PC Gaming: Could The Industry Survive Without DRM?
- Thread starter Starbird
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Just echoing the sentiments already here, but it'd be fine.
In fact, I'm almost positive that it would be better, all around, for both customer and producer, if it were eliminated entirely...with the exception of the good 'ol CD key. Those worked just fine. They discouraged the folks who were in it for a quick, easy 'looting' of content, but didn't stop the 'I'm having this for free, no matter what' segment-
Kind of like exactly what's happening now, and for a decade or two, with all manner of DRM, costing these companies millions and directly (read: negatively) impacting customer experience...which, in turn, spurns some of said customers toward 'alternatives.'
Hell, I've bought Witcher 2 on two different service providers JUST because it's CD PR. Bless those guys/gals.
And...frankly? Shitty DRM and censorship are the PRIMARY things that keep me from buying a title I'd otherwise be interested in.
...Also, obligatory youtube:
In fact, I'm almost positive that it would be better, all around, for both customer and producer, if it were eliminated entirely...with the exception of the good 'ol CD key. Those worked just fine. They discouraged the folks who were in it for a quick, easy 'looting' of content, but didn't stop the 'I'm having this for free, no matter what' segment-
Kind of like exactly what's happening now, and for a decade or two, with all manner of DRM, costing these companies millions and directly (read: negatively) impacting customer experience...which, in turn, spurns some of said customers toward 'alternatives.'
Hell, I've bought Witcher 2 on two different service providers JUST because it's CD PR. Bless those guys/gals.
And...frankly? Shitty DRM and censorship are the PRIMARY things that keep me from buying a title I'd otherwise be interested in.
...Also, obligatory youtube:
I kinda think it survived thusfar in spite of it, not because of it. If its purpose is to stop piracy it just flat-out doesn't work. If its purpose is to benefit players, it just flat-out doesn't work either.
And suddenly it all makes sense. Thank you.RhombusHatesYou said:
I work in game retail and I can tell you that DRM drives customers away like you would not believe. It has gotten to the point that we don't even stock AAA PC games anymore because of how poorly they sell just because people don't want to have to connect games to a million accounts just to play them. So I think that getting rid of DRM would improve game sales.
Speaking personally the terrible DRM practices from 7-8 years ago is why I fled PC gaming for consoles in the first place because they were easier to use and didn't require always on connections, huge downloads and my friends and I could lend games to each other so there was DRM costing companies money.
Accepting that stopping piracy is impossible companies should rather try and add value to games so that people don't want to pirate games. Give legitimate users free content and an improved experience so that they want to buy the game and not pirate it.
Speaking personally the terrible DRM practices from 7-8 years ago is why I fled PC gaming for consoles in the first place because they were easier to use and didn't require always on connections, huge downloads and my friends and I could lend games to each other so there was DRM costing companies money.
Accepting that stopping piracy is impossible companies should rather try and add value to games so that people don't want to pirate games. Give legitimate users free content and an improved experience so that they want to buy the game and not pirate it.
Full of holes so easily dismissed. The easiest and quickest dismissal is most of that is talking about music, the third of which is completely about music and thus completely irrelevant.chikusho said:
Unsure what point the second is going for, so 70% of the US pop (including the youngsters) pirate and thus we can reach the conclusion pirates buy more than those who don't...so 70% buys more than the 30%... okay. If we're going to include casual pirates who've downloaded at least a single piece of music without even knowing its piracy than I guess I have to "concede" for all the good that does.
To question if the industry would survive without DRM you are making an assumption that DRM actually combats piracy and that piracy is a major threat to the well being of the industry. This is the official reason given by designers and policy makers more often for the investors than the customers but it is not so simple.
In many cases the "effective" forms of DRM are ham fisted into games in a manner that negatively impacts the game. This creates a worse product for the customers that purchased it and have to deal with the DRM. By comparison the means of Piracy even working on games that have DRM is to subvert the DRM and make it no longer functional.
