So DRM doesn't stop piracy... what do you think developers should do instead?
- Thread starter Not G. Ivingname
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They should stop adding DRM, and trust that if they make a good game, people will be willing to pay for it in order to support them and the industry.
Even Ubisoft's DRM for Assassin's Creed 2 has been bypassed.
While it may be possible to create some heinous DRM that prevent piracy, that often also prevents people from pirating the game, or with AC2 encourages legit owners to crack the game if their internet connection is intermittent.
Instead of making it worse for people to buy the game, give the buyers something to make it worthwhile to own the game. Perhaps the best example would be great multiplayer support through dedicated servers. Left 4 Dead and Call of Duty 4 have great online support. While anyone can pirate the single player game and possibly play it in a VPN or other sort of private server, but they miss the full experience. Another incentive to buy a game like L4D is all the impressive user created content that you can get through the Steam community.
A highly annoying example of DRM was EA's Spore. The game had it's own network of user created content that made having a legit version of the game well worth having, but they still included DRM that limited your installs. This was completely unnecessary. As far as I know, the Spore network was never cracked, but the game itself was cracked and leaked before release.
While it may be possible to create some heinous DRM that prevent piracy, that often also prevents people from pirating the game, or with AC2 encourages legit owners to crack the game if their internet connection is intermittent.
Instead of making it worse for people to buy the game, give the buyers something to make it worthwhile to own the game. Perhaps the best example would be great multiplayer support through dedicated servers. Left 4 Dead and Call of Duty 4 have great online support. While anyone can pirate the single player game and possibly play it in a VPN or other sort of private server, but they miss the full experience. Another incentive to buy a game like L4D is all the impressive user created content that you can get through the Steam community.
A highly annoying example of DRM was EA's Spore. The game had it's own network of user created content that made having a legit version of the game well worth having, but they still included DRM that limited your installs. This was completely unnecessary. As far as I know, the Spore network was never cracked, but the game itself was cracked and leaked before release.
Don't stop the thieves. I like to pirate *some* games, usually old.
If I wanna play some Duke Nukem 3D, I will goddammit!
-F
If I wanna play some Duke Nukem 3D, I will goddammit!
-F
Steam is just as ineffective at preventing piracy as any other DRM.Maxman3002 said:
As for convenience, most major pirate groups eventually throw out a single crack that you need to copy or run and it takes care of everything. Case in point, yesterday I bought a used copy of AC2 (PC version), after hearing that the DRM was finally cracked. And it has been. I had to copy one single file and I never had to screw around with account registration or any such nonsense and can play offline without any hassle. Despite the complex nature of the DRM that Ubisoft implemented, I only had to copy one file from one directory to another. I assume that a pirated version would work the same way.
As soon as a pirate knows how to go online and look for a crack, any and all DRM goes out the window. And if the would-be pirate can't do even that, then a simple CD Check or CD Key would be enough to stop him.
The second hand market that you mention wouldn't help the publishers. I'm guessing the losses they'd suffer from losing first-hand sales would be greater than the money they might make off DLC and expansions.
What MIGHT help them is DROPPING the price tag and thereby increasing the number of sales. Also, motivating people to buy the games by making good games. Many single-player PC games sell like candy. Anything that pops out of Bioware is grabbed off the shelves. Heck, you remember The Witcher? No-name developer does their first game and sells almost 2 million copies.
The PC market is viable, it's just a matter of publishers crying less and trying harder.
There really is nothing wrong with DRM. DRM just needs to be smart and non intrusive. Did anyone here play Dune 2? Or for that matter Day of the Tentacle? Because these are two that I remember having some rather smart ways of dealing with copies of the game (yeah pretty much DRM).
In Dune 2 after I think the first or second level (and then one a lot later in to the game) you had to answer a question to do with the game, the answer could be found in the manual, if you got it wrong the game was closed down.
In Day of the Tentacle there were certain parts of the game where you had to get a formula of some sort (honestly can't remember what it was) correct. How did you find out what it was? There was a patent number, this patent number could be found in the manual, without it you couldn't continue.
