A DRM thread.

[unangbangkay]

I don't know why the Mass Effect DRM thread got locked (probably due to rampant admissions of piracy), but I'm not about to waste a long post, so here:

Actually it is one of the reasons why people pirate games. Generally there's multiple groups of people that play cracked games. Generally, though I don't have numbers, the largest group is the people that never intended to pay for the game, ever.

Publishers will never be able to beat this group because they don't really care about having specific games right away, and with time any copy protection scheme can be beaten or circumvented. It's a the monkeys + typewriters + time = the collected works of Shakespear issue.

Exactly. In fact, many groups of crackers don't even bother to play the games they've cracked, their "game" being cracking the copy protection scheme and sticking it to The Man. The more draconian the scheme, the more enthusiastic the cracker. SecuROM in particular is a favorite nemesis.

Convenience is a big factor. When your game constantly hassles you to remind it that you bought it, and there's another version available that's easy to find, buy, and maintain, which do you go for? Valve has been able to handily leverage this with Steam, but it has had its own authentication nightmares with the releases of Bioshock, Call of Duty 4 and most iconic, Half-Life 2.

It's also clear that EA intends to couch this idiocy in its most popular upcoming titles for the purpose of setting precedent. Mass Effect and Spore are practically guaranteed to sell like gangbusters. I'm going to end up buying both anyway in spite of this egregious DRM. So will most other people. And the majority will indeed not be affected in the slightest, only a few people ending up disenfranchised by the growing trend of treating customers as "guilty unless proven innocent". And they're frankly so big, owning a large portion of triple-A studios and high-profile releases, that any attempt by less than the vast majority of users to boycott games published by them is difficult if not impossible to organize.

And so the circular justification starts. EA will say "hey, both games sold well, that must mean our DRM works! Let's put it everywhere!"

It becomes even more distasteful once one considers the possibility of malicious intent on part of the publisher. EA may arbitrarily decide to shut down its authentication servers, then release a "gold edition" that requires no authentication, which users will be forced to buy all over again. EA is under no formal obligation to maintain its authentication process for new or continuing users, and if it pulls the plug players are left out in the cold. Individual games almost never come with a warranty, only replacement or return/refund/store-credit promises from a given retailer. You buy it, they break it, and you can't do a damn thing about it.

So in the end, it's up to developers and publishers to take the first step to not being fucking jerks about their games, trusting the games' quality (and marketing) to drive sales. Ironclad did this with Sins of a Solar Empire (which shipped with absolutely no DRM), and Sins sold quite well, taking the top spot in PC game sales for a time.

Here's to hoping, praying, and sending a variety of impassioned letters to monolithic publishers encouraging them to do the right thing.

 

[tiredinnuendo]

This is a well thought out point, and I endorse it.

I was kinda sorry to see the other thread get locked. Last I checked, the crime of talking about piracy is not actually against forum rules. Actually, I'm pretty sure even confessing to piracy isn't listed as a "don't" on the big board.

Shame too, I was interested to see where that conversation would go. Ah well, maybe it can pick up here instead.

- J

 

[Anton P. Nym]

If you disagree with the End User License, you do have recourse; don't get the software in the first place. We're talking games here. This isn't a necessity, like food. Pirating them isn't providing for starving offspring, so any would-be Valjeans can easily do without a toy.

But that doesn't stop all-too-many folks from grabbing it for free and justifying it later with airy phrases. (Or adolescent snickers.)

Though I too think SecureROM is a step in the wrong direction, I can certainly understand why studios and publishers are going with it and similar intrusive DRM... and why more and more studios are migrating from PCs to consoles.

-- Steve

 

[tiredinnuendo]

I don't think anyone (in either thread) was arguing that piracy was good or justified or anything other than wrong. They were mainly (from what I saw) arguing that countermeasures have gone too far.

As I said in the other thread, I download noCD cracks for every game I own. Why? So I don't have to fish out the CD every time. Some users are willing to do the "insert CD to play" thing without much fuss, but how far does it go before your countermeasures hurt more customers than pirates?

