GOG Says DRM Drives Gamers to Piracy

[NLS]

Those few times I pirate games, it's because of the high price. DRM has never gotten in my way.

 

[Savber]

Thats what they're doing with GoG.com, and it seems to be doing quite well. If what you say is true, GoG.com should have gone out of business within the first few months of being active.

And even if it does get pirated to hell and back, then it'll be just as effective as every other form of DRM. With the added bonus of costing a lot less to implement and deal with, and not pissing off your paying customers.

LOL... while I love GoG.com, I think it's stupid to use it as proof that no DRM is working for them. Name a single AAA game they're currently selling (besides Witcher 2) or a game that's worth more than $20. The success of GoG's lack of DRM for games from 2000s is hardly a great business model for AAA game studios to follow. Of course, there's a lack of DRM for games that came out more than a decade ago!

DRM sucks but I think GoG is hardly an excellent model for companies that are producing current games.

Bluntly put, there's no way a SP game will ever avoid getting pirated. MP exclusive games might have a solution since it takes A LONG FREAKING HASSLE to work but not SP games.

 

[Irridium]

Thats what they're doing with GoG.com, and it seems to be doing quite well. If what you say is true, GoG.com should have gone out of business within the first few months of being active.

And even if it does get pirated to hell and back, then it'll be just as effective as every other form of DRM. With the added bonus of costing a lot less to implement and deal with, and not pissing off your paying customers.

LOL... while I love GoG.com, I think it's stupid to use it as proof that no DRM is working for them. Name a single AAA game they're currently selling (besides Witcher 2) or a game that's worth more than $20. The success of GoG's lack of DRM for games from 2000s is hardly a great business model for AAA game studios to follow. Of course, there's a lack of DRM for games that came out more than a decade ago!

DRM sucks but I think GoG is hardly an excellent model for companies that are producing current games.

I agree with your final statement though.

Not saying they should follow GoG's business model, I'm saying they should follow GoG's "no DRM" model. Since it does nothing but piss off paying customers. Was just using it as an example that you can be successful by selling games with no DRM and with low prices.

I'd go on, but then I'd be getting into prices, budgets of games, publisher stupidity, customer stupidity, and lots of other stuff I really don't feel like talking about right now.

 

[Korzack]

Woo-hoo! A/nother publisher's got the right idea!

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I am going to buy this game just because it snubs the DRM crowd.

 

[Ironic Pirate]

And watch as The Witcher 2 gets pirated to hell

And watch as every game, even those with extensive DRM, gets pirated to hell. It only takes one nerd somewhere in the world to crack it, and it's out in the open.

I don't know what the point of your post was. Were you implying DRM stops pirates?

 

[dante brevity]

Spending money to make your products worse for the only people you should be rewarding because "Hey, those folks are the ones giving you money" sounds incredibly stupid, doesn't it? Kukawski is an executive with his head on straight - punishing your customers is the opposite of good business sense (unless you are a dominatrix, in which case it is your core competency) - at best they just won't notice or care enough to stop purchasing games from you, but adding on unnecessary (read: any) DRM to your products can only ever lower public perception and reduce any feelings of goodwill you may have generated through past actions; only crazy people would perceive adding DRM to a game they want as something to be happy about[footnote]If you think that was in any way hyperbole on my part and not cold hard fact, think about it this way: Imagine there is an airport with an exhaustive and annoying screening system in place that everyone has to pass through to get on their flights. Now imagine you could pay a premium to skip all the bullshit and have a greatly simplified check-in. Got that image in your mind? Good - now reverse it, so that the people forking over money are in fact the only ones now subjected to the inconvenience, and everyone else who pays nothing simply get waved on through with no hassle. Kind of hard to imagine anyone who would be willing to pay to make the check-in process longer and more annoying, isn't it? DRM does exactly that now though you say? Imagine that![/footnote].
[/center]

A footnote! You added a footnote to an internet forum post! Kudos!

 

[mooncalf]

Seen that picture of Geralt standing in a city bestriding water, miles high and vast as anything I'd seen in a game before? Hell yes I am getting this game, everthing else is gravy.

