Square Enix Says DRM Is Here To Stay
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
- Start date
Hey, Tuk? Someone (Okay, it was Neil Gaiman.) already addressed how piracy should be handled. It's the fault of the company itself to not cultivate good advice. (You can look up Neil's comments about piracy on youtube.)BigTuk said:
OT: Okay, just to point out something to the people saying "Well, that's how DRM is suppose to work. It's designed to be between the user and the game.". THIS IS WHAT IS WRONG WITH GAMES RIGHT NOW. It doesn't matter if DRM is fulfilling its function. Its function and implementation is WRONG. No arguments. It has no right to be there, especially when you consider how - like cheap tissue paper - it collapses after one good sneeze. Video games don't need this.
Even though thats probably true, CoD and alike overdid it by almost completly ignore the Single player side of their games.iseko said:
If that will be the Future, i sadly won't be playing a lot of games in it.
But DRM is like a lock on a door.
The lock isn't there to stop the thief, but to delay him.
If DRM can delay the game being pirated for a week or so, at least some potetial customers will buy it instead of download it.
The game industry admitted it knows DRM doesn't work, but keeps making it, kinda like how the army doesn't need anymore tanks, but is forced to keep buying them regardless.
Piracy is theft. It is acquiring intellectual property in an illegal manner so as not to pay for it. Piracy is no different than shoplifting. And just for shit n' giggles I looked it up and piracy is categorized as "Intellectual Property Theft".Strazdas said:
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/white_collar/ipr/ipr
http://www.ncpc.org/topics/intellectual-property-theft
https://www.bja.gov/ProgramDetails.aspx?Program_ID=64
The assertion was that "The most obvious solution to the problem of DRM is no DRM [...]", and I countered that the most obvious solution to DRM was actually removing the need for DRM.
But to say that "The most obvious solution to the problem of DRM is no DRM [...]" is just as meaningless of a statement then, as it does nothing to address the matters at hand. I'm in total agreement that if a consumer who pirated a product has a better experience than one who didn't on account of the DRM then the DRM has failed. However, if we simply remove DRM without treating the underlining cause of needing security then we have done one of two things. We have either opened the flood gates of piracy by not protecting anything or we have forced the industry to come up with a new system. Knowing the mindset of the industry I'm sure we can all agree that they would opt for the latter. This new system would probably either be similar but under a different name or, more likely, become far more draconian because the entire market would be changing at the same time. Think pre-180 Xbone when they thought Sony was tightening it's DRM too, but now imagine if Sony had come out with the same DRM. Do you think MS would have changed their policy in the face of consumer backlash if the consumers didn't have anywhere else to go?Andy Chalk said:
Piracy is a copyright infringment, which is illegal and is handled by civil law courts.Sarge034 said:
Theft is stealing of an object, which is illegal and is handled by criminal courts.
even the courts handling it are different, while both are illegal this is akin to saying that murder is rape. they are both crimes, but they are not the same crime.
Copyright infrongement does not "aquire" intenllectual property. the owners of said propertly does not loose it. If that was the case, the property was lost at every sale.
As far as your categorizing, the first link is an FBI page for a broad program that invoves multiple crimes.
the second link does not even have word piracy in it at all.
Neither does the third one.
not to mention that the phrase "intelectual property" in itself is made up buzzword. there is no "intellectual property" or "intelectual property laws". There is copyright, trademark and patent. And there are laws for that.
See, you did not counter with removing need for DRM, but countered by stating that removal of another crime would remove the need for DRM. so yeah, semantics matter.
Likely. Because gaming has grown significantly since pre-Xbox era and the two consoles are hardly the only players, or for that matter, not even significant players, in town.
I don't think this is correct. I do not own an IP if I pirate a game nor do I own an IP just because I buy a game. Owning an IP would give me the right to make copies, the copyright. At the very least, owning an IP would allow me to profit off of legal sales on said IP.Sarge034 said:
No, piracy is copyright infringement. That is, I made a copy without the right to do so.
Further, if I steal a CD from you, you will have lost something while I have gained something. Making a illegal copy of your CD only satisfies one of those conditions, namely that I have gained something but you still have your CD.
