Why do publishers still bother with DRM?

[Phishfood]

I'm guessing 90% of the potential PC customers don't actually care about the DRM. The 10% that're left are vocal but not necessarily going to avoid purchasing a game because of the DRM (see http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/08/08)

Personally - I love "always connected to internet DRM" as opposed to the old SoftDisc (or whatever) DRM that is supposed to be the "ok" one. I don't know anyone who would try and play "non-casual" games away from their home computer, and always fiddling with discs that get scratched pisses me off.

I'd say that most people are more "God, this DRM sucks but I don't seem to have a choice". I know thats how I think. Although I have refused to buy any ubi game with the always on DRM.

The reason publishers are continuing with it is because they think it generates sales. I've not seen any convincing evidence linking piracy with lost sales, I certainly haven't seen anything suggesting DRM increases sales.

 

[genericusername64]

Because if their game tanks they blame it on piracy so drm

 

[Dastardly]

I don't see why they still use software that has been proven many times to be ineffective. IE: Splinter Cell: Conviction

Locks on houses have been proven many times to be ineffective. Something as simple as a sledgehammer can break down the door, leaving it open to anyone and everyone. So why do people still use locks?

 

[fletch_talon]

Just because DRM gets cracked doesn't make it ineffective.
There are people who are too young, computer illiterate or just unknowledgeable and therefore do not pirate games which require you to use torrent software, find a safe link for the game and then the crack and finally deal with ISO files, mounting tools and applying the crack.

Its been ages since I pirated anything (and I regret having ever done so) so my knowledge of the process may be outdated. Nonetheless for many, buying the game is easier than pirating it.

And for many of us DRM is not an issue, not that I'm saying you can't be against it mind you, just that personally I don't care.

 

[zehydra]

Just because DRM gets cracked doesn't make it ineffective.
There are people who are too young, computer illiterate or just unknowledgeable and therefore do not pirate games which require you to use torrent software, find a safe link for the game and then the crack and finally deal with ISO files, mounting tools and applying the crack.

Its been ages since I pirated anything (and I regret having ever done so) so my knowledge of the process may be outdated. Nonetheless for many, buying the game is easier than pirating it.

And for many of us DRM is not an issue, not that I'm saying you can't be against it mind you, just that personally I don't care.

Yes. The pirate elite who are able to obtain cracks and things like that are somewhat a special amount.

With no DRM, I do believe you would see a spike in piracy.

 

[Dogstile]

Just because DRM gets cracked doesn't make it ineffective.
There are people who are too young, computer illiterate or just unknowledgeable and therefore do not pirate games which require you to use torrent software, find a safe link for the game and then the crack and finally deal with ISO files, mounting tools and applying the crack.

Its been ages since I pirated anything (and I regret having ever done so) so my knowledge of the process may be outdated. Nonetheless for many, buying the game is easier than pirating it.

And for many of us DRM is not an issue, not that I'm saying you can't be against it mind you, just that personally I don't care.

Its actually still the same. Download, mount, replace and play. I know this because my friend got so jealous of me buying the stalker collection on steam and hearing me gush about it decided to download it to see if he could run it.

Twelve hours of downloading later (yeah, his internet is that crap) and him walking me through how he was cracking it, he found out it doesn't play.

Gentlemen, that right there, is karma.

 

[Stall]

The manual came with the game, so it really wasn't hard to locate. If you lost it then you have a problem, sure, but we still have that same issue today because games have CD keys.

Also, before we had the random-word DRM we had no DRM whatsoever. Even with the random-word DRM (which is admittedly a little annoying), at least we were allowed to play the game whenever and wherever we wanted, nowadays we can only play the games we've bought and paid for when the publishers say it's OK (so we have to be connected to the internet to check with them, and we have to hope their servers are currently online, and we have to hope they're still supporting their game at all).

This simply isn't right, and if it isn't a breach of customer's rights then it should be.

I get that with software we can't have all the rights we're used to with physical property, but the right to at least play our game whenever we want should really be a given.

