There's the problem that unless you tell them EXACTLY what the DRM does(effectively rendering it moot because cracking groups can just track down every item you listed and fix it), there's no telling what is DRM and what is faulty design. Then the question for the buyer becomes "This game may or may not have drm that is very effective at annoying pirates for a few weeks, also, this game may or may not be a buggy piece of shit, do i want to spend money on it and have a large risk of it being the latter?"coldfrog said:
Building a Better Kind of DRM
- Thread starter Shamus Young
- Start date
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How about just making the games reasonably priced?
sure i can find Batman Arkam Asylum online for 50 euros in the big stores and on STEAM,
but if i look a bit further i can find it for 29 euros!
and that's including the filled box, and a free delivery! (so guess what i chose)
I think good games, (including console games) should not exeed the 30 to 40 euro/dollar pricemark, unless they are some "special edition" release.
It makes them affordable, and more likely of being bought.
Another good way to get pirates to actually buy the game is by including lots of physical extra's, like books, figurines, usb sticks filled with content, game merchanises, posters and stuff like that.
Sure you could download the game, but then you would get only a small part of the package.
They should make games worth collecting, almost like trophy's that you would want to have on your shelf.
DRM is just plain wrong, instead of punishing people that "stole" the game,
they should REWARD the people that actually buy the game.
That makes pirats feel left out, even if they managed to overcome the protection, wich shouldn't be there in the first place!
sure i can find Batman Arkam Asylum online for 50 euros in the big stores and on STEAM,
but if i look a bit further i can find it for 29 euros!
and that's including the filled box, and a free delivery! (so guess what i chose)
I think good games, (including console games) should not exeed the 30 to 40 euro/dollar pricemark, unless they are some "special edition" release.
It makes them affordable, and more likely of being bought.
Another good way to get pirates to actually buy the game is by including lots of physical extra's, like books, figurines, usb sticks filled with content, game merchanises, posters and stuff like that.
Sure you could download the game, but then you would get only a small part of the package.
They should make games worth collecting, almost like trophy's that you would want to have on your shelf.
DRM is just plain wrong, instead of punishing people that "stole" the game,
they should REWARD the people that actually buy the game.
That makes pirats feel left out, even if they managed to overcome the protection, wich shouldn't be there in the first place!
I hopped on to the isohunt forums, they managed to bypass the whole "Batman doesn't know what to do" malarkey.
So... Yeah... They will just think of ways to outsmart you, they will do ANYTHING to get free stuff.
So... Yeah... They will just think of ways to outsmart you, they will do ANYTHING to get free stuff.
Maybe it's funny *and* serious?shMerker said:
In theory, I like the idea of DRM that hurts the pirates and not me, if we MUST have it at all. I would much rather be legit and buy my games with actual monies and it seems unfair that the game companies punish me for this. The bugs-as-DRM idea is interesting, but I'm worried that glitches will stuff up paying customers' games as well. If games are released with this, they better have tested it VERY thoroughly first. Also, I don't want to buy and install a new HDD or graphics card, then be unable to enjoy a legitimately purchased game anymore because it thinks I stole it and I've lost my receipt. Lastly, what about the code that controls the bugs? I'm assuming that if you announce the presence of this DRM, the pirates will know that it is only a case of looking hard enough until they find the code, then deactivating or fooling it. I don't think it'll be a complete picnic for the pirates, but I suspect that there are enough of them, and it's a big enough challenge, that it would be a red rag to a bull and they'll fall over themselves to crack it. And if the check is only one piece of code, then that whole support pillar crumbles and is worthless. If there's more than one, I'm guessing they'll be at least similar, making finding them that much easier. I could be wrong, though, so anyone with experience of programming languages more recent than BASIC may correct me!
Also, cheaper games: Yes please!
It's hardly a new idea for DRM, the earliest example I can think of would be Earthbound's take on it which was a true work of sadistic beauty. With a quick look a pirated copy would appear to work just fine, however the enemy difficulty would be increased, their spawn rate would be very very high so it would take forever to do anything, and as a final kick in the nuts to any pirate with the sheer bloody mindedness to slog through that the game would freeze in during the final boss fight forcing the player to restart whereupon the game would delete any saved games it could find.Pankeyman said:
This is pretty much all there is to say on this matter. Legitimate customers WILL be affected by false-positive pirate detections, and most of them WON'T realize what happened, no matter how open the developer's/publisher's communication strategy on the DRM is. And why should they? There really is no reason why a legitimate customer should consider the idea their game is broken because it thinks it's pirated, because they can tell from the box on their shelves that it isn't.Asehujiko said:
Also, on a diffent note - @ Shamus and everyone else: Stop confusing "copy protection" and "DRM". "DRM" encompasses concepts and methods to control in which ways customers use something they have purchased using rights for. It can act as "copy protection", which does pretty much what it says on the tin, but it doesn't have to - and vice versa. Both terms are independent of each other, but can overlap regularly.
