GOG's Rambourg: DRM Is Terrible, Sales Are Problematic

[Colt47]

I think the dirty secret behind the need for sales is the fact that 90% of the games are practically the same game with different skins or are just not that good.

I think it's more than just that. There are games of dubious quality/retreads, but also games that are incredibly short, and games that sell off parts as DLC. And honestly, that trust thing comes up. I don't trust the gaming industry. I don't think many really do.

So if you know games go on sale, why not wait? Less investment on an uncertain product is surely a good thing, right?

And I don't know if it's hurting the industry, but I also don't care. If they want me to buy things at full price, they need better business practices that make me think the end game will be worth it.

Yeah businesses themselves have been kind of struggling to find ways to get the consumer to part with their resources consistently, largely because the entertainment industry is very difficult, if not impossible, to homogenize. Most businesses have been forced to turn to pop and dazzle to get their audience's attention instead of trying to come up with an enduring, unique product. Notch and other mega success indie developers have been proving that a good game idea is superior to flash and dazzle, while major companies like Square Enix and Activision seem content to just try and milk ancient ideas dry.

 

[JarinArenos]

I will buy good games at full price and never regret it. Bioshock Infinite, Fire Emblem: Awakening, Borderlands 2, all full-price purchases at release, or close after. But like other posters say, my issue is trust. Bioshock, I bought used at gamestop (return for full value in a week = no danger), then returned that and purchased a new copy, because it was worth it. Purchasing a new game at full price often feels like buying a lottery ticket. I might get something awesome... but more often, I'm stuck with something that's just a waste of the money I spent.

THIS is why, when a new game comes out that I'm not sure of, my response is often "eh... I'll look at it during the next big sale. The risk isn't worth $60 to me, but it might be worth $30..."

 

[weirdee]

comes down to profit vs market share

how many more people will you reach, or how much more money will you make?

i see a lot of folks charging more when they could garner significantly more sales at a lower price point that would really drive their profits more than they are now

but "special sales" do have their value, i guess

mostly because the consumer public has been conditioned to believe in them

 

[weirdee]

But you will fine near GoG's entire catalog up on torrent sites.

That is NOT an argument in favor of DRM. You will find any company's catalog on torrent sites.

Uhm... if your target audience will only pay a discounted price it may be a sign that you were over-charging.

I think what he means is even if they cut all the prices in half people would still wait for a sale.

addendum: the main reason why i would wait to buy a cheaper game is that those games have a higher chance of ending up in a bundle, meaning at that point that you can pick it up for pennies, which sort of defeats the issue entirely, and also burns recent customers who picked it up, even in an earlier sale

"you should have waited" is the message being sent here

even aquaria, the holier than thou game that priced themselves at 20 bucks to begin with and claimed that it was worth it to the detractors, still ended up in a bundle later on (even if it is worth 20 dollars. however, i still criticize the game for the pacing and maps that have no clear direction towards the goal even when it's not actually supposed to be a maze)

 

[BrotherRool]

I don't think we'll ever have a full-on crash again, but if there's ever a big slump I think consumers readjusting their expectations are going to play a large role in that. On sites like this you can already find a large amount of people who didn't buy a full priced game in 2013, and more than that, people are buying more games than they can actually play.

comes down to profit vs market share

how many more people will you reach, or how much more money will you make?

i see a lot of folks charging more when they could garner significantly more sales at a lower price point that would really drive their profits more than they are now

In some senses I agree with that, the price point of games is probably why the popularity isn't as widespread as says films (which have comparable budgets), but I also think games are too big and too involved to ever fully reach that level of penetration.

Fallout New Vegas isn't a casual experience. If you work fulltime then that one game represents months of focus and preservation just to finish the main campaign. That's always going to be a barrier to entry which stops games selling to a larger audience, no matter the price. A film is not only cheaper, but it's only committing a couple of hours of your life.

