DRM Systems and the Publishers Who Love Them

[FreedanZero]

All this complaint about DRM, let me put my two cents in.

The most unobtrusive DRM is steam, pure and simple. My PC crashed and I lost my Orange Box disc. Got a new PC and was able to download everything and install it. Works great now. Patching games in the background is great, I don't have to worry about patches coming out for my games. The discounts you get are amazing. I got the Ubisoft pack with far cry, beyond good and evil, dark messiah and il-2 for like $10.

And all this talk about DRM and nobody brings up Arkham Asylum for the PC. Remember? You get to the Gas Chamber room to find out that your glide ability doesn't work? It was unobtrusive and worked great, and was actually creative. We need to see more DRM like this.

 

[acturisme]

look, i know DRM sucks, and its really badly executed in a way that is not beneficial to the consumer, and their hard earned cash

but change the record! i feel that whenever I read one of your articles about DRM, i have heard it all before

that said, you always make it clear that DRM doesnt 'have' to suck, there are ways of preventing piracy without degrading legit consumers, so credit to you for not just saying OMG ALL DRM SUXXXXXXXXX!!!!!!!!!!1

Its never REALLY got in the way of my gaming so long as I have legitimately bought a game, i played mass effect, bioshock, spore, every game you mention and each one has been...not perfect with regards to DRM, it is a pain, but each one has been like 30 seconds of time out my life

I do disagree with the whole 'you get 5 installs of this game'....errrr, no, i bought the game, i can install it as many times as I like, it would be like saying, you paid full price for a cinema ticket, but you have to leave 20 mins before the end...its not the way modern consuming works...you pay for something, its yours, but it doesnt seem to apply to the gaming industry...what if the game doesnt work and you need a re-install?

but has anyone ever honestly had to install a game more than 5 times on 5 different computers?

To answer your last question, yes. I was using the game to test different configurations of pc components with Quake 3 Arena.

 

[blackjaw1]

You keep on talking about how copy protection encourages pirates, however on the other extreme you have World of Goo, which was pirated something like 95%. Without copy protection developers might be dealing with the same stuff as 2d boy.

There was actually a study done where they found that people who pirated games would not have bought the game in the first place. 2d Boy used this research as one of their reasons why they did not bother with DRM I remember.

I get the feeling that publishing companies are just looking for ways to nickel and dime people like they can with their console customers via DLC. Sure, DLC is making its way onto the PC, but it's not as insane as it is on consoles. Honestly, I don't think anyone will ever win this battle because they're forgetting something: computers are not a gaming platform. Computers are things that can do many things and, in addition, they can run games. Sure, it's my first, favorite and only gaming system. But because downloading an ISO and mounting it to a virtual drive is easier than modding your system, piracy really can't be killed. And you can't outlaw torrents, virtual drive programs, or disc ripping tools because they all have legitimate uses. That's probably why CliffyB thinks the PC is a dead platform; the end user of a console has much less control over the system (almost none, I'd say) so it's easier to make money off of them. Also, they're more tolerant of dross like Gears of War.

 

[Abedeus]

2K: Oh. We're very sorry we upset people. We had no idea customers felt so strongly about being kicked in the balls. Moreover, we didn't mean to make female gamers feel excluded. So SecuROM will give you a punch in the gut instead.

Gamers: Wow! They listened to us! This must be what respect feels like! Let's pre-order the game right now!

I don't remember THAT... I remember saying "Wtf, so instead of 2 obnoxious DRMs, we have ONLY the more obnoxious one? Screw you."

And no, I haven't pirated Bioshock 2. Frankly, because I didn't care about the game in the first place, but still...

 

[Bellvedere]

For personal use I love steam. That I can install game on any number of computers, that I can use it offline, that it updates everything automatically. Not had an issue except for that one time last year when I hadn't used it for about 7months and forgotten my password and the answer to one of the secret questions. Took me about 4 hours seeing as every time you get the answer wrong it takes just a bit longer to let you try again. Not so bad at least it doesn't lock you out for a day and it was my own fault for forgetting these things.