For example: Online activation for the sake of ONLY checking a copy's legitimacym, it's copy protection.
If the number of online activations is limited (or the online activation is tied to a user account or something of that matter), it's DRM.
The end is nigh!!!111oneoneelevenShamus Young said:
Actually, I like those ideas. I'm one of those guys who ponder to buy the game, then download the pirated version to play obstruction-free, but I have to admit that when it does come to it, I just download it, since I'm too lazy to send the money directly to the developers (screw dem publishers).
With a system like that I wouldn't even bother to figure out what kind of DRM a game uses, since it hurts those who don't pay, not me (as long as I have a genuine copy).
Shamus for president (of whoever can beat some sense into screw-honest-customers-over-with-DRM-supporters (or, if that can't be done, beat the crap out of those same people))
DRM of any kind just doesn't work, period. Batman AA's DRM has already been cracked. Seriously go right now to any torrent site. Search for Batman and look in the comments, the cracks are already out for it. Oh and there was much more wrong with the game then just the glide jump. Grapples weren't working properly, invisible walls were placed in certain areas, along with dozens of other "glitches" put into the game. Batman isn't even the first title to do this type of DRM. It's actually pretty common nowadays for brand new games to feature DRM like this. Batman for some reason is the first title the press picks up on the subject.
Developers can go ahead and waste time and resources programming in "creative" DRM like you mentioned but it will be cracked within hours. Remember that it's not just one or two people trying to crack these games. There are literally thousands of crackers out there that work at breaking these games and making them playable.
Then you have the problem (which is rare but does occur) that legit copies are dedicted as pirated versions. If that happens then you are indeed screwing a legit consumer and doing nothing against pirates. Especially as these types of DRM get more and more complex we get a much greater chance of this happening.
Implementing a Disc check has already been proven useless by no-cd cracks. Again who you end up hurting here is the consumer.
Online authentication is really the online way to hurt pirates and even then there have been ways for pirates to get around that. So again your hurting the consumer more then the pirate.
Further more maybe you don't understand the mentality of a lot of people that do this but your number 3 suggestion is nothing but a call to pirates. Your basically challenging them to break your game. You might as well walk around with a "Pirate my game Please" sign on. A lot of these pirates do what they do simply because they can. They find it invigorating. They strive to become internet celebrities amongst the pirating community. Look at famous movie pirates like aXXo. Maybe nobody here knows him but this guy (or group of people) is THE most famous movie pirateer. Everyone in the pirateer community knows that when aXXo puts out a release of a movie it's DVD quality, 100% complete, with the best visuals and audio you can find out of a pirated version AND he'll get them before the DVD releases. And you may say LOLINTERNETFAME, but to these people their e-peen actually matters. Shit look at all the people here on the Escapist who pride themselves on what everyone here thinks of them. That should be example enough of what I'm talking about.
All your doing by announcing your game has DRM like that is goading the pirates which will then crack your game and probably work twice as hard at distributing it then they would have beforehand. Then said pirate can advertise himself as "The guy who broke game X's DRM".
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With all this said I wish I could offer some solution to pirates...but I can't. Pirates will always exist and theres really nothing anyone can do about it. DRM or no DRM pirates will pirate simply because they can. Sure do have your "ethical" pirates but lets be straight. Pirates pirate games because they get them for free, period. MOST pirates will still pirate a game even if it was DRM free. Anyone who says otherwise is either lying or in the minority.
Developers can go ahead and waste time and resources programming in "creative" DRM like you mentioned but it will be cracked within hours. Remember that it's not just one or two people trying to crack these games. There are literally thousands of crackers out there that work at breaking these games and making them playable.
Then you have the problem (which is rare but does occur) that legit copies are dedicted as pirated versions. If that happens then you are indeed screwing a legit consumer and doing nothing against pirates. Especially as these types of DRM get more and more complex we get a much greater chance of this happening.