The FairLight release is listed at NFOhump with a date 2007-09-29. It says so even inside their own nfo. Which is exactly what my memory told me, the first "kind-of-working" crack for the game was more than a couple of weeks after the release.Strazdas said:
As of the intrusiveness of the protection, I stand corrected. I remember now the issue with the remaining spyware even after the uninstall of the game and the issue with the double activation and the limited number of machines one could activate it.
Oh, come on, guys! Squeenix only just recently realized that also the western world loves their JRPG's. They're just a little slow on the uptake! You don't publicly go on insulting the mentally handicapped, do you?
Given a little time, they come to realize their mistake, unlike EA...
Given a little time, they come to realize their mistake, unlike EA...
Why are people so hung up on this difference?WeepingAngels said:
Ok, you do just make a copy and leave the original.
But because of this people seem to think it's a victim less crime. (or as not a crime at all)
It is not.
The owner of the IP did lose something, but he lost something of which he has an unlimited supply.
You can argue that you wouldn't have bought it otherwise, but you just cant honestly know that.
But in the end, it are different sides of the same coin.
This unfortunately is true. I kinda hate that I've used Steam, but the fact remains that I have, despite the (many) problems I've had with it. I really should switch, and I hate that I'm "locked into" the games that I already own via Steam.NuclearKangaroo said:
But y'know what, I still haven't bought "Far Cry 3" despite it being EXACTLY the kind of game I'm willing to buy at premium pricing (specifically, single-player open-world RPGs - my biggest gaming purchases, apart from the regretted "Bioshock Infinite", having been the two latest "Fallout" games and "The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim".) There's proof right there that Ubisoft has lost a sale because of UPlay. I just don't want the bother of having to sign up for accounts and do all of the other crap that comes with this stuff. When I bought "Bioshock 2" it came with "Games for Windows Live", and BECAUSE it came with that, took two hours (not even exaggerating here) to start working. Then had the gall to try and "sell" the features of this "social service". For a single-player game. Gah.
Y'know what, this is developing into a near-rant here, but gaming is becoming almost as bad as Amazon. I almost never play multiplayer games, I don't want to "share" my scores, I certainly don't want some company to be scanning what's on my computer, I don't want your ads, I don't want your "recommendations", I don't want you to "know" me. I just want to play your f--king product, ok?
Jeez... and I'm trying to get INTO the games industry right now. Anybody else remember when you could buy stuff without having to sign away the rights to your personal data, your privacy, and your eternal soul**? I remember those days fondly.
(**And if you're interested in mine, don't bother. I accidentally signed it over to Valve after missing a crucial clause in a 550-page EULA a few years ago.)
steam is nowhere near that bad, plus you are talking about the bad stuff, even if you ignore all the social features of steam, theres the cheap games and workshop, not to mention many small developers have found a lot of success thanks to steamTheMadDoctorsCat said:
It does satisfy both conditions because you will have gained the CD and as the IP owner I would have lost the profits from that "sale". Let's stop beating around the bush to justify piracy or to make it seem like less of a crime. You do something illegal to get a thing without paying for it. And for that fucking stupid argument of "I wouldn't have bought it anyway so there was no loss of profits", I will never buy a Lamborghini so it's alright for me to go steal one. No loss of sale profits, right?WeepingAngels said:
Any theft under $1000.00 (USD) can be tried in civil court to recoup the damages and tried in criminal court for the act of theft. The reason all the pirates you see getting arrested go to criminal court is because they all pirate/distribute on a large scale easily crossing the $1000.00 mark. If you're gonna try to school me it would help to know what you are talking about.Strazdas said:
Intellectual property is the category name for all intangible commodities. Including, but not limited to, written works, catch phrases, and invention ideas. Intellectual property laws are the category name for all applicable laws dealing with intellectual property. Copyrights, trademarks, and patents are the rules set up for their particular sections.
Would removing the crime not remove the need for DRM which was the crime? I think that was my point... DRM is akin to locks on doors, if I didn't have to worry about people breaking in I wouldn't need a lock.
Really? MS and Sony aren't the industry leading juggernauts on the console side? The WiiU has backwards compatibility, which is the main gripe of those wanting/owning PS4s and Xbones, but they still can't hold a candle to PS4 or Xbone sales. Who else is there then, the Ouya? That's a funny joke.
Well it's a pretty important difference.Jeroenr said:
I don't commit, condone, or defend piracy, at all.
