Poll: DRM - A necessary evil?

[Robert Ewing]

The only people inconvenienced by DRM are people who bought the game.

This so much. Pretty much the only thing DRM does. Sure it's designed to stop pirates, so the intent is good. But pirates circumvent the DRM within hours of release, no matter how advanced or sophisticated the DRM is, so it's making the pirated games better than the factory product because the un-pirated copies have asshole DRM.

 

[Something Amyss]

It's worth pointing out that the Witcher 2 cited some ridiculously high figures in terms of their "lost sales" in terms of piracy, but most of the top ten pirated games last year had one form of DRM or another, and the Witcher didn't come close to hitting those numbers.

DRM doesn't really stop pirates. At best, it'll slow them down but many of them are cracked on release. What's more, pirates end up with a superior product: one not crippled by DRM.

In short:

The only people inconvenienced by DRM are people who bought the game.

Indeed. I'm sick of being locked out of games I purchased and having to jump through hoops. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen enough to be a problem.

There is no DRM that will be satisfactory in terms of both stopping piracy and sparing consumers.

 

[veloper]

The error here is the 100% suggestion. It's more like "Oh it doesn't work at all! 0% effectiveness".

Well, no DRM doesn't work either. Let's stop doing that.

No DRM garnered the CDPR guys some good will and more sales because of that.
Copyprotection and DRM don't make you any sales. The only thing that works is having fans and enthousiasts. Pissing them off costs you sales.

Pirates never deal with DRM.
They get a cracked version. Crackers crack for the interesting challenge it is and the prestige they gain in their scene, so there's no stopping them either. Harder = better.

Read what I write, damn it. I'm not going to spend every post retyping what I've typed before.

But let me bring something new - for a long time have scene groups have put some variation of "If you like this game - buy it" in their NFOs. RELOADED, DEViANCE, iMMERSiON and SKiDROW come immediately to mind. Listen to those guys, if not me. I may not know enough about the scene, but they sure do.

They were encouraging the try-before-you-buy kind of pirate.
Their idea is that if the game was good, pirates may still become fans and support the company so the devs can keep their jobs to make the next game, hopefully just as good.
Again it's about goodwill driving sales.

A waste of a long wall of text. Pirates remain completely unaffected by any DRM measure. Their game versions come without any.

Hence what I said about copy protection. Thank you for not acknowledging it.

You're welcome.
If a work of software is not being pirated, it's simply not something people want. Piracy is a sign of success.
There's hordes of deadbeats in this world you cannot even flog a cent from, but also a surprisingly amount of PC gamers out there willing to bear the financial burden.
They don't technically have to since piracy is easy and many started out as pirates when they were kids, but they pay for good software now because they have the faith and the means.

It's all about goodwill. If there wans't any, there would be zero sales.

Retail sales for popular multiplatform titles on PC may be less half of 360 sales, but when you add the digital sales, the situation is not nearly as dire.
The industry needs to stop focussing all attention on all the penniless kiddies and deadbeats pirating their games and instead focus on potential fans with money. Fans don't rip you off.

 

[DoPo]

The error here is the 100% suggestion. It's more like "Oh it doesn't work at all! 0% effectiveness".

Well, no DRM doesn't work either. Let's stop doing that.

No DRM garnered the CDPR guys some good will and more sales because of that.

80% piracy. I'd like to see what a failure looks like, if that is the case.

Copyprotection and DRM don't make you any sales. The only thing that works is having fans and enthousiasts. Pissing them off costs you sales.

Let me get this straight. With an example. One of the Splinter Cell games (I don't remember which one) didn't have a 100% working crack for about a whole year after release. You're saying that nobody, not even one person, said to themselves "Yeah, I'm sick of waiting" and went and bought it? Or The HL2 pirate release which behaved like an early beta. Nobody decided "Meh, why don't I go and buy the game instead f trying to run this shit". Or do you assume that all those people either gritted their teeth and endured, or just stopped playing? Because it is a reasonable assumption that there were sales because of DRM.

Also, let me introduce you to a different scenario: Jim and Mark are friends. Jim goes over to Mark's house and watches him play Final Mass Battle Warfare, so he likes the game. Now, excluding DRM and excluding organised piracy (the scene), Jim would just need to ask Mark nicely and he would get the game. But add in copy protection, and now Jim has to buy the game, he can't get a copy from Mark. There, another sale again.