 

[Gennadios]

Back when securom was the go-to DRM, the first thing I'd do after downloading a game (off of direct2drive) is get cracks from secondary sources. I'm not a fan of the Witcher but I feel I should pre-order on principle.

 

[risenbone]

Look DRM isn't there to prevent piracy thats just the PR spin we have heard for so long thats it's become "fact". The real reason for DRM is to stop second hand sales. If you can only install a programe a limited amount of times no second hand dealer in their right mind will buy second hand DRM protected merchandise because there is no way of telling how many uses it has left. Thats the reason PC games have no refund when the seal is broken and no real official second hand market. When seen in that light DRM has been and will continue to be wildly successful and won't go away anytime soon.

Yep. This would be it.[/quote]Ah, yes, that old chestnut. Say, care to back it up with evidence? BTW, if there was no piracy, what "excuse" do you think publishers would use for DRM?[/quote]

Ok I'll bite.

Simple proof go to your local gamestop and check out their catalogue of used PC games. Now compare that to the choice of Console pre-owned. Which of those has DRM?

Piracy has been around for as long as mates/buddies made copies of their tapes/floppies to share with their friends. Certainly the original intent of DRM was to prevent piracy and the ways around it were crude ie photocoping entire manuals but it never actually prevented piracy.

Now think about it for a second. What percentage of Pirated copies of PC games actually have a sale attached to them? Sure it may be low but that percentage exists and is probably higher than you would expect. Now what percentage of used sales have also bought the game new? I'm willing to bet that percentage is microscopic in comparison. Now ask yourself how much money do the devs/publishers make off a used sale? Before day 1 DLC absolutly none and with it I very much doubt they make as much as if the game had been bought new. Therefore logically the modern DRM model is not to prevent piracy but to prevent second hand sales yet they continue to push the anti-piracy PR line because that sounds alot better.

 

[Sightless Wisdom]

DRM causes piracy? OMGZ!!!1!! I never would have guessed!!!


Seriously, not news. However it's good to see a developer that does something about ehir assessment of the situation.

 

[Syntax Error]

EA DRM is screwing you. Right now. [http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/04/drm-run-amok-how-bioware-and-ea-are-screwing-users-right-now.ars]

So yeah, legal buyers are assumed to be criminals. There's an XKCD comic (flowchart) that's appropriate here but I'm too lazy to look it up.

 

[AlexiVolkov]

DRM and really shitty and/or buggy games that people won't even pay bargin bin prices for. Way to state the obvious GoG. I love you to much to be mad at you though.

 

[oldtaku]

I can tell you personally it does. I'm more than willing to pay money (just bought Bulletstorm for full price, which was totally worth it), but if you make it a a pain in the ass and counter-productive to buy it legally (Hello Ubisoft) I'm not going to risk not even being able to play a game I bought and having no recourse.

Make it easy for a lazy SOB like me and I'll throw money at you. Make it difficult and I'll bypass you.

 

[Baalthazaq]

Overall it seems to me death to this industry to have DRM.

Think about any other type of entertainment.
Music or DVD's for example.
Once the box is up and running, you put in the DVD/CD and it plays.

You still get the problem of certain members of the population not quite knowing how to use the remote to get the DVD to play, or maybe the TV isn't set to DVD, and this is a barrier to entry.

For videogames: It took me, an IT technician, about 6 hours to get a certain game running, after the 30 min install.
The DRM interfered with the proxy my isp was running (online confirmation).
I had to bugger around with IP settings, router settings, and so on and so forth.

Are you genuinely telling me (anyone) that any other industry would survive such an epic endeavor to play their medium? Videogames are already placed out of the mainstream for the install and complexity of operation (a keyboard vs a playbutton), and you've decided that, to protect sales, you're going to take that and multiply every aspect of it?

they're only hurting themselves in the short, and the long term.

 

[Zefar]

Tell that to all the people that got locked out of Assassin's Creed 2 because Ubisoft's servers fucked up.

How many could it have been on a total then? Probably not more than 1/4 of the rest.

I call bullshit on this. Either you're perpetually stoned, you have no annoyance mechanism, or you work for DRM companies. Which is it?

I'm sorry, but have you been there when I've played those DRM protected games? :/ No, you have not.