Implementing a Disc check has already been proven useless by no-cd cracks. Again who you end up hurting here is the consumer.
Online authentication is really the online way to hurt pirates and even then there have been ways for pirates to get around that. So again your hurting the consumer more then the pirate.
Further more maybe you don't understand the mentality of a lot of people that do this but your number 3 suggestion is nothing but a call to pirates. Your basically challenging them to break your game. You might as well walk around with a "Pirate my game Please" sign on. A lot of these pirates do what they do simply because they can. They find it invigorating. They strive to become internet celebrities amongst the pirating community. Look at famous movie pirates like aXXo. Maybe nobody here knows him but this guy (or group of people) is THE most famous movie pirateer. Everyone in the pirateer community knows that when aXXo puts out a release of a movie it's DVD quality, 100% complete, with the best visuals and audio you can find out of a pirated version AND he'll get them before the DVD releases. And you may say LOLINTERNETFAME, but to these people their e-peen actually matters. Shit look at all the people here on the Escapist who pride themselves on what everyone here thinks of them. That should be example enough of what I'm talking about.
All your doing by announcing your game has DRM like that is goading the pirates which will then crack your game and probably work twice as hard at distributing it then they would have beforehand. Then said pirate can advertise himself as "The guy who broke game X's DRM".
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With all this said I wish I could offer some solution to pirates...but I can't. Pirates will always exist and theres really nothing anyone can do about it. DRM or no DRM pirates will pirate simply because they can. Sure do have your "ethical" pirates but lets be straight. Pirates pirate games because they get them for free, period. MOST pirates will still pirate a game even if it was DRM free. Anyone who says otherwise is either lying or in the minority.
Or you could go to the root of the problem, which is people being able to actually acuire some version of the game pre-release. Now I admit I am a bit uneducated in the ways of the cracker, but I figure that somewhere along the line they need to aquire the source code for the game to be able to crack then pirate it. If you were able to keep that from them, by say, not releasing demo's, or whatever you could to keep the source code under the utmost security. Well then you probably wouldn't have many pirates now would you?
Problem:
If one of the advantages of your system is that the real pirated game acts as a demo
And one of the features of your system is that it sneakily gimps the controls to make playing the pirated version a frustrating hell
... I don't think its going to do you much good as a frustrating hell demo, really.
If one of the advantages of your system is that the real pirated game acts as a demo
And one of the features of your system is that it sneakily gimps the controls to make playing the pirated version a frustrating hell
... I don't think its going to do you much good as a frustrating hell demo, really.
DRM wouldn't be such an issue if it only worked for the consumer, not against it.
How often is it that the honest customers get stuck with unplayable games because some quirk of their system triggers the DRM failsafes, while those who pirate the game have no problems what so ever.
That is the biggest problem with DRM in my opinion, it punishes those who buy the legal version, it doesn't even slow down the illegal downloaders. Yet publishers keep believing that DRM helps, it never does, it only wastes resources better spent on the games themselves.
How often is it that the honest customers get stuck with unplayable games because some quirk of their system triggers the DRM failsafes, while those who pirate the game have no problems what so ever.
That is the biggest problem with DRM in my opinion, it punishes those who buy the legal version, it doesn't even slow down the illegal downloaders. Yet publishers keep believing that DRM helps, it never does, it only wastes resources better spent on the games themselves.
Doesn't "Poison the Pirate Well" immediately invalidate "Be Sneaky"? I mean, you've essentially just told pirates that their pirated copy is fucked up. So when they notice discrepancies between their complaints and a legitimate customer's complaints, they'll immediately realize there's something fishy going on here, and correct. You can't have both sides. You can't warn people that you're screwing with the pirated version of the game, and then screw with the pirated version of the game.
It'd be better all around to just claim that you had installed some very sneaky DRM, and then not do that at all. They'll search fruitlessly through the code, trying to find it.
This works, because again, you have to remember that DRM that is a lie is just as effective as DRM that is real, in that it does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO FIGHT PIRACY. Pirates aren't customers. Their thieves. WalMart doesn't sell products to shoplifters, but they do account for shoplifters in their sales and purchasing data. They assume some of their stuff is going to be stolen, and then they make money at it anyways (usually by offering low enough prices that it doesn't matter). Stardock does the same thing. They don't really care that much if you pirate their game/software. The flip side is that they're not designing the game/software for you, so when you ***** and moan about it, you don't get squat. And they've produced a number of best-selling PC game titles. Gosh, that says something, doesn't it?