The industry needs to stop focussing all attention on all the penniless kiddies and deadbeats pirating their games and instead focus on potential fans with money. Fans don't rip you off.

Except when they do. Again, the Witcher 2 - are you seriously claiming that all people who pirated it did not like CD Projekt one bit? Take my anecdotal example, then, I know people who like games studios and still pirate their games. Being a fan does not mean you buy their games.

 

[lRookiel]

Hmmm, if it actually did anything to stop piracy maybe I would accept it. But no, it's just inconveniencing the consumer for no good reason.

 

[veloper]

The error here is the 100% suggestion. It's more like "Oh it doesn't work at all! 0% effectiveness".

Well, no DRM doesn't work either. Let's stop doing that.

No DRM garnered the CDPR guys some good will and more sales because of that.

80% piracy. I'd like to see what a failure looks like, if that is the case.

Copyprotection and DRM don't make you any sales. The only thing that works is having fans and enthousiasts. Pissing them off costs you sales.

Let me get this straight. With an example. One of the Splinter Cell games (I don't remember which one) didn't have a 100% working crack for about a whole year after release. You're saying that nobody, not even one person, said to themselves "Yeah, I'm sick of waiting" and went and bought it? Or The HL2 pirate release which behaved like an early beta. Nobody decided "Meh, why don't I go and buy the game instead f trying to run this shit". Or do you assume that all those people either gritted their teeth and endured, or just stopped playing? Because it is a reasonable assumption that there were sales because of DRM.

Also, let me introduce you to a different scenario: Jim and Mark are friends. Jim goes over to Mark's house and watches him play Final Mass Battle Warfare, so he likes the game. Now, excluding DRM and excluding organised piracy (the scene), Jim would just need to ask Mark nicely and he would get the game. But add in copy protection, and now Jim has to buy the game, he can't get a copy from Mark. There, another sale again.

The industry needs to stop focussing all attention on all the penniless kiddies and deadbeats pirating their games and instead focus on potential fans with money. Fans don't rip you off.

Except when they do. Again, the Witcher 2 - are you seriously claiming that all people who pirated it did not like CD Projekt one bit? Take my anecdotal example, then, I know people who like games studios and still pirate their games. Being a fan does not mean you buy their games.

The only fans are those million or so gamers who bought the game new. Calling those fans "pirates" is Ubisoft's silly mistake and it's costing Ubi fans and sales.

Pirates are not the fans. The children and the deadbeats are without number and for every fan, there's always many more pirates and you can do nothing about them. Even if somehow hypothetically, by magic you could stop them from pirating you'd prolly still not be able to beat money out of most of them.

Don't punish the paying customers for something they don't control.

If CDPR did do DRM they'd have fewer sales and ONLY the sales matter. Pirates not playing your game, still doesn't make you any money.

 

[Woodsey]

That's because Steam asks for a one-time activation on games and continues to add benefits to sweeten the deal.

Everything else only serves to obstruct me playing the game, and benefits me in no fucking way whatsoever. Oh, and one small thing: it doesn't work.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Except when I pointed out that in fact you can offer a better deal than piracy. Which you believed before.

Very well. I see my error, and it's a foolish one considering I've made the same argument before.

However, this must come with a caveat, because it does NOT apply to every game.
A game that is service-centric will offer a better experience when purchased legitimately because it offers interaction with the online community.

Of course, this means it only applies to multiplayer games.
Any single player content or games with limited/local multiplayer do not apply here.

And adding multiplayer to a game that is CLEARLY better off as single player (or again, limited-local) just for the purpose of diverting piracy detracts from the game itself. It causes the developer to place less focus and emphasis on their original premise/goal, and more on market security.

Lamentable, but it happens.

As for better support/patching: Those are non-issues for pirates already. They just crack the new version if the DRM changed schemes or whatnot.