Yes, it all is conditioned on "not losing the manual," isn't it? And since PC games have never had a nice little case that will easily contain everything (unless you store and display your games in the box), then losing a manual really isn't that hard of a task, is it?

And CD Keys aren't a big deal anymore since a majority of sales on PC take place via digital distribution, so you can quite easily find your CD key (and its impossible to lose as well), and then you just copy-paste it into game. Compare this to the days of physical media, where the CD keys would appear on everything from the jewel case, to the manual, to this random little piece of crap piece of paper randomly inserted into a box. I have plenty of old games I can't play because I have no fucking idea what the CD key for that game was on, let alone where that object might be. Hell, this even happened back when these games weren't "old": I have many memories of spending a healthy amount of time searching for the manual or box or whatever to find the CD key.

Lastly, I see people throw around the whole "consumer's rights" thing a lot when talking about DRM. The term honestly has lost meaning because it gets thrown around so much, especially since the user of the term simply assumes everyone knows what it means. What "rights" exactly do you have as a consumer? Where do these rights come from? What guarantees you these rights? How do you enforce these rights? People who throw around the "consumer's rights" argument really don't understand the philosophical implications of the word "rights". I think it would more easily understood if yous aid you should have certain privileges or courtesies shown to you as a consumer, but this is hardly the same thing as "rights". Even further, a company must then question how much of a risk they have to take by extending these courtesies. If there is too much risk in extending a courtesy, then they will obviously take the cautious approach and not extend it.

Like I said, trusting your customer is a bad business decision, since that trust will always inevitably get exploited.

 

[Scout Tactical]

I want an example of this tactic ever having succeeded. Otherwise it would be fair to assume that you are talking out of your hat and failing miserably at trying to make me look stupid by using bold text.

If you read the earlier posts in the thread, you would've seen at least two examples of when major AAA game releases prevented zero-day cracks. Specifically, AC2 and SC:CT were given as examples.

It's not like there's more than one page in this thread. You could've at least read the one page before flipping out on that guy. The fact that you "sincerely doubt" DRM has ever delayed a crack shows how young you are, though. DRM used to be highly effective back in the earlier days of gaming. You need to remember that the entire history of gaming is not relegated to the past two years. We've been around a bit longer than that.

 

[mad825]

I want an example of this tactic ever having succeeded. Otherwise it would be fair to assume that you are talking out of your hat and failing miserably at trying to make me look stupid by using bold text.

Like how? Last time I check, the media doesn't have coverage of crackers cracking DRM. In any case, this is a common tactic and has been recently used by the music industry to prevent songs getting on the web before even the album/single/song is released to the public.

Anyhow, even if DRM has ever delayed a leak, which I sincerely doubt, there is still no reason not to remove it after official release. Or after the DRM has been cracked.

*shrug* Beats me.

 

[Stall]

Also, another fundamental flaw with anti-DRM folks is they fail to think about WHO DRM is supposed to target. Is DRM supposed to target 133tst3r: t3h ub4h pir47z0r5!1, who will crack the game then upload it to all his torrenting buddies, or is it supposed to stop Joe Schmo from using Nero so that his friends can play his cool new game? The underlying assumption here that all people who argue against DRM make is that DRM is made ONLY to prevent Mr. Piratzors and not prevent Mr. Schmo from doing what amounts to the exact same thing. DRM might not be effective against 133tst3r most of the time, but how effective is it against ol' Joe?

 

[Korolev]

DRM keeps SOME people from pirating it. While a lot of you would scoff at the notion that pirating games is hard, there are some people out there who don't know how bittorrent works (or even what it is), and the whole notion of copy-pasting exe files is scary and foreign to them. DRM, even simple DRM, stops these people. If a game had ABSOLUTELY NO DRM AT ALL - as in, you could give your friend's the CD and they could just install it like that, piracy would increase for that game. Just look at World of Goo.

