The crap publishers keep pulling with various completely ineffective and annoying forms of DRM, when anyone with even half a brain can see that it doesn't work(!), would make me wonder if it's because they're brain-damaged or their investors are, so they have to fork out money for expensive copy-protection software that does jack to stop pirates or they'll be seen as "not doing enough to stop piracy, oh noes!". I say 'would' because I don't think DRM has anything to do with piracy at all, but first let's look at how piracy impacts the bottom line.
Software companies love to bandy about the potential revenue figures for all the pirated copies circulating around the interwebs and call them "losses due to piracy!", but that's both dishonest and misleading. Software piracy is stealing, but it's not stealing - if I take merchandise from a physical store without paying for it I have both deprived that retailer of the money they would have ordinarily received for that item and the item. If you download a copy of Crysis, you have a copy of Crysis you didn't pay EA for, which has the same impact to their bottom line as a customer browsing through the software section and deciding not to buy it.
The 'losses' are hypothetical, since the 'loss' was to their potential revenue - there's no way at all to confirm that, had piracy actually been impossible (ha!), they would have sold all those copies the pirates downloaded. Publishers say "Look how popular our games are, we are losing so much money from piracy!" and point to the piracy figures while neglecting to mention the bit where the folks pirating your games are bloody software pirates, who do not as a rule pay for things. The number of pirated copies does not equal "units we could have sold if only DRM couldn't be circumvented", since that would rely on the demographic that's content to rip you off now suddenly deciding to purchase your stuff - this is an inherently flawed assumption.
Thieves are not a reliable purchasing demographic as a general rule, and there's absolutely no way to tell if the pirates would have paid for your game if they couldn't have just stole it - and it's readily apparent that you can't keep them from pirating your software anyways.
I choose to believe that the suits know all this and use piracy! as a straw-man that keeps the general public from being outraged at their real reason for pushing DRM down our throats: It screws over the second-hand games market and, if they are lucky, sometimes the honest customers have to purchase things they already bought again! Unlike pirates, the people who frequent used games stores actually have a tendency to PAY for things, but as far as money reaching the publisher, used games sales might as well just be piracy, because they don't see squat from those. And how does your continuing use of the software you paid for once help their bottom line? (Answer: It doesn't!)
If publishers came right out and admitted their draconian DRM schemes were really just ways to increase sales by screwing over paying customers and the used-games market, well that wouldn't work so well for them. Thank goodness they can keep playing the "Pirates, oh noes!" card!
Software companies love to bandy about the potential revenue figures for all the pirated copies circulating around the interwebs and call them "losses due to piracy!", but that's both dishonest and misleading. Software piracy is stealing, but it's not stealing - if I take merchandise from a physical store without paying for it I have both deprived that retailer of the money they would have ordinarily received for that item and the item. If you download a copy of Crysis, you have a copy of Crysis you didn't pay EA for, which has the same impact to their bottom line as a customer browsing through the software section and deciding not to buy it.
The 'losses' are hypothetical, since the 'loss' was to their potential revenue - there's no way at all to confirm that, had piracy actually been impossible (ha!), they would have sold all those copies the pirates downloaded. Publishers say "Look how popular our games are, we are losing so much money from piracy!" and point to the piracy figures while neglecting to mention the bit where the folks pirating your games are bloody software pirates, who do not as a rule pay for things. The number of pirated copies does not equal "units we could have sold if only DRM couldn't be circumvented", since that would rely on the demographic that's content to rip you off now suddenly deciding to purchase your stuff - this is an inherently flawed assumption.
Thieves are not a reliable purchasing demographic as a general rule, and there's absolutely no way to tell if the pirates would have paid for your game if they couldn't have just stole it - and it's readily apparent that you can't keep them from pirating your software anyways.
I choose to believe that the suits know all this and use piracy! as a straw-man that keeps the general public from being outraged at their real reason for pushing DRM down our throats: It screws over the second-hand games market and, if they are lucky, sometimes the honest customers have to purchase things they already bought again! Unlike pirates, the people who frequent used games stores actually have a tendency to PAY for things, but as far as money reaching the publisher, used games sales might as well just be piracy, because they don't see squat from those. And how does your continuing use of the software you paid for once help their bottom line? (Answer: It doesn't!)
If publishers came right out and admitted their draconian DRM schemes were really just ways to increase sales by screwing over paying customers and the used-games market, well that wouldn't work so well for them. Thank goodness they can keep playing the "Pirates, oh noes!" card!
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