 

[Lunar Templar]

i still don't see any real need for it, other then pleasing the stockholders, and there's no way at all i could care less what those useless shits think. while i am fine with some DRM, like steam, i just don't see a need for it, it doesn't stop anything. people have found work arounds or ripped it from the game out right, so its only getting in the way of the people who play legitly, but no, we have to keep the stock holders happy, and not the people paying every ones fucking wages (IE: US)

 

[DoPo]

The only fans are those million or so gamers who bought the game new. Calling those fans "pirates" is Ubisoft's silly mistake and it's costing Ubi fans and sales.

Pirates are not the fans. The children and the deadbeats are without number and for every fan, there's always many more pirates and you can do nothing about them.

During the StarForce fiasco, there were lots and lots of Heroes fans, who claimed that were StarForce included, they would pirate the game. People who have been with the series for years. Now, we all know gamer promises (cue in the picture of the MW boycott) but assuming Ubi hadn't removed StarForce and somebody had gone through with their promise, would that mean that they are not a fan any more?

And I don't understand why you bring up Ubisoft when we are speaking of what DRM should do. How many times do I need to repeat that? What DRM should do is not what Ubisoft thinks.

Don't punish the paying customers for something they don't control.

Which is what I want. I truly want that. What I don't want is people going "DRM is bad hurr durr" because this is a stupid statement. The support for that is even more idiotic - "Oh look, Ubisoft = DRM, therefore bad" (or other generalisation) NO IT DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY! Ubisoft are idiots when it comes to it. So are the any people you'd cite me. I had a stupid pen once which was really uncomfortable to grip and even randomly stopped writing. It must have been created by an idiot. Does that mean that all pens are bad and we should stop using them because of that? Again - no. Making a sweeping generalisations is not the way to go.

However, this must come with a caveat, because it does NOT apply to every game.

Not in every game, yes, but the possibility is there. And that is something gaming companies should strive for - making buying a game a more enjoyable experience. Not artificially by tacking on a multiplayer to Solitaire for the need of legit copy.

As for better support/patching: Those are non-issues for pirates already. They just crack the new version if the DRM changed schemes or whatnot.

Of course they aren't issues in cracking the game. But frequent patches may just put people off from waiting. For example, if you have a patch released every week and it takes two days to crack and distribute it, that leaves you with five days of play. Depending on the game, of course, and even then it might be "meh" or "oh fuck that". It is just a way to make legal copies more desirable. If you have the right game for it, again. There isn't a catch-all method to make your game better.

 

[Weaver]

However, is it necessary - I'd say yes. For the reasons stated - stop random pirates and stop zero day releases. No DRM just doesn't make much sense. Well, aside from some good publicity, it's not achieving anything, really. No DRM doesn't reduce piracy by any significant portion. At least I haven't seen any evidence for that.

And games without DRM (Humble Indie Bundle) get pirated anyway, so what's the point of playing nice with pirates?

None, really. That's why I don't get why some people would think that no DRM is somehow inherently better.

No DRM makes some people more likely to buy the game but at the expense of some other people getting easier access to it. All in all, it's not going to make a massive amount of profits. No copy protection at all is fighting piracy about as hard as hard as going "Pretty please with cherry on top".

Because DRM isn't free. A securom license can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, plus the cost of actually programming your game with it in mind. So couple that with the fact that it doesn't even work anyways and there is really no point in using it.

 

[Krantos]

You can never offer a better deal than "Functionally identical, but for free".

Actually, yes you can.

The way Stardock handles it is you have to register your games with their online database. Once registered you can redownload as many times as you want. They then offer free downloads for anyone registers, access to beta's of their other games, etc.

Post sale service is how you make Piracy less attractive. Seriously, it can be done, just not the way companies have been doing it.

I'm interested to see if UbiSoft can follow through with their claims.

 

[Something Amyss]

80% piracy. I'd like to see what a failure looks like, if that is the case.

[citation needed]

Glibness aside, you mean the number that one guy from CD Projekt pulled out of his ass? He addresses that in the same interview, and then covers his assumptions. It all adds up to an asspull.

Of course, I would be interested in knowing what alternate universe you have visited where you can conclusively prove the numbers would be different.

You bordered on a hefty logical fallacy there, bro, which brings me to that other post:

Why do people claim "DRM is trying to stop piracy"?

Because it's easier to say "stop" than "mitigate the effect by reducing it through available means."