But put it this way... if a burglar comes into your house and makes off with £3,000 worth of electronics and jewelry, I don't think anybody would argue that "you can't honestly know if he'd have bought it or not". And you've most definitely lost something. That's the difference between piracy and theft.
There's also the emotional damage to a victim of burglary to consider, which is pretty awful, and something I don't think you can appreciate unless you've actually been a victim of this kind of crime yourself. I haven't, by the way, but I know a couple of people who have, and both of them were children at the time.
Try and imagine what you'd feel like if you lived in a house that you believed was safe, that was YOUR space, that nobody could get into. And then imagine that the house is raided, that somebody has come into it and emptied out all of the drawers and looked into every private spot, ransacked it, left the place in a horrible mess, and made off with your most precious valuables. Again, I'm lucky that I've never been through that, but two of my friends had years ago (we were about thirteen years old at the time), and it was my house that they came to after they'd discovered what had happened. Not a situation that I'd ever like to experience again.
And even if we're just talking a simple bag-snatch (which comes without the stress of knowing that somebody had broken into and defaced a place that you consider personal and private), think about the impact on the victim. Supposing their credit cards were in that bag, or their smartphone was. Supposing that all of the passwords to their bank account, their social media accounts, even their e-mail acounts, were in that bag. Think of everything you have to do, of the inconvenience you suffer. Again, I've never experienced this myself, thank goodness.
What I'm getting at here is that there's a HUGE gulf between the impact of piracy and the impact of theft. Piracy mostly affects businesses, often large ones, and it's very difficult to judge how much (if any) effect it's actually had on their sales. (There used to be evidence that pirates are more interested in "convenience" than saving money, although how valid or relevant that is nowadays I'm not sure.) I agree that it absolutely sucks for small developers when their product gets widely "pirated". But that's the worst of it.
By comparison, theft is a much smaller problem for large businesses and corporations, and a much larger one for small businesses, individuals, and houses. If you own a chain of supermarkets and you are a victim of "theft", it's usually going to be low-level stuff - shoplifting, or breaking and entering at worst - and you're probably going to have insurance to cover it when it happens. But if you only have ONE shop and that gets raided, causing damage and massive loss of money or stock - that's a very different situation. Even if you have insurance you're likely going to be in a much worse situation - you can't conduct business with a hole in the window or when your shelving's been smashed, and repairing this stuff takes time. And if your house gets burgled... well, I've already gone into that.
So yeah. Piracy and theft - very very different crimes, despite what the annoying ads at the start of the blockbuster movies would have you believe.
That's true of course - although with the state Steam is in nowadays, I'm not sure how much longer some of those benefits will last. I do particularly like the sales. I haven't tried the workshop (maybe I should, given my current situation, but anyway...)NuclearKangaroo said:
I didn't mention exactly WHAT problems I had with Steam by the way - which include (but aren't limited to): some Valve games not starting at all for hours (specifically Portal), a Valve server browser that continually crashed (specifically TF2, which is a good part of the reason I'm so un-enthused by multiplayer games these days), and an out-of-date EULA for an older game that I'd purchased that specifically didn't show a privacy policy of an ad-serving application (for a single-player game). I've also had them tell me to reset my password because some of their data was stolen. All of which were isolated incidents over a long period of time, but their service hasn't been great. Let's just say that I've used it because of its advantages for a while now, but the disadvantages and problems have been a fairly regular annoyance that I could absolutely have done without.
I agree completely with Square Enix here.
People pirate games despite ultra cheap/convenient delivery systems (Steam) or when money going 100% to charity/devs (humblebundle). At one time, relatively early in The Witcher 2's lifecycle, it had been pirated over 5 million times despite absolutely no DRM, positive fan and critical reviews, and aggressive pricing through Steam.
Even when a company does everything right...they lose.
I realize that 1 instance of piracy does not equal 1 lost sale. I also realize that word of mouth from piracy can actually generate sales. However, it's hard to deny that sales lost due to piracy is far greater than sales generated. Companies aren't so stupid that they'd continue these practices which people hate just so they can have higher expenses and lower sales.
I honestly can't envision a world of gaming without DRM anymore. For the most part, as a consumer I'm 'okay' with it. 95% of the time it's unobtrusive to the point where I don't care. I'd be nice if I didn't need a dozen or so username/passwords for things like Steam, Uplay, Origin, Battlenet, GFWL, etc....just to enjoy this hobby. It would be even nicer if companies removed ALL DRM from their product upon ending support for it. Servers are going down? That's fine, let gamers enjoy the product locally if they choose to.