It'd be better all around to just claim that you had installed some very sneaky DRM, and then not do that at all. They'll search fruitlessly through the code, trying to find it.
This works, because again, you have to remember that DRM that is a lie is just as effective as DRM that is real, in that it does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO FIGHT PIRACY. Pirates aren't customers. Their thieves. WalMart doesn't sell products to shoplifters, but they do account for shoplifters in their sales and purchasing data. They assume some of their stuff is going to be stolen, and then they make money at it anyways (usually by offering low enough prices that it doesn't matter). Stardock does the same thing. They don't really care that much if you pirate their game/software. The flip side is that they're not designing the game/software for you, so when you ***** and moan about it, you don't get squat. And they've produced a number of best-selling PC game titles. Gosh, that says something, doesn't it?
The good:
The illegal version as a demo before the protection kicks in, may just win over a handful of try-before-you-buy pirates.
It'll make cracking the game slightly less interesting, because crackers are in it for the prestige among their peers and crackers are often not gamers themselves, but rather more interested in the technology. The other crackers don't want to play through the whole demo to see if the crack works, so no respect is earned.
The bad:
It's more expensive to have copy protection in the middle of the game. Typically the protection scheme comes from the publisher when the game is already finished.
If you subtly ruin the gameplay instead of telling the user the protection scheme has kicked in, some pirates will just think the game sucks and you may also frustrate some legitimate players with an alternative pc configuration.
(not that it matteers ofcourse, because the REAL reason for DRM is to kill reselling and to remove old titles)
The illegal version as a demo before the protection kicks in, may just win over a handful of try-before-you-buy pirates.
It'll make cracking the game slightly less interesting, because crackers are in it for the prestige among their peers and crackers are often not gamers themselves, but rather more interested in the technology. The other crackers don't want to play through the whole demo to see if the crack works, so no respect is earned.
The bad:
It's more expensive to have copy protection in the middle of the game. Typically the protection scheme comes from the publisher when the game is already finished.
If you subtly ruin the gameplay instead of telling the user the protection scheme has kicked in, some pirates will just think the game sucks and you may also frustrate some legitimate players with an alternative pc configuration.
(not that it matteers ofcourse, because the REAL reason for DRM is to kill reselling and to remove old titles)
This would fail. When people talk with each other about the games they play, they don't usually explicitly state whether their copy is legit or not (especially if it's not). Therefore, all the gripes about the glitches and bugs will always be against the game, and the company would have to spend a whole lot of money on advertising campaigns if they wanted to ensure that most people know about the pirate-only glitches. And advertising, even implicitly, the fact that the game can actually be pirated is not something any investor/publisher will ever spend money on.
Locks don't really stop thieves; any safe can be broken or picked given time and skill. The idea of most locks is to keep honest people honest, and to cost most of the dishonest more time than they can comfortably spare.
DRM doesn't need to be foolproof, and frankly it can't be. It just needs to be good enough that it's not easy to crack, raising the bar so that it takes the dedicatedwankers pirates some serious time and attention and places it out of reach of the script-kiddies.
It also has to be transparent enough that it doesn't piss off your paying customers. It has to be easier to be honest than be a crook.
If you want to put a crimp into piracy, leave SecureROM and other technosexual fetish gear alone... you're better off spending that money on tightening up inventory controls to prevent pirates from boosting copies before release, and using a less expensive and more customer-friendly check that's "good enough" to require an adult to break.
-- Steve
DRM doesn't need to be foolproof, and frankly it can't be. It just needs to be good enough that it's not easy to crack, raising the bar so that it takes the dedicated
It also has to be transparent enough that it doesn't piss off your paying customers. It has to be easier to be honest than be a crook.
If you want to put a crimp into piracy, leave SecureROM and other technosexual fetish gear alone... you're better off spending that money on tightening up inventory controls to prevent pirates from boosting copies before release, and using a less expensive and more customer-friendly check that's "good enough" to require an adult to break.
-- Steve
DRM is pointless as it doesnt affect sales as much as you think. Alot who pirate games are not going to buy it if they cant get it for free because they were not intending to buy it anyway. DRM is also a pain to customers. Costs the developers money. And as many have said, someone somewhere will find a way around it sooner or later.