I like the point above about how this latest countermeasure is being put on games that are pretty much guaranteed to sell like hotcakes. It's a good way to get users used to this new authentication. I'd be really annoyed if Turok required this much work to launch, but I'll put up with it for something like Bioshock. And then one day we're all used to this measure and accept it on everything.

Pirates will crack Mass Effect in under 48 hours. I have absolute faith in this. So really, who does this security hurt?

- J

 

[unangbangkay]

If you disagree with the End User License, you do have recourse; don't get the software in the first place. We're talking games here. This isn't a necessity, like food. Pirating them isn't providing for starving offspring, so any would-be Valjeans can easily do without a toy.

But that doesn't stop all-too-many folks from grabbing it for free and justifying it later with airy phrases. (Or adolescent snickers.)

Though I too think SecureROM is a step in the wrong direction, I can certainly understand why studios and publishers are going with it and similar intrusive DRM... and why more and more studios are migrating from PCs to consoles.

-- Steve

Certainly, gaming is not a right, but acknowledging that does not address the issue. It merely silences discussion.

I'm just saying that there is little justification for going to such ridiculous lengths to do something that's more likely to achieve the OPPOSITE of the intended goal. It's hard enough to judge how much the industry loses to piracy, much less how much it'll gain from the lack of such, and thusly it's difficult to show cause for pulling these stunts.

All EA is doing is squandering good will and wasting money licensing a product that has met with near-universal derision from developers, publishers, and users alike.

Copy protection is an OK goal. Piracy is very much a crime of opportunity. People will try things they think they can get away with. And making sure that they can't get away with it may well have them prefer to do the right thing. But the opposite is also true. If it's easy and simple to do the right thing, most people will. This measure does not do that. It simply forces legitimate users to constantly acknowledge that they are not criminals.

Many people I know who have bought pirated content stopped doing so after they moved to the developed world, where fast internet is ubiquitous and retailers are easy to find (also because games are cheaper when you make more money, relatively speaking).

If there were no pirated games anywhere, most of the user would simply not be playing games, since the same games are not sold legitimately in many countries, and because many countries do not have game retailers, access to importers, or other ways of getting games "legit". I doubt that publishers would see more than a token increase in sales from the prevention of piracy.

Let's consider a hardware standpoint. The PS2 had very high worldwide sales partly because you could find PS2 games f*'ng EVERYWHERE, even in places where PS2 games were never intended to be sold. More games to play, more reasons to buy the damned thing. Same with the Wii (shortages notwithstanding).

It's hard to see how this benefits a software publisher (though it certainly benefits hardware manufacturers), but the idea remains that making something easier to access and distribute can be an ultimately positive effect.

I'm not attempting to justify piracy by saying it's inconvenient to go legit, I'm saying that the policy of punishing user for NOT being pirates is counterproductive.

 

[Geoffrey42]

Forgive me, but I'm going to copy some things I said in this exact same discussion on Joystiq (because I'd much rather have the conversation here, and because my points are awesome):

On the subject of DRM and Developer's Woes:
Piracy's impact is over-calculated, because it is based on every pirated copy being representative of a lost sale.

There are fallacious assumptions inherent in this system: 1. Piracy is preventable within the current legal framework (ie, the idea that with sufficient DRM, all individuals willing to pay for the software would). 2. The demand for the product is inelastic with regards to price (The price for a pirate is essentially bandwidth, effort, and the risk of being caught [which, in the current market, has a probability very close to nil]. Were assumption #1 true, then all pirates would not suddenly become consumers, because the cost will have increased exponentially. Valid point for the anti-piracy people: there is a segment of consumers that WOULD pay for the full game, were it not for the free alternative. It is simply not the whole universe of pirates. Which leads back to assumption #1: you can't make piracy go away, so you can't easily capture this lost segment, no matter what.)

On top of that, depending on the way that piracy is calculated, the impact of draconian DRM like this will cause piracy to be overstated if they base it off of "# of individuals logging onto our servers with cracked copies". Guess what, dudes? Legitimate customers contributed to the demand for the crack, because you made it harder for them to play your game than it is for the pirates to do so. They paid for it, then cracked it, so they could: Skip your bloody 5 minutes of intro screens to get into the game; Play without an internet connection; Play without a disc in the drive; Play without it crashing because it keeps phoning home. Say what you will about Steam, naysayers, but at least it doesn't shut you down if it fails to phone home for 10 days.