People pirate games despite ultra cheap/convenient delivery systems (Steam) or when money going 100% to charity/devs (humblebundle). At one time, relatively early in The Witcher 2's lifecycle, it had been pirated over 5 million times despite absolutely no DRM, positive fan and critical reviews, and aggressive pricing through Steam.
Even when a company does everything right...they lose.
I realize that 1 instance of piracy does not equal 1 lost sale. I also realize that word of mouth from piracy can actually generate sales. However, it's hard to deny that sales lost due to piracy is far greater than sales generated. Companies aren't so stupid that they'd continue these practices which people hate just so they can have higher expenses and lower sales.
I honestly can't envision a world of gaming without DRM anymore. For the most part, as a consumer I'm 'okay' with it. 95% of the time it's unobtrusive to the point where I don't care. I'd be nice if I didn't need a dozen or so username/passwords for things like Steam, Uplay, Origin, Battlenet, GFWL, etc....just to enjoy this hobby. It would be even nicer if companies removed ALL DRM from their product upon ending support for it. Servers are going down? That's fine, let gamers enjoy the product locally if they choose to.
I completely agree with you in principle here. Apart from this:babinro said:
"However, it's hard to deny that sales lost due to piracy is far greater than sales generated."
There's no evidence that a single sale has been lost because of piracy. There's no physical loss, so the idea that someone pirating a copy of a game has caused the distributor to have one less copy to sell to a paying customer is absurd. And the idea that the pirate "would just have paid for it anyway" if he HADN'T pirated it is just unsupportable. Maybe it might be true - sometimes - depending on the person in question - but there's no way to say for sure. The only thing we DO know for sure is that that person chose to pirate the game rather than buying it. Call me crazy but I don't think that's a strong argument for their willingness to shell out the cash anyway.
But that point aside - I agree with your main point, and I think a lot of people would. The reason I think so many people here are "assuming the worst" is because there has to be trust between seller and purchaser during a transaction. A lot of people don't believe that the sellers can be trusted. The sellers, in turn, don't believe that they'll be treated fairly if they don't put this DRM in (and in all fairness, on occasions they've been proven right there). The trust is completely lacking.
Are we, as consumers, being unfair? Maybe. I've had no personal experience with Square Enix myself (except for the recent "Tomb Raider" game? Didn't realise that was theirs but someone mentioned it above?) I've had bad experiences with DRM in the past - most notably with Steam and GFWL - which have made me sceptical of the whole concept.
Honestly I think the Steam model of "one web logon at a time" will probably be the most accepted one. That still depends on an Internet connection, of course, but that's becoming less and less of a problem as the 'net becomes more and more universal. It also involves the least hoop-jumping. As much as I love what GoG and the makers of "The Witcher 2" - which I have a paid-for copy of by the way - are doing, I can't see the big distributors getting behind the model unfortunately.
man thats a shameTheMadDoctorsCat said:
also yes the workshop is amazing, in my case Gmod and L4D2 are probably more mod than actual game at this point, i like mods but ive always hated the tinkering one had to do to get the mods running, with the workshop your mods are 1 button away, and steam downloads any updates to the mods automatically
a pirate is not a customer, is not worth losing legitimate customers over people that probably wouldnt have bought the game anywaysbabinro said:
steam works as an anti-piracy meansure, not because its DRM is effective, but because it generally offers a good service that adds value to games
DRM: Ruining gaming since the 1980's.
Yeah, I'm surprised people don't realize that DRM has been around for a long time. It's gone digital, and maybe has become a lot more inconvenient for legitimate customers if done poorly (hello, Starforce!), but it's not like DRM is a new thing. I don't get why people claim DRM is universally a bad thing when there have been entire video game systems with built-in DRM technology that were wildly successful and popular.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNES#Regional_lockout
Yeah, I'm surprised people don't realize that DRM has been around for a long time. It's gone digital, and maybe has become a lot more inconvenient for legitimate customers if done poorly (hello, Starforce!), but it's not like DRM is a new thing. I don't get why people claim DRM is universally a bad thing when there have been entire video game systems with built-in DRM technology that were wildly successful and popular.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNES#Regional_lockout