So paying customers have to deal with the negative impact of DRM and Pirates don't. This ends up creating a situation where legitimate consumers are paying for a worse product than what those that pirate the product get for free. Piracy itself is a small inconvenience but when the negative hassle involved with pirating a game is a far better experience and provides a far better product than paying for that product and jumping through all of the hoops demanded by it then the publishers are punishing the customer for actually buying the game under the banner of preventing piracy.
One of the reasons why it is important to mention this is because it is impossible to prevent piracy. The internet as a whole has more man hours and more resources available than any company, organization or government can hope to match. The internet is the pool of resources that said groups draw their candidates from and said groups can only afford a limited number of employees while the internet practically runs on volunteered time.
Examples of DRM being a golden shower on the consumer are not few and far between. Any launch that uses an Always Online form of DRM fits this bill as these games are in an unplayable state when the servers managed by the publisher fail. A good portion of customers that purchased D3 went on to pirate the game so they could actually play the game that they paid real money for for a specific and non-isolated example. No doubt the up and coming release Drive Club with be another page in this chapter.
To make the claim that without a means of preventing piracy that the games industry would collapse is just misleading. One of the most critically acclaimed PC series The Witcher released without any form of DRM and despite claims and statistics showing massive amounts of downloads through torrents the original The Witcher not only turned a massive profit but also funded The Witcher 2 and The Witcher 3 is currently in production. What was a PC only title got the funding to be able to pay for porting the second game in the series to consoles as well.
In addition both of these examples provide a ground as to how you cannot correlate Torrent Downloads to Lost Sales, something that the games industry is often guilty of trying to use as a metric to justify DRM. The reasons why something was downloaded through a torrent or the possibility of a lost sale is much more complicated. Region restrictions on sales and DRM avoidance either due to DRM breaking the game, unreliable Always Online structure or Limited Downloads are two good examples of factors that break that correlation in half. There is no ratio that one can make between Torrent Downloads and Sales Lost as a torrent download doesn't mean that they haven't purchased the game or that they would have ever purchased it in the first place.
Rather the opposite, one can argue that DRM actually drives customers away from purchasing the game and toward pirating it instead. I doubt there is a single case where someone bought the game because DRM prevented pirating it yet I can think of several games that I have refused to purchase because of abusive DRM included in the title when I would have purchased it without it. I can also say the same about several negative game design directions, like Micro-Transactions in Full Title Cost games.
To think that Piracy is the norm is to think that your customers are criminals by nature. I subscribe to the idea that Piracy is very much a service and quality problem, if the pirates can provide a better product than you just by removing the aspects you've wedged in to try to stop piracy then you are merely promoting piracy instead. When you refuse to sell your digital product in certain regions of the world, when you use physical world borders to limit a digital world without borders then you promote piracy.
Steam is an excellent living example of this as well. It is without a doubt a form of DRM but it operates in a manner that enables, empowers and provides additional conveniences to the consumers that choose to purchase through that DRM. Steam constantly keeps games up to date, offers regular discounts, has been the most successful example of price points changes over time, offers standardized internet connectivity tools to developers, offers cross title promotions (incentives for purchase, like content for other games or even new games [Got Darksiders for Preordering Space Marine for example,]) and provides a community hub for modders through the Steam Workshop. Steam will always have it's problems, always have it's detractors, and always have consumers that will forever refuse to use Steam but Steam has become a success by proving that you can sell video games in Russia (a region that was claimed to be a failure to attempt sales in due to rampant piracy) as well as by getting customers to accept a very moderate form of DRM by providing more conveniences and services than what the DRM detracts (Seriously, I remember PC gaming when you had to manually patch games by contacting the developer to get a patch disk in the mail. Dark days of PC gaming.)