It's not surprising that the games which do have absolutely mass appeal are not only dirt cheap, but also generally something you only need to put a few minutes into every now and then

 

[Grabehn]

I always love when people start talking about piracy, DRM doesn NOT by any means stop piracy, the harder your system is on the actual user, the easier it is to frustrate people and basically help them decide to just go and get the pirated version that has no security programs at all, no matter how much companies repeat "Our game NEEDS all this stuff" it doesn't. And just like PC games get pirated, EVERY SINGLE CONSOLE gets pirated games too. There's always someone that will outsmart a security system, so harsher DRM is never a solution.

There's also the "we lose sales with piracy", when in reality a lot of people that pirate a game and stick to just that where never planning on getting the game anyways, which in several cases I've seen is mostly due to money, and there's been several that actually end up buying the game afterwards because they tried it and liked it enough as to thing that the game they played has enough value as to make the price worth it, be it during a sale or not.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

I am not against paying a reasonable amount for a good game. I am definitely not paying the 110 dollars games go for here in Australia new, and I'm definitely not paying full price for games that are just platforms for more purchases, be they shitty DLC or microtransactions.

But praise be to GOG for their stance. I'm glad it's paying off. Piracy yields a DRM-free product, why should you pay more for worse? There is a serious portion of people who have pirated games they'd rather pay for because of DRM.

 

[Kuala BangoDango]

Look, it's time to admit that $5.99 and $9.99 aren't the kind of prices people want to pay for games so old despite how good they are. I hate to say this, but did GOG ever consider that people might be more interested in buying the old games if they were $2.99 and $4.99 instead?

There's a problem with your pricing though...

There's a reason why GoG's version of games will install and run on any modern OS while the original disc version often won't install anymore or won't run even if you CAN install it on the newer OS'es. GoG updates every one of their games to run on new systems and they'll often fix glitches/bugs in the games that the original versions never fixed. GoG has to pay their devs to do all this updating. They also try to get free extras for their version of the games (soundtracks, pdf manuals, artwork, etc.).

So, if it was simply a matter of throwing a game up on their website without caring if the game actually works for people (like Steam does on their old games) then yeah, I think your prices would be right. But since they DO go the extra mile then they need to charge a bit extra.

Also, keep in mind that the $5.99 and $9.99 prices are normal prices. They often go on sale for the $3 and $5 you say they're worth. If GoG lowered the normal prices to your prices then when they went on sale they'd only be $1 to $3 and at THAT price it'd not even be worth it to update & sell the game...in fact they'd probably LOSE money taking into account things like $1 transaction fees they have to pay on credit card transactions and such.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

Oh god that Insomnia sale. What a freaking mess. I appreciate the attempts to do something new with sales to keep them interesting, but that was not the way to do it.

A freakin' mess it was. However, I kinda enjoyed it. I got a ton of cool games for cheap and it encouraged me to try a few new things. I would have preferred something more like what Amazon did for Black Friday so I could plan a little better, but all in all I got most of the games on my wishlist that weekend.

I personally prefer the sales on GOG to Steam. I just don't like booting up Steam before I can shop. I don't like having a DRM program running before I can even buy a game.

 

[Amir Kondori]

Oh where to begin.

DRM just doesn't work, and is terrible as a concept; resistance from gamers is stronger than ever before, but GOG isn't worried that its fans will exploit its DRM free system. GOG customers tend to download a game only once, and when GOG launched a 30-day money back guarantee program, customer support queries only increased by a modest amount.

This, thinks Rambourg, is proof that GOG's customers aren't scamming the system. If they were, GOG would see multiple downloads per account, and have been overwhelmed by money back demands from chiselers looking to score a free game.

But you will fine near GoG's entire catalog up on torrent sites. So yah, check your metrics Ram. Now as much as I like the idea of DRM free it's not unlike the idea of communism. IT works great in theory... but in practice it's not that great. It's why most of the games on GoG are old games that the license holders don't really care about because (trhing is 10 years old?? We already wrote that off the books.) or and more importantly, indies for whom exposure is just as important as revenue.