On the subject of people saying "I don't blame the Devs for trying to protect their IP":
Nobody is angry at the game companies for wanting to protect their profits. We're angry at them for being idiots that make our lives more difficult, and in turn, may very well CAUSE some of the reduction in the size of their market.

On the subject of using piracy as the justification for the death of PC gaming:
The general point is: the PC market is the size of the group that is willing to pay for a PC title. That's what a market is. If EA chooses to inflate their idea of the potential market when making their cost/benefit analysis, I blame them, not pirates, for causing it to be untrue.

Now, perfectly valid: if the market of people willing to pay is not large enough to justify development for the platform, then stop developing for it. Don't blame piracy. In the current setup, the trade-off between lost sales due to excessive DRM and lost sales due to people that would've paid were it not for the piratable version (IMO) is a wash. They could save themselves licensing fees on SecuROM, and maybe eke out a little bit more (the pirates would still pirate, but at least they wouldn't be losing sales to actual paying customers, or paying the licensing fee). But, they're deluding themselves if they think all of the pirated copies equate to lost sales, which they then subtract from their bottom line. Those sales were never part of their bottom line to begin with.

 

[ke7eha]

Pirating them isn't providing for starving offspring, so any would-be Valjeans can easily do without a toy.

A reference to Les Miserables, nice. Also, MARATHON!

DRM is a response to irresponsible behavior, plain and simple. If people were responsible, i.e. not attempting to pirate video games, DRM would be wholly and completely unnecessary. Unfortunately, as normal, the industry overreacts to the problem of piracy, causing new problems with the 'solution' to the problem. [See issues with the rootkit on those Sony CDs]

IN the future, I would like to see more online content distribution, such as is provided by Valve's Steam. I believe that this would protect the gaming industry on the PC. Online content distribution has a very low marginal cost associated with it. There is a cost involved with writing the game and starting the service, but apart from that, online distribution is very low cost. Companies can rely on services such as Steam to provide publishing. This extremely low cost of distribution will increase the incentive to publish games for the PC, as it would cost much less than publishing for a console. Even if you consider publishing to a physical disk, the computer market is still cheaper than the console market, as the computer market require no expensive licensing fees etc. that the consoles require for publication.

 

[Cousin_IT]

Just count your lucky stars theyre not taking the same route the music industry is (eg. convincing the UK government to consider forcing ISP providers to moniter traffic for evidence of illegal downloading). DRM etc tends to suck, but theres far worse options the industry could try & take.

Sins of a Solar Empire is a good example, but its not really a great one because space rts' are a niche; & niches generally seem, imo, to have a playerbase more willing to cough up the cash then "generic megabucks FPS infinity" players. When multi million million $ budget games like Doom3 see upto 50% of their users playing pirated copies (thats from memory & was no doubt exaggerated), its unsurprising the publishers & makers of said AAA title megabudget games are reactioning this way. Even if the 50% wouldnt have bought the game, most would rather not have to see the figures of pirated copies because, if nothing else, it does strike a blow to "morale" to see so many people "stealing" your game.

Maybe they are making a mountain out of a molehill. But like I said at the start, at least theyre taking a comparatively moderate approach to anti-piracy than some others in the entertainment business.

Edit: I have reevalutaed my position having seen just what EAs system will involve. Limiting installations of a disc is mad. They are setting a dangerous precedent not just for games but the entire entertainment industry with that imo. The multactivate thing seems idiosyncratic but tolerable, but limited installs is a step too far.

 

[unangbangkay]

First off:
According to the ESA the PC gaming market made up about 10% of retail sales in 2007. That's not a small market, especially since online distribution sales, MMO fees and so on are missing from that figure.