However I used to work at a videogame store and we have a 7 day return policy. This is where it gets really annoying. We don't return games that require online activation. And we explain this to customers when they're buying it, but we get people who claim they weren't told demanding refunds and even people who say that the CD Key has already been used. I don't know if this is the fault of new staff members who forget or weren't told due to poor training - not telling people about this or returning these games and re-selling them or if people are lying and getting free games (for the latter not the former). It can be very frustrating. Once again not entirely the fault of steam itself but it would be easier for everyone involved if there was no DRM or if there was some way to tell if the code had been registered.

As for DLC I don't really mind, playing DA:O on PC it would stay logged into the EA Account if I was offline so no problem with the DLC there. I haven't got around to downloading the stuff I have with ME2 on 360 yet so I guess I'll see how that goes.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Next for DRM? You can only rent the game from their website. Which they can delete at any time.

Microtransactions as standard?

since no executive could POSSIBLY be so staggeringly stupid.

I lost that level of trust the first time I turned on the TV.

 

[ItsAPaul]

I don't see why registering a game is so bad, but I do agree that Ubisoft's DRM won't work. They're paying out of pocket to turn people into pirates.

 

[KDR_11k]

I'm getting the impression that DRM is just a security theater to fool investors. Investors demand growth (after all if you stay the same size inflation will cut you down) and the company must show the investors that it can achieve growth. However most companies just push out sequel after sequel, few people will be interested in the sequel to a game they haven't played and others won't buy the sequel after buying the original game so growth is limited or possibly reversing. By talking about piracy the publisher creates the appearance that there is massive untapped demand for the products they make that can be reached "simply" by tightening the DRM to make piracy harder.

On a larger scale the industry is facing disinterest issues, investments are receding, so are gamer numbers (what happened to all those PS2 owners? Since the Wii has mostly new users that didn't have a PS2 that leaves millions of PS2 owners unaccounted for!). For now they can claim it's the recession but the entertainment businesses are supposed to be recession proof or even helped by recessions (pinball was invented during a recession). This disinterest cannot be fought by simply making the same games over and over again, if they didn't get more interest before why would they now? Piracy is a neat way to sidestep the product appeal issue and simply claim there are many people who want the product. Turning pirates into paying customers sounds easier than re-engineering your product to turn completely uninterested people into paying customers.

 

[asiepshtain]

My fellow escapists "Pirates",

damn you, for stealing games and bringing this on us
damn you, for hurting the companies making our favorite meduim
damn you, for taking money from the hands of people slaving for years for our fun

You deserve this, every inch of it.
For every stolen game on your HD, for all the crimes you commited. And make no mistakes, you are criminals. You STEAL these games from people whose livlihood depend on the games income.
You are responsible for people losing jobs and going broke, damn each one of you stealing, thieving, "Pirate" bastards.

You boldly state you will steal stuff then act insulted when they install locks, damn you.

I havn't stolen a game since I've been old enough to realise that stealing is exactly what it is. And I'm the one hurt by your actions.

Thieves, fuck you!

ps. To all of you out there who don't steal games, thank you from me and from all the developers. Sadly, knowing the usuall PC crowd, there are too few of us.

EDIT: The final step in DRM will be this: you pirate a game, the game company sees and informs local police officers. Who come to your house and arrest your stealing, stupid, criminal ass. You then go to jail where you fucking belong, you fucking thief.

 

[Who Dares Wins]

But still only people who are hurt through the DRM are their customers, who pay full price for the game, and not people who downloaded it for free (pirated), not only pirates are not hurt they benefit from their system: if you wanted bonus stuff in ME2, you had to have DA:O, pre-order ME2, buy the Prestige edition..., and if you're a pirate. you just have to download one file, ONE FILE, and you get all that stuff for free... I think games have became " tax for being a fool"

 

[mooseodeath]

some things i've seen around the traps
you recieve an installer and put your registartion code into that in order to recieve the actual content.

usb keys that contain the activation codes and need to be installed as a parmament piece of hardware in order to run the software

those are both for software packages rather than games, and those software packages are fighting piracy. there is no sub goal.

i've put a few trains of thought into how I would do anti piracy measures

1, don't, people want to torrent the game let 'em, upon installation they will be greeted with thanks for downloading the game and the option to purchase. games fails the registered check a complicated web of gameplay hindrences will be injected. none of which will be obvious and most will be interdependant on each other so attempting to fix the game will make it inoperative.

legitimate consumers have to enter a cd key or reg code, pirates who disable that check have a game that is basicly broken. somewhat beaten to the punch by batman.