Piracy has always been a scape goat for practically everything. The music industry blamed Piracy for lost sales when it was really their practice of forcing customer to cough up the cash for a full album when they only really wanted one or two songs on it, a practice proven to be anti-consumer when platforms like iTunes were released that sold songs individually and reported record earnings. The film industry and MPAA has blamed Piracy for a loss in box office earnings and post release media sales (DVD/Bluray these days) when the issue has been with a dramatic drop in overall quality of films during the past few decades, declining consumer experience at movie theaters, loading post release media with disturbing amounts of garbage (preroll ads, lack of user control in navigation,) a complete and total lack of understanding about "The Window Of Relevance" (releasing DVD/Blurays months after the film has been out of theaters,) and still being on this runaway Hollywood budget of excess for the purpose of excess. Yet Netflix and similar services continue to be a success.
In short, DRM drives away customers and treats customers like criminals. It assumes Piracy is the default course of action and that purchasing products is a last resort by the majority, an outlook that is blatantly false. The design of it is inherently anti-consumer and disrespectful of your market to think that it is required.
In many cases the "effective" forms of DRM are ham fisted into games in a manner that negatively impacts the game. This creates a worse product for the customers that purchased it and have to deal with the DRM. By comparison the means of Piracy even working on games that have DRM is to subvert the DRM and make it no longer functional.
So paying customers have to deal with the negative impact of DRM and Pirates don't. This ends up creating a situation where legitimate consumers are paying for a worse product than what those that pirate the product get for free. Piracy itself is a small inconvenience but when the negative hassle involved with pirating a game is a far better experience and provides a far better product than paying for that product and jumping through all of the hoops demanded by it then the publishers are punishing the customer for actually buying the game under the banner of preventing piracy.
One of the reasons why it is important to mention this is because it is impossible to prevent piracy. The internet as a whole has more man hours and more resources available than any company, organization or government can hope to match. The internet is the pool of resources that said groups draw their candidates from and said groups can only afford a limited number of employees while the internet practically runs on volunteered time.
Examples of DRM being a golden shower on the consumer are not few and far between. Any launch that uses an Always Online form of DRM fits this bill as these games are in an unplayable state when the servers managed by the publisher fail. A good portion of customers that purchased D3 went on to pirate the game so they could actually play the game that they paid real money for for a specific and non-isolated example. No doubt the up and coming release Drive Club with be another page in this chapter.
To make the claim that without a means of preventing piracy that the games industry would collapse is just misleading. One of the most critically acclaimed PC series The Witcher released without any form of DRM and despite claims and statistics showing massive amounts of downloads through torrents the original The Witcher not only turned a massive profit but also funded The Witcher 2 and The Witcher 3 is currently in production. What was a PC only title got the funding to be able to pay for porting the second game in the series to consoles as well.
In addition both of these examples provide a ground as to how you cannot correlate Torrent Downloads to Lost Sales, something that the games industry is often guilty of trying to use as a metric to justify DRM. The reasons why something was downloaded through a torrent or the possibility of a lost sale is much more complicated. Region restrictions on sales and DRM avoidance either due to DRM breaking the game, unreliable Always Online structure or Limited Downloads are two good examples of factors that break that correlation in half. There is no ratio that one can make between Torrent Downloads and Sales Lost as a torrent download doesn't mean that they haven't purchased the game or that they would have ever purchased it in the first place.
Rather the opposite, one can argue that DRM actually drives customers away from purchasing the game and toward pirating it instead. I doubt there is a single case where someone bought the game because DRM prevented pirating it yet I can think of several games that I have refused to purchase because of abusive DRM included in the title when I would have purchased it without it. I can also say the same about several negative game design directions, like Micro-Transactions in Full Title Cost games.
To think that Piracy is the norm is to think that your customers are criminals by nature. I subscribe to the idea that Piracy is very much a service and quality problem, if the pirates can provide a better product than you just by removing the aspects you've wedged in to try to stop piracy then you are merely promoting piracy instead. When you refuse to sell your digital product in certain regions of the world, when you use physical world borders to limit a digital world without borders then you promote piracy.