That said:
I agree with the OP. Copy protection is an understandable desire that led to, in my opinion, measures that are simply over the top. EA has lost me as a customer when it comes to Mass Effect and Spore. No matter how much I'd like to play those games, I'm not going to buy them after the lesson that Bioshock taught.
But sadly, the OP is also right about the fact that Mass Effect and Spore will sell damn well, and that EA will use that as a "reason" to use that copy protection in every other game after that, probably. Even in the odd case that those two games fail, that will just be another reason for developers to leave the PC, since even those two great games didn't sell good, all due to piracy.


Little "anecdote":
A few weeks ago I read a rant by a former employee of recently deceased Iron Lore Entertainment. That thing actually made me laugh and not feel sorry for them, although I quite like Titan Quest. What he said was the following:
- Iron Lore Entertainment got killed by piracy mainly.
- They put a copy protection in Titan Quest that, of course, was cracked.
- The crackers seemed to have been sloppy, so a few chunks of the protection remained in the game.
- Their protection was designed to crash the game without a message being displayed to the user stating the reason for the crash, if the protection deemed this version of the game illegal.
- As a result, there were lots of people playing the poorly cracked game that crashed without apparent reason. Those guys then complained in forums about the game being buggy as hell, giving the game a bad reputation, in addition to the original piracy issue.

I'm sorry, but why exactly should I feel any sympathy for these guys? You have to be extraordinarily stupid to pull that one off. It is obvious that your game will be cracked within a few days prior or after release, happened to every game out there probably. It is rather likely that a sloppy crack would appear, since crackers seem to be really eager to be the first ones to release a crack. Why, in the name of god, do you implement a copy "protection" that kills the game without any notification to the user as to why that happened? Of course you're going to get the reputation that your game is buggy. Simple logic. ILE simply shot themselves in the foot with that protection.

Sorry, but as long as publishers and / or developers follow that mindset, PC gaming is pretty surely doomed. It simply is stupid to put in a copy protection that harasses the customer or makes the game crash. Pirates won't care about those things. The customers will (hopefully).
Pirates don't pay for your product, so why invest hours and lots of money in those guys? That effort would be better spent on increasing the value your customers get for their money. Perhaps that even could have the nice side-effect of having a better game that would sell better in the end?

There are games out there with no or very little copy protection (Sins of a Solar Empire or Oblivion for example) that sold pretty well, very comparable to games with over-the-top DRM measures. I see no evidence that copy protection helps increase sales. What I do see are the majority of my acquaintances / friends refraining from buying a game with SecuROM for example.

Piracy is a crime, no question about that. But copy protection in its current form doesn't help to fix the problem, it just increases its symptoms.

 

[00exmachina]

Personally I've alwyas wondered about DRM from the publisher's side form a buisness stand point. Not the idea of if it delays rampant piracy by x days it's y more dollars.

But the licensing / contracting / payout for side of the scheme that is implemented. As an example I'm going to use Bioshock for the pc, because it is a good example of when things go wrong.

(Disclaimer - I have nothing to do with the video gam industry other then seeing what magically pops up on review sites and store shelves. I have been involved with various bits of contracting work though, so will be applying that experience and logic in a useful manner I hope)

So in the example Bioshocks release day rolls around, the pe-orders are picked up,and everyone and their uncle buys a copy. (Grandma buys two but she's getting a little odd and puts the discs in the toaster, so let's forget about her) So far so good, everybody installs the game, updates drivers and what not, and then comes the online activation.

The first few people get through ok, then things pick up the servers start refusing connections for the registration, and then for all intents and purposes implode, keel over, and die.

That's the interesting part, the DRM for the game used servers provided by the company that developed the system and they cracked under the load. The scheme was licesened fo Bioshock and that means there was the ever mysterious buisness contract involved.

The contract (as far as I can guess) covered two things, the license to use the DRM in the retail copy and that was pobably paid for through some kind of bulk agreement x copis or ever $50.00 or some such. Then there was the aspect that covered the activation service that had to be run through the servers that the publisher did not own.

In my expierence service level contracts are evil in a very base and primal way. You essentially gaurentee come hell or high water that the service will be provided as agreed upon or the other party gets to bend you over the barrel. Unless the contract for the activaton service was written to cover processing volumn instead of numbers, this part of the contact was violated. This would mean that the publisher would get the agreed upon contractual penalties for each time interval until the issue was corrected.
(ex. If the ordering system goes down for more then 1 hour, an isue directly related to this software you will be charged $1,000 per every 2 hours until it is resolved)
The numbers used were probably much lower then a real contract.