The bigger problem is sales. Rambourg acknowledges that discounts have their uses, and that companies have to adapt to the market to survive. Yet at the same time he's a little worried that gamers are beginning to believe "their hobby is worth roughly the same as an iPhone app." That's bound to hurt the industry in the long run, as gamers start refusing to pay full price in the expectation of a sale discount.

Uhm... if your target audience will only pay a discounted price it may be a sign that you were over-charging. Gamers will pay full price but understand that like any other groups, gamers are being hit by the global economic problems just as badly. When the price of your product is the barrier to ownership then one must find a way to reduce the price of said product.

It's getting to the point, he jokes, where GOG might just run an anti-sale, "where, for a day, our entire catalog will be priced at 150 percent of original price with a big message splattered across our main page: PLAY THE ONES YOU OWN!"

I sense a touch of bitterness. I wonder if he's a little perturbed that he can't beat steam on sales., which is legit, steam sales pretty much define the market now. Though my own answer would be, to stop trying twitchy gimmicks. i mean that Autumn insomnia sale was literally a joke and I honestly wonder how many users were turned off by it since the sale was not design for their convenience but for GoG to trying and turn shopping into skinner-box.

My advice to GoG, focus more on the classics... 'Still waiting for FOur Crystals of Trazere' to show up in the catalog. There seems to have been a bit more divergence into mainstream and indie which is not bad but remember what brought people to you in the first place. Classics. sell the games that STeam and Origin aren't, sell those oldie gems no one is carrying.

Are you really in favor of DRM? Are you a gamer or a publisher? In any case what does it matter that GOG copies of games end up on torrent sites? Copies of games with DRM end up on torrent sites too, and I have read that the ripped copies show up first and are the most downloaded.

I always wonder at people who seem to be against their own self interest. I don't trust such people.

 

[Strazdas]

The bigger problem is sales. Rambourg acknowledges that discounts have their uses, and that companies have to adapt to the market to survive. Yet at the same time he's a little worried that gamers are beginning to believe "their hobby is worth roughly the same as an iPhone app." That's bound to hurt the industry in the long run, as gamers start refusing to pay full price in the expectation of a sale discount.

Good. That means they are aware that the full price is too high and gamers are actually not choking it up and want to pay the real worth if it. And the phone app comparison is hilarious considering that mobile gaming is many times mroe profitable than regular gaming.

But you will fine near GoG's entire catalog up on torrent sites.

Right there next to entire catalog of steam, Origins and GFWL. Torrent sites have all games, DRM or no DRM. This really isnt a point in your favour, its a point against, since this proves that DRM does not affect the people to was created to affect - pirates.

Now as much as I like the idea of DRM free it's not unlike the idea of communism. IT works great in theory... but in practice it's not that great.

In practice noone has tried communism save for very small scale experiments (which worked well enough). So we cannot say what it will be in practice. And the only reason it would not work is because of shit people like the same ones that tried to make DRM.

mate, almost every game that has DRM was cracked a couple of days after its release (with the exception of always online DRM, which in all honesty worked great. I mean, look at diablo 3 and simcity... oh wait) DRM or not, a game will get cracked, after it's cracked, the DRM is only there to annoy THE LEGITIMATE CUSTOMERS.
I prefer the way cd projekt red did it, but DRM on the game for a week and then disable it because it was cracked anyway.

Not even that. AC2 always online DRM mean that on launch day pirates wwere playing while legal costumers were having connection issues. Sim City is playable offline now via a mod that is not "allowed by EA" (however mods are not illegal, so suck it EA), and there is a cracked version of Diablo, though admitedly very buggy one.