I am not against simple DRM designed to stop the very lazy pirate. I am against intrusive, potentially system damaging DRM because it doesn't stop any more piracy than simple DRM. Simply put, the same amount of people who would be deterred from pirating a game with heavy, intrusive, complex DRM is almost exactly the same amount of people who would be flummoxed by a simple CD key. A determined pirate, on the other hand, will not and CANNOT be stopped by ANY type of DRM - look at Ubisoft's new fangled on-line DRM - it didn't stop the pirates from cracking it, now did it?

So please developers - put simple DRM on your games. You won't stop the determined pirates, no matter HOW complex you make your DRM. Without quantum encryption (which isn't as far off as you might think), there is no such thing as fool-proof DRM, because no matter how many checks you introduce into the game, a programmer or a cracker can just EMULATE the info needed to pass the checks, or hell, remove the DRM altogether from the program!

Simple DRM is all that is needed. I will grant you the fact that you do need to deter the lazy pirates, and simple DRM does do that. But the harsh DRM is overkill - it's unnecessary, it takes money for you to design and modify in an ever-lasting war against the pirates and it can hurt your paying customers.

 

[-Dragmire-]

It's kind of a hard sell when they try to get millions from investors and say they won't even try to protect the product. Investors don't care about the game or the customer, they want to see guaranteed profits from their investment and they hold the publisher responsible for it's security.

edit: I seem to have walked into a rather heated argument....

 

[Stall]

Wait, what? In the music industry? Now you have me intrigued. Is Sony putting SecuRom on music discs now? Probably not, more of an inside-company-pre-release thing I guess, but if they did that would be terrible, funny, stupid and ineffective at the same time.

But compare how hard it is to pirate music versus pirating a game. Pirating an album can be done with nothing beyond a well-structured google search. Compare that to pirating a game though, which involves downloading the exe and files (which might not be as easy as it sounds), finding a crack, cracking the game itself, etc..

So, it's fairly clear that DRM is serving some kind of purpose, i.e. it is making the overall job of pirating a game much harder if we compare it to another medium that is also having to deal with piracy.

 

[DEAD34345]

Yes, it all is conditioned on "not losing the manual," isn't it? And since PC games have never had a nice little case that will easily contain everything (unless you store and display your games in the box), then losing a manual really isn't that hard of a task, is it?

And CD Keys aren't a big deal anymore since a majority of sales on PC take place via digital distribution, so you can quite easily find your CD key (and its impossible to lose as well), and then you just copy-paste it into game. Compare this to the days of physical media, where the CD keys would appear on everything from the jewel case, to the manual, to this random little piece of crap piece of paper randomly inserted into a box. I have plenty of old games I can't play because I have no fucking idea what the CD key for that game was on, let alone where that object might be. Hell, this even happened back when these games weren't "old": I have many memories of spending a healthy amount of time searching for the manual or box or whatever to find the CD key.

Lastly, I see people throw around the whole "consumer's rights" thing a lot when talking about DRM. The term honestly has lost meaning because it gets thrown around so much, especially since the user of the term simply assumes everyone knows what it means. What "rights" exactly do you have as a consumer? Where do these rights come from? What guarantees you these rights? How do you enforce these rights? People who throw around the "consumer's rights" argument really don't understand the philosophical implications of the word "rights". I think it would more easily understood if yous aid you should have certain privileges or courtesies shown to you as a consumer, but this is hardly the same thing as "rights". Even further, a company must then question how much of a risk they have to take by extending these courtesies. If there is too much risk in extending a courtesy, then they will obviously take the cautious approach and not extend it.

Like I said, trusting your customer is a bad business decision, since that trust will always inevitably get exploited.

I'm not saying CD keys are perfect, but they're better than what we're getting now. At least we used to be able to play the games that we paid for, wherever and whenever we wanted to.