So when this hit, EA got penalty money, and a metric shit-ton of bad press as it were. So I'm wondering what kind of stuff goes into the cost benefit analysis for this kind of thing. Does the bad faith geneated get factored in the same way the math is run for a product recall where it has to reach a certain point before it's an issue.
Or even worse did EA turn a larger proit because the activation tanked retail money + penalty money?

 

[unangbangkay]

Maybe they are making a mountain out of a molehill. But like I said at the start, at least theyre taking a comparatively moderate approach to anti-piracy than some others in the entertainment business.

For now, perhaps. I mentioned earlier that much of piracy is a crime of opportunity; people do it because they can. The same goes for business entities such as publishers. If they can get us to start taking such poor schemes for granted, they'll no doubt expand its execution to every game. Once we start assuming it is the status quo for games to force you to phone home every ten days, they'll likely see if they can't get away with Mass Effect 2 phoning home every THREE days. Maybe they'll see if you don't mind having the disc in the drive while the game phones home. Perhaps next time a constant connection will be required, so they can gather data about what else is in your hard drive, just to check if you haven't pirated any other EA games. And while they're checking to see what games you HAVEN'T pirated, you won't care if they forward the data to the marketing department.

If anything, businesses are far more likely to see how many hoops they can make consumers jump through. This is a poison pill covered in a metric ton of sugar. And sad as I am to say, I'm going to swallow it because I want to freaking play Mass Effect and Spore.

Unless....

 

[Joeshie]

I'm not sure why people put so much blame on the developers here.

If you want to blame someone for this DRM shit, blame the friggin' pirates. If they weren't up to illegal activities, then companies wouldn't be forced to such extreme measures. Christ, a company wants to protect the entire way that it's able to make games and you guys jump on them so quickly.

Yes, DRM sucks shit. I will attest to that, but the fact of the matter is that it's their product and this is fully the result of rampant piracy. If you don't want to put up with their DRM crap, don't buy their products, just like I will be doing with ME for PC now. You don't have an inherent "right" to steal a game, even if it's infested with crap.

That's the problem with my current generation and younger people. Everyone expects they have a right to free entertainment.

 

[Drong]

I'm not sure why people put so much blame on the developers here.

If you want to blame someone for this DRM shit, blame the friggin' pirates. If they weren't up to illegal activities, then companies wouldn't be forced to such extreme measures. Christ, a company wants to protect the entire way that it's able to make games and you guys jump on them so quickly.

Yes, DRM sucks shit. I will attest to that, but the fact of the matter is that it's their product and this is fully the result of rampant piracy. If you don't want to put up with their DRM crap, don't buy their products, just like I will be doing with ME for PC now. You don't have an inherent "right" to steal a game, even if it's infested with crap.

That's the problem with my current generation and younger people. Everyone expects they have a right to free entertainment.

But DRM does not stop pirates so why should the legitimate game buying public who are the majority get shafted because of the minority who partake in software piracy? I have 2 desktops (one connected to my tv) and a laptop and once I buy a game I expect to be able to play it on all 3 not have it locked to one, after all i have brought it so why should i have restrictions on how I play it? It's bad enough having to find the disk every time.

And what about lending games to friends? after all this is fine with the console's and it's a form of 'word of mouth' advertising because if they like it they will often buy their own copy, my brother leant me company of heroes and now i have ordered my own copy (if it ever gets back in stock and they deliver it to me that is) same with Civ 4, i played my Dads copy and enjoyed it so much I brought my own.

 

[Geoffrey42]

If you want to blame someone for this DRM shit, blame the friggin' pirates. If they weren't up to illegal activities, then companies wouldn't be forced to such extreme measures. Christ, a company wants to protect the entire way that it's able to make games and you guys jump on them so quickly.

