Well my thoughts on DRM is that it ultimatly amounts to "crippleware" punishing the legitimate, paying, users of a game. There is some debate on whether it's actual crippleware or not, but the bottom line is that legitimate, paying users do not like it. They find it annoying and that it hampers their enjoyment of their systems. Thus for all intents and purposes it is crippleware.
Arguably, I feel that stuff like this is the biggest advertisement for piracy the industry could make. Simply to get copies of games that will run without this drek on it. My personal biggest regret was actually paying money to DL Dawn Of War II from the company that makes it. A game that REQUIRES you to install and go through Steam to run it. Oh joy of joys.
Crap like this makes me want to fly a Jolly Roger from the top of my monitor.
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As far as the specific "ideas" mentioned in the article that started all of this, some of them are decent, others are just "meh".
For example, most gamers nowadays are quite familiar with the differance between producers and developers. Truthfully your not really screwing the guys who developed the games through piracy very often, typically your screwing the producer who put up the money for the game to be developed. You start having game developers come up giving "woe is me" speeches they are going to get called on it. Especially given the amount of attention being paid to the developer/producer relationship nowadays and how badly producers rushing game development or pushing for "get rich quick" games based on formulas are killing the industry.
The point being, that idea isn't just practical.
Likewise, games already reduce in price over a period of time. In a year or two a game that stays on the shelves can see a dramatic price reduction. Speeding up the process will simply cause people to wait a month or two before buying anything. Right now the initial period after release is how producers are measuring success, and if a game doesn't make a ton of money shortly after it hits shelves it's a failure. Also stores and such do not want to keep stocking huge numbers of games, especially if the inventory rapidly depreciates in value.
Right now the system of the price going down in a couple of years fits how the industry works.
THAT said, I think the industry should be lowering their prices in general. All talk about the development cost of "A" class titles aside, the point of these games is to move a lot of units any way you look at it. If companies are losing that much money due to piracy they need to lower the prices to make piracy less desirable, especially given the risks involved in it. Companies ASSUME that without piracy all those people who DLed would have paid for the game at the market price, and that is simply not true.
It was a big deal when they generally hiked the price of games $10 accross the board. Rather they should have been lowering it by $10 (or $20 price reduction from current
games as they stand).
The trick being to lower the price in proportion to the increased number of sales that will come in from reducing the temptation of piracy.
Also better production values overall would probably help. I mean back in the day I remember when I could buy a CRPG and have it come with a map, and a cool instruction booklet with professionally drawn artwork and such. Maybe even a seperate book made to look like a faux spellbook listing all the games spells (thinking back to like Ultima IV here). Nowadays to get junk that is half as cool you wind up having to dump like an extra $20 onto the game price for a "special edition". Arguably all the cool extras that came with a legitimatly purchused game was part of the whole point of buying it. Pirates didn't get that junk. The gaming industry has simply lost touch.
Keep in mind that it says a lot that piracy is "rampant". I mean to pirate your typical game nowadays you not only need torrent software, but special clients to trick your computer into thinking it's mounting a pirate file in a disc drive. So basically you've got to risk running a program like Daemon Tools, many of which are going to fill your computer with Ad/Spyware (or demand a subscription fee). Then you've got to DLed a file from god knows who over totally anonymous sources (which work both ways I might ad) and hope that nobody installed a computer crippling virus into the software or "crack", and that if they did your virus protection is going to catch it.
The bottom line is that piracy is risky, personally I don't find the risks worthwhile. However given the number of people who are willing to basically play Russian Roulette on Torrent Sites, this should tell the industry something.
Lower the prices sufficiently, and produce a decent enough overall product again, and I can virtually guarantee people are going to prefer to buy software legitimatly rather than trust the fact that some totally anonymous guy calling himself "Doktor 1337 Haxx" is a borderline philanthropist as opposed to some dude who wants to fry your computer, or plant a program to mine your credit card data, or simply spam you with ads for Viagra and gay porn.
Oh yes, and get rid of DRM and junk like that. I mean, heck, if you make pirated software simply better/more friendly to use than the real thing you know something is deeply wrong.
I mean honestly, after Dawn Of War II, I pretty much decided I'm done with computer software unless the industry stops messing around. Disc or direct to drive, I am not going to lay down my hard earned money and then have to install and run STEAM or tolerate DRM to play a game. It's not worth it to me, and that's sad since I vastly prefer the PC as a gaming platform to consoles.
