is what CD Projeckt Red believes, and from what I've read on /v/, who seem to hate games by the way, most of them are going to buy it instead of pirating it, which is something special.

From what I heard CD Project's Witcher 2 will have DRM. That is, if you won't buy it from GOG.

I agree that there is no point in adding DRM to the games, pirates will pirate the game anyways. Waste of money and time.

 

[IndianaJonny]

They should bring back those old 'what's the first word in paragraph 2 on page 16!' questions that used to pop up in the old MS-DOS games. I swear I hardly used the manual for anything else.

 

[RanD00M]

This is what CD Projeckt Red believes, and from what I've read on /v/, who seem to hate games by the way, most of them are going to buy it instead of pirating it, which is something special.

From what I heard CD Project's Witcher 2 will have DRM. That is, if you won't buy it from GOG.

I agree that there is no point in adding DRM to the games, pirates will pirate the game anyways. Waste of money and time.

It will, but all games do nowadays. However they are not going to be having a DRM that gets in the way of your game or make you have to have an internet connection.

 

[k-ossuburb]

I've wondered about this before, I thought it would be nice to give some kind of single-use code in the game that allowed you to get something extra, like some special bonuses on the official website that gave you something awesome depending on how many games you purchased legally, like an opportunity to play the beta version before release or future discounts.

Something along those lines. It's kind of like what my music store does with their loyalty card, you get a stamp for every set of guitar strings you buy and then you get two free sets when you fill out the card. If you fill out ten cards then you get 10% off of accessories like stands or music books.

I know it's probably impossible to implement, but it might also make it easier for people to catch the pirates, if they try to use the code from a game someone else has already bought then they're pretty much advertising that they've stolen it. Although, I'm not sure how you'd get around trade-ins, since someone who paid for a legitimate used copy will have the same code even though they bought it legally.

 

[BrotherRool]

It depends, but we've seen lots of companies be nice and be punished. Remember World of Goo? In the end you lose whatever you do

 

[standokan]

This probably counts more for Indie games

 

[manythings]

It depends, but we've seen lots of companies be nice and be punished. Remember World of Goo? In the end you lose whatever you do

And the humble indie bundle. Some people willl just asshole it up no matter what you do. I'd say partial obscurity helped and if he was immensely well known I don't think it would've worked out so well.

 

[RSparowe]

What gets me are the games available on Steam/Direct2Drive/Gamersgate that still require a third-party DRM. It's excessive and redundant. And, for example, last week was the EA Sale on Steam. Things were great until late Friday when the EA authentication server went down and nobody could register and unlock several titles. It wasn't fixed until Sunday night.

 

[Vrach]

It's a sad state of things that I'm posting to agree rather than put a captain obvious picture.

 

[mjc0961]

Yep. DRM is the real problem. The sad fact of the matter is that people are going to pirate no matter what kind of protection you put in place. The only thing you can really control is how much you want to piss people off with DRM. Do you put in enough so that it's just a very minor annoyance that people note but don't get upset about, or do you put in so much that you actually drive people to not buy your game at all because they don't want to deal with your nonsense?

 

[Prof. Monkeypox]

Don't pirate. There's no excuse for it.

That said- when companies come off as friendly and helpful, it makes people feel even less justified about piracy than they were otherwise.

 

[nagi]

Yeah, do not, under any circumstances, alienate your own paying customers. Because that is what DRM does: it hits your customers, while the "pirates" will not have to deal with it. Who gets the better experience? The pirates! That is just so unbeliveably bad way of doing things.

I'm not against pirating, especially in a country where a new game may cost upwards to 1/10th of an average monthly wage. But if you like it, buy it. If not on release, then maybe when it only costs half of it. But do buy it!

 

[uguito-93]

This reminds me a lot of what the developers of Zenoclash did, they effectively said "we are a small studio that needs this project to survive, but we are against DRM so we are going to trust you guys not to pirate it". the result? a very low piracy rate and a decent number of copies sold. it just goes to show that treating your audience without hostility pays off

 

[grinner_88]

People are pretty simple at the end of the day, if you make the experience of buying, installing and playing your game more pleasant than pirating it then you'll reduce piracy. You'll never reduce piracy to zero, don't even try.

I find it a little odd how much time and effort go into crafting these big budget titles and yet when it comes to non-game aspects of the user interaction they don't seem to try. Installation issues, DRM issues, poor after sales support, all of these things colour a users experience of your product and you as a company - why make it so horrible and de-humanising?

 

[Denamic]

DRM doesn't work on pirates.
They just copy over a few files and play their free games without any hassle.
It does often work great on honest customers though.
I'd say that's pretty counter-intuitive, honestly.