You can't stop a determined thief, you can only test his determination. That is a quote of wisodm. A locked door won't stop someone from breaking in if they really want to... but there's a finite amount of effort someone will put in to get something for free. DRM does slow things down because there's always quirks and ticks with Pirated games, half the times they don't really work, the other half they cracks contain trojans and the other half they are deliberately seeded tweaked copies' put out by the Devs.

The problem is - pirates are not thievews in multitude of ways. They are copyright infringers, which is illegal, and lets leave it at that from this perspective. because you really cant win the morality battle here. and you already lost the legality battle here (they are not thieves as defined legally).
The reason your "wisdom" does not work is that digital media is not phyiscal house. When robbing a house you need the robber to break your locked door. When pirating a game you need 1 cracked and then millions can enter. sort of like how if one person opened a lock and then everyone could enter every house.
Not working and trojan horse pirated stuff only exists if a perosn so stupid enough to go intentionality seeking for them. the most easily accessible pirated material is safer than searching for more obscure drivers on the net. Also due to how the system works all virused torrents get deleted almost instantly. Tweaked copies put by developers, we saw those with GTA4, they were "Fixed" within days.
Pirating a game isnt hard. its easier and safer than buying one. you really got no argument here.

I agree with the rest of your post, but you clearly dont know anything about piracy and thus shouldnt use it as an argument.

It may be largely due to low frame rates combined with extremely narrow field of view, but try getting anyone new to games to play an FPS... in my exerience they universally get turned around, disoriented, or just strait up nauseous. I really miss being able to play 3rd person games, and even those that exist now are almost all shooters. I wish all those jokes were true about Naughty Dog revisiting Crash Bandicoot with the next gen Uncharted engine ^.^

Im completely the opposite. give me a FPS and ill be happy, give me same game in 3rd person (some games allow mukltiple camera angles btw) and ill be disoriented as fuck, will rage at controls and camera and everything. i think 3rd person shouldnt even be around except for driving. so yeah, there are people on both ends of the spectrum.

This.. is true, but the same case could be made thusly. Thousands of homes with locked doors are broken into every year... does than mean it makes no sense to stop locking your door at all? Thousands of cars with alarms are stolen every year... does that mean you don't put an alarm on your car?

I surely wouldnt be putting a lock that cost me half a million and anyone can break with a fart on. If house locks were as inefficient as DRM (as in 0% efficiency), then noone would use it. there is no detriment to DRM other than for legal costumers. Pirates do not stop because of DRM.

You see you have to do something to protect one's property, games have always had some form of DRM really. It's just for a good while the media itself was the DRM, before burners came standard it was not practically to pirate a game that came on a CD... the next media down was flopy disks and sure there were harddrives butr back then a 500meg hd was not cheap... so having even a 100 megs just sitting on your pc was not a fun idea...

No, people copied cartridges, tapes, way before CDs were around. I still remember we all knew a guy that would copy you a CD for free back when i was a kid. Piracy is nothing new, DRM is new, and it doesnt work.
Floppy copying and pirated games were very easy to get.

Check back to earlier games you find many of them required passwords from the manuals, now again, back then it was an effective barrier since scanners were not standard home equipment back then. These are all early examples of DRM people. Also back then even if it was pirated there was a limit to how far one person could spread and distribute. This was also the era where most gamers were into consoles anyway so yeah again, smaller market.

Because it was so hard to write down a password. you would get a piece of paper with password with your pirated disc and problem was solved.
Also did you just imply that console games werent pirated. Cha, Cha.

Now, things have changed , and granted most DRM is inconvenient but what else would you have them do.

How about realizing this is 21st century and trying to do the ONLY thing that works - provide better service?

Again, remember, piracy basically hurts the devs more than the publishers.

you say it as if DRM prevents piracy.

One's stance on DRM changes depending on whether one has actually produced a game... so really, let me hear from Any of you that have actually deved a game that has or was on the market...am I right?