2, free game, once again abuse the torrents to spread my game for free, people sign up for a free account when they run the game, the game consistently updates with new missions/adventures/whatever it revolves about. free accounts are limited too 2 dlc's a month and paid accounts (who are paying for the game to be made/maintained) get as many as are made.

3, game is shipped on a usb key, you plug it in to the pc and boot into a custom OS centred on the game. lets see someone crack the drm without software

 

[HeartAttackBob]

One of the recurring assumptions that game companies seem to make is that people pirate a game instead of buying it. This is clearly false. There is certainly some segment of pirates who could not otherwise afford the game, or simply would not buy for it for some other reason. As Shamus previously pointed out, a hundred thousand pirated copies does not mean a hundred thousand lost sales.

With the increasingly absurd DRM practices, I imagine there's some segment of pirates who simply steal the game because it's easier than buying it and dealing with the DRM.

When HL2 first came out and required online activation through Steam, I was disgusted and refused to buy it. However, watching the trend towards progressively more invasive and restrictive DRM, I must admit that Steam seems quite reasonable by comparison.

 

[veloper]

One of the recurring assumptions that game companies seem to make is that people pirate a game instead of buying it. This is clearly false. There is certainly some segment of pirates who could not otherwise afford the game, or simply would not buy for it for some other reason. As Shamus previously pointed out, a hundred thousand pirated copies does not mean a hundred thousand lost sales.

and even if it did hypothetically, they still cannot stop the crackers from removing the DRM.
The pirates then will always get their games for free, because they get *cracked* games.

DRM is a kick in the balls to the loyal, PAYING customers.

I won't be buying any ubi games now that's for sure.

Now game reviewers need to get honest and inform PC gamers about the DRM on the product.

 

[mooseodeath]

to be honest i was among the it's drm get over yourselves crowd, but i couldn't play with ubi's drm. our internet around these parts just isn't good enough. random intermittent checks maybe but not a constant connection or dropped system.

still like the idea of usb "cartridges" though. hell they could even offer a high end "e-sata" option.

 

[Snotnarok]

I love your writings man, they really say what it is and the best part is you're right and no one can really argue unless they have severe brain intrusion...or post in the forums here. DRM hurts the customer not the pirate, why is that? Because the pirates removed the DRM and release the game a week before it's out in stores and enjoy as many installs as they want. Legitimate users have 5 installs and bugs to deal with (See Borderlands DLC that has DRM breaks the game).

I've met people that actually say DRM is fine, just be careful with your installs. They just don't see the big picture and it's really annoying. DRM also limits installs by monitoring your hardware and if you change something, it'll count that as an install!
Okay see I have this wonderful game called Tie Fighter, and every year or so I pop it in and have fun with it. Had this been DRM'd, I'd have to have re bought it probably 10 times if not more and by now the DRM servers would be gone so I'd be forced to what...that's right, pirate the game because my legit copy wouldn't work.

DRM drives me up the wall (if that wasn't bloody obvious) I've kept from buying games because it has DRM, Riddick, Farcry 2, Borderlands DLC, STALKER Clearsky, etc etc. I just can't support a company who's lying to the customers and stealing their money.

 

[Asehujiko]

Steam is a perfect example of how a DRM platform SHOULD NOT work: Obtrusive, unreliable and with a ton of bugs/problems.

How can any sane man on this earth love steam? Seriously... you must be sick... or understand nothing of computers at all... <.=.<

If you are going to call people insane, sick and stupid come up with some facts instead of hyperboles.

I set it to auto login on boot, it handles all my patching for me and i down have to fumble around with boxes and cd keys when installing something. From the store it takes about 5 clicks to buy something and just as many to install it, which is significantly less then any other service. Then there's the offline mode, which takes two clicks to activate and stays indefinitely as long as you didn't activate it while patching. Then I challenge you to find any non-steam game that still works after ragequitting a patch in progress. Steam games however will continue where they left off once they have an internet connection again, or failing that, using steam's 3 click autorepair button as opposed to having to reinstall the entire game again.

