Doubly so if THEY were the company who spent millions developing said DRM (I'm looking at you , Blizzard).Zhukov said:
For the consumer, DRM adds absolutely nothing but inconvenience.
That would be Securom and later, Starforce.lockecole21 said:
Do Publishers really need DRM?
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For the consumer, DRM adds absolutely nothing but inconvenience.
Brick and mortar stores have a limited amount of shelf space, and there are only so many of them. The big publishers have made their fortunes by controlling access to the market, not merely facilitating it.
With digital distribution that changes a bit. On the internet, any developer with a decent game can sell it directly to anyone with an internet connection. However, sales figures are still dependent on exposure. Small indie titles tend to be very obscure if they don't feature on Steam or something similar.
Hence the DRM strategy that publishers have adopted. They want their online stores on your desktop. The ones that succeed will make a fortune.
They know they're not stopping piracy. If they wanted to stop piracy they would quit using one-size-fits-all DRM systems and just let the developers handle it, which is much more effective. The developer can do all sorts of tricks to hide DRM checks from the crackers. They can avoid checking until the date is a month past release date, screw up the game in subtle ways rather than just closing it, check for a .nfo file in the game directory, only check once the save file has more than 20 hours played, etc.
With digital distribution that changes a bit. On the internet, any developer with a decent game can sell it directly to anyone with an internet connection. However, sales figures are still dependent on exposure. Small indie titles tend to be very obscure if they don't feature on Steam or something similar.
Hence the DRM strategy that publishers have adopted. They want their online stores on your desktop. The ones that succeed will make a fortune.
They know they're not stopping piracy. If they wanted to stop piracy they would quit using one-size-fits-all DRM systems and just let the developers handle it, which is much more effective. The developer can do all sorts of tricks to hide DRM checks from the crackers. They can avoid checking until the date is a month past release date, screw up the game in subtle ways rather than just closing it, check for a .nfo file in the game directory, only check once the save file has more than 20 hours played, etc.