Seriously, dude, at best you're being pedantic and at worst you're hedging on a couple of logical fallacies.

It's accepted shorthand that even the publishers and developers use, not to be taken literally. Unless the publishers really do mean it, and then it's to be taken seriously and mocked.

And then why do they go "but if doesn't stop it, it's useless"? That's a perfect example of the Nirvana fallacy "Oh if it doesn't work 100%, then obviously it doesn't work!" You can see the error here (if you don't, don't bother to come back).

It's not so much just that it doesn't stop it; rather it's that it doesn't seem to have much of an impact at all, save to spend a ton of money and screw with the paying customers. I cannot reach into an alternate universe any more than you can, but I can point to day 1 (or earlier) cracks available widely with a huge number of peers. And, you know, that's kind of the problem. Since pirates are going to those sites to download in the first place, the often fast availability of cracks that are user-friendly kind of demonstrates the defeated purpose. Since people are already going to the site for the game, they don't even have to take an extra step in acquiring the "fix."

That sounds lime a failure to me. And with minor, often negligible changes in the number of downloads, it only worsens things.

DRM doesn't work. Not because it's not 100% effective but because it doesn't demonstrate even remote effectiveness.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Post sale service is how you make Piracy less attractive. Seriously, it can be done, just not the way companies have been doing it.

I'm interested to see if UbiSoft can follow through with their claims.

I suppose I ought to make a correction to my argument:
You can't offer a better PRODUCT; only a better SERVICE.

Products that remain static vary only by value/price, which piracy has no trouble beating.

Personally, I doubt Ubisoft will keep to their claims for long if they behave as they have.
Notice how quickly they flip-flopped on the issue of Always-Online DRM and that's AFTER they took harsh criticism and backlash for implementing it.

 

[Ec3437]

I cannot reach into an alternate universe any more than you can

it's that it doesn't seem to have much of an impact at all

It seems to me that you are committing the same type of fallacy that you claim DoPo is guilty of. Yes, you CAN'T look into an alternate universe anymore than he can, so why are you claiming that DRM has no effects on piracy? To use the house analogy again, it's like claiming this: Because locking your doors won't effectively stop a burglar from breaking through your windows, a world without locked doors would have JUST AS MUCH burglary as a world with locked doors. Do you really believe that to be true?

Unless you can indeed reach into an alternate universe where there is no DRM at all, and tell me what kind of piracy rates exist there, you're being no better than DoPo in claiming that DRM doesn't have an effect on piracy.

 

[distortedreality]

Oh god. I wrote a lot about it here [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.370375-Exploring-How-Piracy-Should-Be-Handled]. I'll just try to summarise.

DRM, or rather, copy protection has two major uses that deal with piracy. First, it doesn't allow the games to simply be copy pasted, so if Joe Random buys a new shiny game, he doesn't go and give free copies to all his buddies thus making his buddies not buy the game. That's pretty much it for this - it's not trying to stop everybody from making free copies, it's to stop just a random anybody from doing it. Second, to fight zero day piracy. Again, it's not trying to stop anybody from making a free copy at any point in time (although, if that magically happened it'd be great...or just the game sucks bad) but to stop the free copies at or even before release time.

This is what DRM is good at. Or maybe it's OK at. At any rate, these functions it can do the best out of everything else. Pretty much anything added on top might make it not behave properly. And hence cause problems. However, when it does work as intended, you would generally be unaware of it. That shows it's good - if it doesn't bother you, DRM is good.

So inherently DRM is not bad but rather it's abused by publishers who don't know its the true capabilities. It's like they are trying to push a horse to cover for the cow and the dog as well. It's not "evil" it's only being exploited.

However, is it necessary - I'd say yes. For the reasons stated - stop random pirates and stop zero day releases. No DRM just doesn't make much sense. Well, aside from some good publicity, it's not achieving anything, really. No DRM doesn't reduce piracy by any significant portion. At least I haven't seen any evidence for that.

Pretty much agree with this.

We've moved on a fair bit from the initial terrible DRM implementations, and now Steam, Origin, and the various always online implementations are pretty unobtrusive (unless of course you have an unstable net connection). In that case I don't see a problem with people who purchase the game but can't have a constant net connection going to bypass the security.