Steam has malfunctioned exactly TWICE in it's entire 6 years life so far: on 16 november 2004 when the the huge popularity of half life 2 and everybody trying to use the "enter key and download from here" crashed the servers and the second time a few years later due to a weather related power outage at valve's server hosting company, both of which lasted a few hours. 99% of the other problems are caused by retards not figuring out that setting their firewall to block it is obviously going to prevent it from working

In 5 years of using it i never experienced any problems and i own about 15 games on it.

 

[Goliathvv]

Ubisoft doesn't care for pc gaming anymore, why else would they launch Assassin's Creed 2 on pc three months after the console launch? They've already earned their "serious" money on the consoles, now it's time to earn an extra tip by joking and experimenting with pc gamers.

By the way, I intended to buy AC2, now I will just burn the money I would spend with it. It seems like a better option.

 

[Treblaine]

Hmm, I can't tell if you're joking but it bears exploring the economics of whether the publishers as really trying to "destroy the PC market" with restrictive DRM because for almost any business that seems counter-intuitive and schizophrenic but publishers like all companies are aggregates of people working together as one "intelligence" only each element is not entirely honest to each other... which is very much like schizophrenia.

Lets consider the facts. Publishers sell far more units on home consoles than PC, yet more games than ever are getting co-release on console and PC and fairly good quality ports too. Capcom have released virtually all their recent games, from franchises that have usually been console exclusive, on PC as well. MGS Rising will see a PC release, Batman Arkham Asylum was great on PC, Dirt 2 kicks ass in DirectX 11 on PC as well as most of the games from THQ and EA seeing QUALITY PC releases.

I think one reason for this is how the PS3 and 360 are pretty much level pegging at the moment, which forces most developers to simultaneously make games for both systems, whereas in the last generation most games were made just for the PS2. But this lowest common denominator game coding between 360 and PS3 pretty much makes a PC version by accident, it hardly takes any more effort to release a PC version.

The thing is in this age of convenience PC gamers have become a different breed as offer a typical console gamer a chance to fully adjust the graphics, resolution, field of view, control layout while balancing the importance of frame rate... they look at they've been given the manual to make a nuclear bomb. They just can't fathom the joy in geeking out getting a game to run absolutely perfectly and reach it's full potential but would rather just pay 50% more for their console game and work no questions asked.

So PC gaming is here - for this generation at least - but the nature of the market and console's dumbed down "ease of access" mean PC will always be a minority. Yet surely if PC versions are being spat out for virtually nothing by the nature of cross-platform development, it makes sense to keep selling them as even if you sell 1/4 as many as on PS3 or 360 hell it's money in the bank. It is also MUCH easier to release a PC game as you don't have Microsoft or Sony dictating every little thing about the game like disc licence fee nor dictating box art, content, price of DLC, connection priority, etc

I mean once a publisher has printed a PC-DVD they can just put it in a box and sell it directly to retailers.

But are there elements within Ubisoft and EA and other publishers who are deliberately trying to sabotage the PC market? No, I wouldn't go that far as money is money and they love that above all else. I think it's a case of frustration, they cannot market to PC because PC owners are far too savvy IMHO, since most of them depend on user run forums for setup advice this cuts marketing out of the loop and makes it harder to set up a brand that will keep selling even if the sequels are shit.

I think it's a case of live and let die (not the movie), if some douchebag suggests restrictive DRM no one in the publisher company is going to fight it as I think.

They are obliged to make a PC release to earn "that little bit more money" and I suspect the studios (quite separate from the publishers usually, like creative vs business) want a PC release as this can allow their games to reach their maximum potential so take that last half step with a PC build and by then publishers could hardly object to a PC release, what would the stockholders say?

I have no doubt that publishers would rather not have to deal with a PC release, mainly because it is a market they cannot control. It is easy with console titles to whip up hype but with PC games, if the sequel is shit there is no way anyone can spin it another way.