Also, the reason I used consumer rights is because I was talking about the actual legal rights that governments enforce. These laws differ in every country, but I'm basically talking about this stuff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_protection

I don't want to have to rely on businesses giving us courtesies (that I believe we should automatically get), because as you quite correctly said, they won't. Companies will do whatever gets them the most money, and they will be as unfair to their customers as possible. If a car salesman could randomly deny you access to a car you bought, then people would be quite rightly outraged, even if he didn't actually do it. Luckily, there are laws against that. Yet this is exactly what is happening in the world of games. Does no-one remember this incident: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/98927-Ubisoft-DRM-Authentication-Servers-Go-Down?

Consumers should have certain basic rights to the property that they buy, but with regards to software, companies have taken those rights away from us by making it so that technically, we are just renting the usage of that software. What's worse is that we are allowing it to happen, and companies will continue to rip away our rights until people finally start reacting. As you said, trusting your customers is bad business, so they will take away anything and everything they are able to. I am strongly against this, and I think every gamer should be as well, otherwise things will only get worse.

 

[yuval152]

I wish that they'll just go back to serial numbers...

 

[Xanthious]

Let me say this again. DRM has fuck all to do with piracy and everything to do with sticking it to the paying customers. It just makes for better PR to say they are trying to prevent piracy than it does to say they are making sure your game has zero value to anyone but you once you fork over your money. DRM is all about keeping the secondhand PC market dead and buried. Developers and publishers know that piracy is a battle they can never hope to win and have stopped all but the most token of efforts.

Think about it, which does DRM do a better job at stopping? Piracy is rampant for most all titles either shortly after release or in some cases before release. Compare this to secondhand sales which have gone the way of the dodo bird. Hell, you can't even give away most of your used PC titles anymore.

This is all part of an ugly trend of consumers getting stripped of more and more of their consumer rights by a gaming industry blinded by greed and wrought with contempt for the very people that pay their bills. There is a prevailing mindset with people who work in the gaming industry that their industry alone is somehow special from every single other industry that makes and sells goods somehow.

The gaming industry's belief is that they, and they alone, should be exempt from secondhand sales. However, games are not special, not in the least, but rather gamers are a largely spineless lot that are more than happy to ***** and moan about being screwed over repeatedly but choose to bend over and take it with a smile on their face when push comes to shove.

Personally I believe the gaming industry in it's current form needs to crash and burn to damn near the point of being wiped out entirely. I wouldn't give these companies my money at gun point anymore. I still play their games mind you (not by piracy either, there are other totally legal ways to play damn near anything for free with a little creative thought and knowing the right people) but they can go bugger themselves with hot pokers before they get a single cent out of me. I want to see all but the most indy of developers out of business and people losing their jobs en mass. Only then can we rebuild to something that doesn't involve one side continually getting screwed by the other.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

See, this is a question that has been bugging me lately. Locks don't stop burglars, so why are we still doing this whole "lock our door" thing?

 

[Scout Tactical]

And there I was, assuming the thread title read "Why do publishers STILL bother with DRM?". I must be suffering from delusion.

I would confirm that you are delusional if you are saying that your use of the word "ever" is rendered moot by the fact that we're talking about recent games.

Even then, if you think Assassin's Creed 2 isn't "recent" enough to warrant being talked about in the timeframe of "still", I think you need some perspective on time periods.

TL;DNR: Try not to mock your fellow forumgoers if you're too lazy to read the one page of a thread that has already been posted. There might be helpful information that you ignored.

 

[Draitheryn]

Why do you chain your bike up or lock your door, if someone is persistent enough they will get past your security, it keeps the honest people honest.

 

[Stall]

Groups that crack games REMOVE DRM. Thus, its impossible for the DRM to get in the way of a pirate playing the game.

So it doesn't get in their way when they actually have to remove their DRM? Like I said, it's a whole lot easier to pirate an album than pirate a game, so clearly DRM has something to do with it all. The "make it harder" thing counts for something, you know.

And again, you are making the assumption that DRM only exists to stop people from cracking and pirating a game via a torrent site, when it exists just as much to stop the average guy from copying and distributing the game among his friends. It might not stop the "real" pirates for sure, but it will definitely stop the normal guy from doing pretty much the exact same thing. Just imagine how bad piracy would be if there was no DRM.