The pirates are the motivation for companies to protect their IP from infringement and theft. The COMPANIES are responsible for the hare-brained schemes they come up with to do this. As far as I can tell, piracy has always existed, and will always exist, so long as we (the real consumer) maintain some modicum of consumer rights. As with gun control, and many other social programs, there's an on-going balance between restricting freedom for the benefit of all (Free Speech except when shouting "FIRE!" in a crowded theater) and protecting freedoms from the overzealous (Think of the children!!!). We already have a legal system for dealing with the pirates; put your effort into identifying the people that engage in piracy, and then subject them to that legal system. Quit taking away the ability of your actual customer base to enjoy your game (with or without an internet connection).

 

[JakubK666]

I don't understand something.
I've torrented a fair share of games during my lifetime.Mostly PC ports of my console games as I don't believe in paying for the same game twice.

And out of all the games I had, I NEVER came across one that wouldn't run due to DRM protection.Be it a week or a month,people will crack it eventually so why bother at all? The Developers are just making life worse for people who bought the game.And they're wasting their money too.

Same with iTunes.Prices...fair enough.But if they're asking me to pay for the bloody songs then DRM it, they might as well replace my Itunes shortcut with Limewire.

 

[Saskwach]

I'm not sure why people put so much blame on the developers here.

If you want to blame someone for this DRM shit, blame the friggin' pirates. If they weren't up to illegal activities, then companies wouldn't be forced to such extreme measures. Christ, a company wants to protect the entire way that it's able to make games and you guys jump on them so quickly.

Yes, DRM sucks shit. I will attest to that, but the fact of the matter is that it's their product and this is fully the result of rampant piracy. If you don't want to put up with their DRM crap, don't buy their products, just like I will be doing with ME for PC now. You don't have an inherent "right" to steal a game, even if it's infested with crap.

That's the problem with my current generation and younger people. Everyone expects they have a right to free entertainment.

NB: You've mixed up developers and publishers. People are angry at EA, not Bioware (except for the selling their soul part, maybe).
And if people weren't such selfish pricks then communism would work. When you're faced with a dilemma in which a whole legion of people do a bad thing and a single group suggests a solution it's the solution that people criticise. We can't get a whole segment of society to change; we might get a single organised entity to do so. Think of it this way: when government brings out it's latest terrible crime-stopping bill which do you critique, the bill or the criminals? One is a group of people who don't care what us law-abiders think, another is a group that might.
I don't oppose companies protecting their rights. What I oppose is them making the life of every person who follows the rules just that bit harder in a failed attempt to protect their rights.

 

[unangbangkay]

And out of all the games I had, I NEVER came across one that wouldn't run due to DRM protection.Be it a week or a month,people will crack it eventually so why bother at all? The Developers are just making life worse for people who bought the game.And they're wasting their money too.

Exactly. There has yet to be any form of DRM protection that has remained uncracked, and to my experience as well. Historically speaking, the only games I have yet to see outside of the black market are the ones absolutely no one cared about, ore the oldest of old games.

The justification aspect (and potential for malicious intent) is particularly troubling in the case of EA, which is infamous for trying its level best to get away with whatever they can. Remember the next-gen ports of the Godfather game selling the cheats as DLC? Selling unlockables for Need for Speed? Selling new guns for Battlefield: Bad Company (though public outcry managed to forestall that eventuality)?

Send your letters! Post to your blogs! It's important because they've put this crap out as a rider to some of their best titles, guaranteed sellers that the "vote with your dollar" strategy cannot work on. Complain that there's no tomorrow, for that is what this series of tubes is best for!

 

[Mystery00]

And out of all the games I had, I NEVER came across one that wouldn't run due to DRM protection.Be it a week or a month,people will crack it eventually so why bother at all? The Developers are just making life worse for people who bought the game.And they're wasting their money too.

Exactly. There has yet to be any form of DRM protection that has remained uncracked, and to my experience as well. Historically speaking, the only games I have yet to see outside of the black market are the ones absolutely no one cared about, ore the oldest of old games.....

This one has already been won: http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/52618

Mystery

 

[Alan Au]

The 10-day re-activation has been scrapped. However, the 3-machine limit is still there.

- Alan