I dont need to. CD Project, the owners of GOG, have developed multiple. Or do i need to point out all those developers putting their own games on piratebay? OR perhaps Adobes stance on software piracy?
So no, your not right.

DRM can however be a force for good, look at steam for example. it's drm...and better still it's drm that provides a benefit to all parties. Steam makes the installation eay and finding support much faster, it provides a means for indies to get their titles listed in a major distributor (Greenlight) and it provides devs and publishers a means of reasonably securing their product from theft. That's not to mention the sales.

If people weren't dicks...we could live ina DRM free world... sadly.. this is not the case.

Steam provides good service despite being a unitrusive DRM. If all DRM was like steam, i dont think that many people will be complaining.

You think so huh? and how long do you think this will continue, many other torrent sites have been brought down and the music and film industry have been sending out aquite a fewletters to file sharers.

FOrever. The only way to defeat piracy is mind-control of human race.

I personally prefer the sales on GOG to Steam. I just don't like booting up Steam before I can shop. I don't like having a DRM program running before I can even buy a game.

You could jstu browse steam store via a browserver cant you?

 

[Neta]

About 50% of the games I've purchased from GoG needed to have unofficial fan-made patches to work properly, such as the Fallout games, or Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura.

Not a complaint about GoG, just ranting about half-assed games that needed to be finished by one of the game company's customers... Y'know, I think Jim Sterling may have also raised this point at some stage.

 

[alj]

That's not a Binary question. I'm an avid gamer and in the process of game development. But regardless. it goes back to what I say: People hate the idea of copyright until they actually produce IP. When things wind up on torrent sites it hurts the distributor, the publisher and most importantly, the developers. Come on, let's be reasonable, most fledgling devs have the hope their game will allow them to eat something other than instant ramen cups for a few weeks.

If i made a game myself and it found its way onto pirate bay or news-sites or whatever and was being downloaded by 1000 of people i would know i had done something right, made a good game. Sure i would be disappointed that they did not pay for the game but how many of them would have paid for it if i had the magic elixir of DRM that made it impossible for them to commit copyright infringement? I would say not many at all.

And just think of all that free advertising if they like the game, they tell there friends and they tell theirs and so on, many of them may also download if from the same source but not all of them.

And can we please stop calling it Intellectual Property there is no such thing https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.en.html Its a miss mash of copyright law and trademark law and confuses both.

 

[wulfy42]

The honest truth is Steam has flooded the market with extremely cheap games. Seriously....even if you thought pirating was ok.....I don't think many people will pirate a game when they can wait for a steam sale and get it for a few dollars. Worse then that is just the shear number of games. If you have 150+ games in your steam library...even if you are retired and do nothing but play games 24/7 your not gonna get through your library anytime soon.

But it's not just Steam (by itself). Humble bundles etc add even more games, for very low prices to the list (either on steam...or directly).

Then, as mentioned, you have Ipad etc games, which often sell for a fraction of the price as the PC version....while being mobile...which you would think should make it cost MORE. Why is a game 99 cents on the ipad, and 7.99 on the pc? People asked that question about 1 game (was an rpg where you controlled people...playing an RPG)....and the response was that steam or the company they worked with to get it released on steam, set the price....not them.

The end result though is that if you have an ipad, you can usually get any games that will run on it much cheaper then on your PC....often even after factoring in the eventual 75% off you get for almost everything on steam.

I've gotten to the point where my games list is a bit overwhelming on steam. I can't even pick something to play because..there is just too many. I have mostly stopped buying games unless they are at least 50% off (with a few exceptions but far fewer then in the past). There is no reason too anymore. I have 80+ games I have never even installed, let alone played....that I have already payed for...and have not played. I'm married, have a real life etc, but seriously if I stopped everything and just played games for 5 years, I don't think I would get through them all...and thats without buying anything new.