I don't necessarily like it - but I can see it's usefulness and it doesn't inconvenience me in any way, so i'm happy to live with it the way it is.

 

[I.Muir]

DRM does nothing, I almost pirate games in order to avoid DRM and I'm pretty sure my friend is.
Id say DRM doesn't have much to do with piracy at all and is just there to have more control over already paying customers so they can feel more secure and can crack down on used games and attempt to make more money.

 

[DoPo]

80% piracy. I'd like to see what a failure looks like, if that is the case.

[citation needed]

Technically, I could quote that guy from CDP, but I get what you mean. For some reason, I just took his word for it. And his numbers really are bullshit. 4.5 million...from estimation of torrent downloads. Sheesh, the actual reported numbers for the most torrented game that year didn't hit that number.

It's accepted shorthand that even the publishers and developers use, not to be taken literally. Unless the publishers really do mean it, and then it's to be taken seriously and mocked.

My problem is with people not realising what they are saying. They say "DRM is trying to stop piracy". Of course, it would be perfectly fine if they don't actually mean "stop" as "trying to eradicate" as they then turn and say "well, as we see, piracy isn't stopped" which of course would mean that it is ineffective. But since the goal isn't "eradicating" piracy, this means that it's stupid to call DRM out on those grounds.

It's worth being pedantic when other people aren't able to understand the words they are using. Better replace them with something they can wrap their heads around. "Reducing piracy" is just as concise as "stopping piracy" but the former is way more clear on the intentions. The latter leaves those who don't understand the issue with the wrong impression.

And then why do they go "but if doesn't stop it, it's useless"? That's a perfect example of the Nirvana fallacy "Oh if it doesn't work 100%, then obviously it doesn't work!" You can see the error here (if you don't, don't bother to come back).

It's not so much just that it doesn't stop it; rather it's that it doesn't seem to have much of an impact at all, save to spend a ton of money and screw with the paying customers. I cannot reach into an alternate universe any more than you can, but I can point to day 1 (or earlier) cracks available widely with a huge number of peers. And, you know, that's kind of the problem. Since pirates are going to those sites to download in the first place, the often fast availability of cracks that are user-friendly kind of demonstrates the defeated purpose. Since people are already going to the site for the game, they don't even have to take an extra step in acquiring the "fix."

That sounds lime a failure to me. And with minor, often negligible changes in the number of downloads, it only worsens things.

DRM doesn't work. Not because it's not 100% effective but because it doesn't demonstrate even remote effectiveness.

Again, it's trying to stop random blokes from illegally distributing the game. Also, yes, sometimes (very often in the case of any popular game) it fails and zero day releases emerge. However, copy protection has so far been pretty consistent in not badly fucking up the first part. The second might be partly a logistical issue, but whatever the case, DRM has shown at least some delay in scene releases. Especially for non AAA releases and some slightly more obscure stuff (as in, there might be a dozen people who haven't heard of the game a month before release). And the odd few "successes" when it was more than a week or so. But all in all, some success looks more promising than no chance of success whatsoever. Therefore, it's a reasonable assumption that DRM does work to some degree. More than "none" would work.

And you are correct, we cannot prove that DRM has any significant impact or not. We can't have an accurate analysis between having copy protection or not. But it is not a far stretch to theorise that there would be more piracy, would there be no barrier for entry. After all - it's simple to give support for that - DRM delays some zero day releases, the absence of it doesn't delay any (unless absolutely nobody could be bothered uploading the game...which would work the same way for copy protected titles) and DRM stops some people who own the game from making copies of it, again the absence doesn't. Sure, this isn't a hard proof that copy protection works, but it hints at it.

 

[afroebob]

Seriously, do you honestly believe that? Piracy has in no way caused anything bad to happen. Pirates purchase more games than the rest of you, piracy has only increased monetary gain, and a pirated copy is not equal to a lost sale.

Wait... WHAT? How does not buying a game increase sales? Thats just... wow. Stop trying to defend what you do cause no one is buying it except the other pirates who convinced themselves that what they are doing isn't wrong, too.

 

[TelHybrid]

All DRM does is piss people off. It ruins games for legitimate customers. Nothing more, nothing less.