Steam is an excellent living example of this as well. It is without a doubt a form of DRM but it operates in a manner that enables, empowers and provides additional conveniences to the consumers that choose to purchase through that DRM. Steam constantly keeps games up to date, offers regular discounts, has been the most successful example of price points changes over time, offers standardized internet connectivity tools to developers, offers cross title promotions (incentives for purchase, like content for other games or even new games [Got Darksiders for Preordering Space Marine for example,]) and provides a community hub for modders through the Steam Workshop. Steam will always have it's problems, always have it's detractors, and always have consumers that will forever refuse to use Steam but Steam has become a success by proving that you can sell video games in Russia (a region that was claimed to be a failure to attempt sales in due to rampant piracy) as well as by getting customers to accept a very moderate form of DRM by providing more conveniences and services than what the DRM detracts (Seriously, I remember PC gaming when you had to manually patch games by contacting the developer to get a patch disk in the mail. Dark days of PC gaming.)
Piracy has always been a scape goat for practically everything. The music industry blamed Piracy for lost sales when it was really their practice of forcing customer to cough up the cash for a full album when they only really wanted one or two songs on it, a practice proven to be anti-consumer when platforms like iTunes were released that sold songs individually and reported record earnings. The film industry and MPAA has blamed Piracy for a loss in box office earnings and post release media sales (DVD/Bluray these days) when the issue has been with a dramatic drop in overall quality of films during the past few decades, declining consumer experience at movie theaters, loading post release media with disturbing amounts of garbage (preroll ads, lack of user control in navigation,) a complete and total lack of understanding about "The Window Of Relevance" (releasing DVD/Blurays months after the film has been out of theaters,) and still being on this runaway Hollywood budget of excess for the purpose of excess. Yet Netflix and similar services continue to be a success.
In short, DRM drives away customers and treats customers like criminals. It assumes Piracy is the default course of action and that purchasing products is a last resort by the majority, an outlook that is blatantly false. The design of it is inherently anti-consumer and disrespectful of your market to think that it is required.
Yep, it'd be fine. In fact I think it'd may even increase sales. I know I for one have been deterred from buying more than one game that has always online DRM because it'd mean I wouldn't be able to play when I want to.
Some people game on a laptop, some people don't always have high-speed internet access all the time. Some people still don't have internet at all in any meaningful way. By implementing draconian DRM policies you are actually not punishing the pirates. Your'e just making your PAYING customers live's more difficult. This is not a good business strategy. Why pay for something when you can get it for free with less hassle? Come on publishes, like get a clue dudes.
Some people game on a laptop, some people don't always have high-speed internet access all the time. Some people still don't have internet at all in any meaningful way. By implementing draconian DRM policies you are actually not punishing the pirates. Your'e just making your PAYING customers live's more difficult. This is not a good business strategy. Why pay for something when you can get it for free with less hassle? Come on publishes, like get a clue dudes.
Since it's still about piracy and consumer behavior, I disagree.Rozalia1 said:
Also, the first link shows clearly that gamers who pirate buy on average 1.5 more games each year than those who do not.
Here's another report on another from the same country, that shows piracy actually has had a positive effect on its economy.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/01/dutch-government-study-net-effect-of-p2p-use-is-positive/
That's not what it says. It says that the people who pirate buy on average 30% more legal content than the people who do not pirate.
DRM has never deterred pirates, and never will, if anything it further encourages it, as some game DRMs actually make the game more annoying to play making the pirated copy the preferred version, even for those who paid for it.
With the exception of Always Online games there is no way to make a pirate-proof game.
DRM is a very slowly dying thing, and it's becoming increasingly obvious that it's going away because of the extremes some companies go to with it. I'm sure it'll always be around in some fashion but we will eventually see a time when it's the exception, and not the rule.
Also I should point out many gamers who pirate will happily purchase a game they enjoy to support the developers of it.
With the exception of Always Online games there is no way to make a pirate-proof game.
DRM is a very slowly dying thing, and it's becoming increasingly obvious that it's going away because of the extremes some companies go to with it. I'm sure it'll always be around in some fashion but we will eventually see a time when it's the exception, and not the rule.
Also I should point out many gamers who pirate will happily purchase a game they enjoy to support the developers of it.