And of course, I'll still buy new games that really interest me. I got rogue legacy at release for instance, and Dragons Crown on my ps3 and Van HElsing (which was just on sale already after having just been released right before the Summer Sale last time). I have only played 20 minutes of Van Helsing....so yeah...I should have waited. That happens so often..it just leads players to feel like they should wait for sales on everything.

 

[Falterfire]

I just don't like booting up Steam before I can shop.

Then don't? You don't have to start Steam to buy games, you just have to go to the website.

 

[TiberiusEsuriens]

...

It may be largely due to low frame rates combined with extremely narrow field of view, but try getting anyone new to games to play an FPS... in my exerience they universally get turned around, disoriented, or just strait up nauseous. I really miss being able to play 3rd person games, and even those that exist now are almost all shooters. I wish all those jokes were true about Naughty Dog revisiting Crash Bandicoot with the next gen Uncharted engine ^.^

Im completely the opposite. give me a FPS and ill be happy, give me same game in 3rd person (some games allow mukltiple camera angles btw) and ill be disoriented as fuck, will rage at controls and camera and everything. i think 3rd person shouldnt even be around except for driving. so yeah, there are people on both ends of the spectrum.
...

Quite a post there Strazdas! As for 3rd Person, I was referring specifically to games that are NOT shooters. I personally greatly enjoy shooters, but i think that 1) there are too many that are all the same so my brain has simply turned off from overload, and 2) they are a terrible choice to introduce new gamers with.

I agree with you that most shooters have clearer aiming mechanics when they're first person. The problem is that in my experience newer gamers hate having to worry about moving their character AND camera, it's just a lot to keep track of. 3rd Person action games (at least the good ones) typically have mechanics that let the camera take care of itself, letting the player focus all their efforts and hacking, slashing, jumping, etc... even incredibly difficult games like Ninja Gaiden are really easy for newer gamers to get into because the entire game is essentially a combination of three buttons: attack, heavy attack, and movement. They will die a thousand times and still love it because it is always abundantly clear what happened, why it happened, and how to fix it next time. As you said, there are people on all ends of the spectrum, so rather than simply changing mechanics to a different but equally complex scheme, devs should be focusing more on cleaning and clarifying [or removing, gasp!] mechanics instead of adding/changing complexity simply in an attempt to distinguish themselves.

Just as a small addition, one thing that almost all 3rd person games have that 1st NEVER do is the ability to auto-center the camera at the touch of a button. FPS can't even afford to have it because every single button has to always be reserved for weapons and items that most people never use. The most common button for this is clicking in the camera stick, but in shooters that's always either zoom or melee, which are 'essential.' This will never change because someone, either customers or investors, will complain in outrage that it's not enough like Call of Duty. Which I guess is more or less my point. Less games should be like Call of Duty.

 

[mindfaQ]

I don't know about you guys, but I tend to give money to the people/companies that deserve it in my opinion. I only have a certain budget, ofc the money will end up mostly at the products I really like, which atm is only very few games (Dota 2, TWD, Portal 2). So I personally would not spend more money if games were sold at higher prices - I just would try out fewer of them.

 

[Zombie_Moogle]

http://www.quickmeme.com/img/74/744c4ea5185154a4968efe9c14e5c2a4a07b5271fab26a573a04935834dc62d2.jpg

Hmmm... trolling your own website as an in-joke with your own customers...

Yup. I could see them actually doing this

 

[SecondPrize]

If I wait for a game to fall below $10 before buying it, it's only because that's what I figure it'd be worth. Sometimes I'm wrong and regretted not paying full price when it released, but that's not a common event. He thinks we're undervaluing games, that's fine. I don't think there have been many games at all recently whose quality justifies their release msrp, so we'll just have to agree to disagree.

 

[Little Gray]

This, thinks Rambourg, is proof that GOG's customers aren't scamming the system. If they were, GOG would see multiple downloads per account, and have been overwhelmed by money back demands from chiselers looking to score a free game.

Why would they need to download the game more then once? All you need is one copy to toss it up on the pirate bay.