Install limits have NEVER and I mean NEVER been a problem for me. Do you know why? I install it on one PC and one only. I've updated my hardware but I think it just gave me a little screen to confirm something and all I had to do was press a button. One button and it was gone again and didn't bother me anymore.

Other DRM as such with no activation limits and online only have never been a problem either. Why? 24/7 broadband connection year around except on maybe 1 or 2 days but that is really really rare for me. SecuROM have never been bothered with any other programs I run along with the game.
Even with Ubisoft online need I can still play the game offline now. All I need to do is at least connect to the game once in order to start it. After that I can shut it off completely and it won't kick me out and it won't bother me at all.

Aside from the game being free, being able to install it whenever they want on whatever they want, being able to play SP games offline, not having to phone India because their DRM shat itself, not having to put up with a game not running because of disc emulators, and streamlining the install process. But I guess those don't count, right?

Installing all over place really isn't going to affect that many people. As most gamers usually have one PC or maybe two. So that really isn't an issue.
Also for playing offline. This really only points toward Assassin Creed 2. But even then they changed the system. Most support tickets for DRM are done through the company and not some India phone line. So that's just you being silly with excuses.
Even then some people have said they just sent in one mail and got it fixed in a relative short amount of time.

Disc Emulators have rarely caused problems for me. I got Daemon Tools and some other ISO file launcher and no DRM have made a request for me to shut them down.

For a few weeks. Couple of months tops. But better cracks pop up that get around that.

A month with those problems is actually a long enough time for most people. Even some weeks it would be annoying.

So you enjoy being bent over a table and violated by game devs?

Sorry but I'm not poor and don't live a third world country. I got a connection 24/7 so constant internet connection is something I really don't give a damn about. In fact, most games I play these days are online game. So if I where to whine about online connection I would be a little whiny schoolgirl. But I'm not.

Sorry bro I value my right to play the games I bought on whatever the fuck I want to play them, to install them as many times as I deem necessary, to play them off-line, and generally to OWN MY OWN FUCKING SHIT! I didn't pay 30-60 bucks for a god damned rental, and that's all you get when you have DRM.

You own a LICENSE to play the game. The content to play the game is provided but you don't own it by law. It's like owning a car. Sure you can mod it all you want but you need to follow the rules when you're out on the road. Some games though do remove the option to mod it but modding isn't that huge as it was before.


So no, DRM really isn't as harmful as you people make it out to be. Except maybe that one case with Starforce + DVD drives. Todays DRM do you nothing.

 

[Soveru]

And watch as The Witcher 2 gets pirated to hell

And watch as every game, even those with extensive DRM, gets pirated to hell. It only takes one nerd somewhere in the world to crack it, and it's out in the open.

I don't know what the point of your post was. Were you implying DRM stops pirates?

It doesn't. I know some friends who haven't bought a single game for years and just pirate everything. They don't justify their actions with 'DRM has driven me to piracy waaaaa'. So why do they do it? They just want free stuff. A good number of pirates simply do it because they want the game for free. DRM or not, won't stop them.

 

[nipsen]

I would just like to point out that there is so much more potential to get real malware from a pirate site than actual DRM.

..wow. Listen to the expert..

 

[Ironic Pirate]

And watch as The Witcher 2 gets pirated to hell

And watch as every game, even those with extensive DRM, gets pirated to hell. It only takes one nerd somewhere in the world to crack it, and it's out in the open.

I don't know what the point of your post was. Were you implying DRM stops pirates?

It doesn't. I know some friends who haven't bought a single game for years and just pirate everything. They don't justify their actions with 'DRM has driven me to piracy waaaaa'. So why do they do it? They just want free stuff. A good number of pirates simply do it because they want the game for free. DRM or not, won't stop them.

Oh, so you were saying the consumer goodwill won't translate into significantly increased sales?

That makes more sense. I'd have to say the majority of pirates do download just for the freeness, but they'll probably get a few sales from this, and good will occasionally translates to higher review scores, which could also help.

 

[nipsen]

Oh, so you were saying the consumer goodwill won't translate into significantly increased sales?

Exactly. The idea is that unless consumers are inconvenienced by something, they do not feel privileged and exclusive when using it. Spite sells, specially in America.