Of course we could. Any dev who puts their game on GOG.com runs that 'risk'. Gabe Newell put it best: "Piracy is an issue of service".
I imagine there are a decent number of pirates who torrent the game first cause there is no demo, then buy it later if they like it. Multiplayer game modes can be considered as a bonus of getting the game through a vendor, etc.
Of course there are people who will pirate everything, but DRM is inherently foolish. It's like trying to register trademarks to spoken word.
I imagine there are a decent number of pirates who torrent the game first cause there is no demo, then buy it later if they like it. Multiplayer game modes can be considered as a bonus of getting the game through a vendor, etc.
Of course there are people who will pirate everything, but DRM is inherently foolish. It's like trying to register trademarks to spoken word.
Uhm...I don't think you read that properly. Very interesting stuff. From anecdotal evidence, I would much rather buy a game than pirate it, provided the devs aren't:Rozalia1 said:
- Price gouging me.
- Forcing me to install bloatware.
- Make the game easily obtainable.
Also - Witcher 3 won't have DRM - and watch it outsell most AAA titles that year
.
It already has, from what I heard a functioning release is being worked on at the moment. And that's a good thing I believe, because hear me out:CrazyBlaze said:
Those guys that came up with that DRM ("Denuvo" it's called) are the same geniuses that inflicted starforce/securom onto the world back in the day, names that will have many older gamers shiver in fear and rage.
What it does, simply put, is using the game files in an encrypted form, rapidly encrypting and decrypting them for use, writing the de-and recrypted data into the ram and onto the hard drive.
Now this is where things go from annoying to clownfuck lunacy. SSDs in particular are very sensntive to high numbers of writing operations. Running the insane ammount of 150.000 writing operations an hour, DAI on an SSD will wreak absolute havoc on your hardware and decrease the SSD lifetime significantly. But even regular HDDs aren't meant for that kind of shenanigans and will get messed up over time. On average, you will lose one memory block forever, for every 4-6 hours of playtime, despite the game never writing more than 2kb into it. And that is on top of the 10-15% performance hit the DRM causes.
If a pirated copy of a game offers a better experience than an original thanks to not requiring some silly crap like a constant online connection, or running with 15% more frames, it's bad enough. But if a legitimate copy of a game actually physically breaks your hardware and the pirated version does not, then shit has gotten out of hand.
... Did you just look at the headline? Bloody hell.chikusho said:
That link does not make positive reading, the "positive" is a "you don't say" that has no relevance.
And you can only speak for yourself on that.Starbird said:Uhm...I don't think you read that properly. Very interesting stuff. From anecdotal evidence, I would much rather buy a game than pirate it, provided the devs aren't:
- Price gouging me.
- Forcing me to install bloatware.
- Make the game easily obtainable.
Also - Witcher 3 won't have DRM - and watch it outsell most AAA titles that year
The economic benefits are discussed all over. Here's another one:Rozalia1 said:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090119/1943093458.shtml
Basically, people who pirate buy more, and get more content, and the producers of said content don't really lose out. This equals a net benefit to the economy.
Torrentfreak hosts some tables from the Dutch study that are quite interesting. Looking at digital sales, pirates purchase dramatically more legal digital content than those who don't pirate.
https://torrentfreak.com/file-sharers-buy-more-movies-121018/
Oh, and here's a similar study in the UK.
http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/telecoms-research/online-copyright/deep-dive.pdf
Still in the UK, where they make the claim that piracy increases sales and profitability of products.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/digital-piracy-not-harming-entertainment-industries-study-1.1894729
Piracy wasn't so rare as you suggest it was back then. Torrents didn't exist yet, but the main distribution methods were FTPs, BBSs, IRC channels, and Usenet. Cracks weren't that hard to come by either, with things like NeverLock being out there (which was handy when you spilled something on that god-damned black on blood red code sheet, or the dog ate your Colonel's Bequest magnifying glass (I ended up using a viewer from a sierra game hint book to get around that one -- they used the same shade red cellophane in both). Less helpful if you misplaced the Liber ex Doctrina from Conquest of Camelot (I actually managed to guess my way through the language of flowers puzzle) or the spellbook from King's Quest III though (ugh the spells in that game were such bullshit -- for those who don't know, they required you to follow precisely the directions in the spellbook, and you were operating under a time limit, and the last step required quoting a stanza of poetry. A single incorrect step or typo or missed comma in the poem killed you).Jiggle Counter said:
I think my favorite form of DRM has to be making the game go subtly wrong on pirate copies. Darkstar One would experience massive inflation if it wasn't legit, for example. My favorite version of that was Spyro, where area were locked by gates that required you to have a certain number of gems to progress, but some gems simply wouldn't be there on pirate copies such that it wouldn't seem like something was wrong until you got a ways into the game and just couldn't progress because there weren't enough gems.
I can not describe my feelings towards DRM in words that would not ban me from the internet.
Let's just say I don't look favorably upon it.
Especially any form of Online Activation, Always Online or Limited Installs.
This is the part where I grab my shield of fire immunity because I see a lot of people being very negative towards DRM, YET you still probably buy them and in doing so support them.
I know it can be very hard to resist but how else are publishers and devs ever going to stop something that people go along with.
There have been a rise in developers releasing games without DRM and even stores such as GOG who sells games without any DRM but they are still a minority and the public eyes are always going to be on AAA games.
That's not to mention the behemoth that is Steam, having practically cornered the market on digital distribution and gets away with its DRM because of constant sales and game-related gimmicks (Achievements anyone?) and community "fostering".
In the face of all the glitter it's hard to see the online activation requirements and the forced patching for example.
I prefer to buy my games in retail stores and when asked by helpful staff I inquire after games without DRM.
I mostly get blank looks or commiserating answers.
I end up looking through the "buy 2 get one free" deals and buy those I know are okay or note titles to look them up online.
Let's just say I don't look favorably upon it.
Especially any form of Online Activation, Always Online or Limited Installs.
This is the part where I grab my shield of fire immunity because I see a lot of people being very negative towards DRM, YET you still probably buy them and in doing so support them.
I know it can be very hard to resist but how else are publishers and devs ever going to stop something that people go along with.
There have been a rise in developers releasing games without DRM and even stores such as GOG who sells games without any DRM but they are still a minority and the public eyes are always going to be on AAA games.
That's not to mention the behemoth that is Steam, having practically cornered the market on digital distribution and gets away with its DRM because of constant sales and game-related gimmicks (Achievements anyone?) and community "fostering".
In the face of all the glitter it's hard to see the online activation requirements and the forced patching for example.
I prefer to buy my games in retail stores and when asked by helpful staff I inquire after games without DRM.
I mostly get blank looks or commiserating answers.
I end up looking through the "buy 2 get one free" deals and buy those I know are okay or note titles to look them up online.
people who pirate games are not necessarily potential customers saying that piracy hurts sales is hearsay. I have yet to see any legitimate data to support that statement.
For example say someone who has no money to buy the game pirates it. That does not translate to loss of potential customer.
What about people who pirate stuff first to try before buy due to lack of playable demos that show games true colors. That does not translate to loss of potential customer.
What about people who own a copy on one system already and pirate it for another? That does not translate to loss of potential customer.
I could go on but I think I made my point not to mention that piracy has always been around since software development inseption and the industry has thrived and is continuing to thrive to this day. Look at some of video game publisher/developer exec salaries and tell me they are suffering.
For example say someone who has no money to buy the game pirates it. That does not translate to loss of potential customer.
What about people who pirate stuff first to try before buy due to lack of playable demos that show games true colors. That does not translate to loss of potential customer.
What about people who own a copy on one system already and pirate it for another? That does not translate to loss of potential customer.
I could go on but I think I made my point not to mention that piracy has always been around since software development inseption and the industry has thrived and is continuing to thrive to this day. Look at some of video game publisher/developer exec salaries and tell me they are suffering.