Now for the life of me, I cannot remember how many times I misplaced those manuals but it was a lot. Still I thought that was a nice bit of protection, just like I did with Batman: AA. And although it was easily bypassed they had the right idea, it doesn't need to be intrusive or downright invasive. It just needs to be smart.
In Dune 2 after I think the first or second level (and then one a lot later in to the game) you had to answer a question to do with the game, the answer could be found in the manual, if you got it wrong the game was closed down.
In Day of the Tentacle there were certain parts of the game where you had to get a formula of some sort (honestly can't remember what it was) correct. How did you find out what it was? There was a patent number, this patent number could be found in the manual, without it you couldn't continue.
Now for the life of me, I cannot remember how many times I misplaced those manuals but it was a lot. Still I thought that was a nice bit of protection, just like I did with Batman: AA. And although it was easily bypassed they had the right idea, it doesn't need to be intrusive or downright invasive. It just needs to be smart.
offer nice physicalthings with the sold game disc.
Not just anything stupid, but the kind of hting that is pure awesome like, I don't know, a letteropener that is the hidden knife from Assassins Creed/2.
It's rated mature so they should be able to get away with it.
Not just anything stupid, but the kind of hting that is pure awesome like, I don't know, a letteropener that is the hidden knife from Assassins Creed/2.
It's rated mature so they should be able to get away with it.
Invite all people who are considered gamers to meet at one place and all the heads of the game development studios as well. When we're all there we'll pinky-swear not to steal games and the developers will pinky-swear not to screw us over with DRM and dumb installation policies. Things will be back the way they were.
Yeah, good in theory, but in reality they would jack the price up for all that. I don't mind much actually paying for DLC if it is worth it (Fallout 3, Borderlands, etc). Those were more like mini expansion packs, which worked. Stuff like the $2 character packs for Killing Floor seem a little pointless, but I guess some people like them. Map packs though, those are a rip off. After playing Black Hawk Down for years and having literally thousands of different maps to pay, having less than a dozen then have to pay for more just seems wrong.Caliostro said:
OT: Steam works great, and more convenient for keeping games in one place. Also what Novalogic did seemed to work fine too. Make an account, registered the CD(s) with the account, and use the account to log in for multiplayer.
I also say Nothing.
My basic attitude is that the pirates have been there as long as gaming has, and the industry has flourished despite the accusations of mass piracy, which I feel are greatly exagerrated to begin with. Simply put people have obviously been making enough money off of this despite piracy to turn game design from something done by a couple of guys in their basements, to a billion dollar business with constantly increasing budgets and profits.
It's like this, looking at say Maxim's article, or heck even just the numbers (which means Maxim understated things if anything) going towards paying human resources/coders/etc... the guys doing these games are making big bucks. What's more even the producers/investers are seeing massive returns since they keep coming back with more money to feed into these projects.
The industry is simply greedy, and wants more and more. Hence all the DLC, micro transactions, charges for online play (X-Box Live), and similar things. The whining about pirates has always been there, but even if they were right about how stopping pirates is going to increase sales numbers, your basically looking at a bunch of people with mountains of money, wanting even bigger mountains of money.
See, I'm all for capitolism, but there is a point where I as the consumer feel like I am getting unreasonably gouged. I also tend to get a bit miffed when the people who are getting greedy try and justify the behavior as somehow being nessicary and motivated by anything else. The point being that I think consumers should "buckle" a lot quicker than we do as it is. No problem with people making money and getting rich, but when your dealing with people who are already rich treating you like a moronic money bag with legs and deciding to get even richer off a product... well that's something else.
The thing with the piracy is that while it would be nice if it could be stopped, the cure is worse than the disease since it punishes legitimate consumers. What's more you can't even consider it a major problem because it's not like piracy has put the industry in jeopardy or anything since the industry is flourishing despite it's existance.
I'm not going to sit down and claim piracy is anything but theft, or talk about a symbiotic relationship between pirates and the industry. But I will say that the issue is similar to company shrink. Every company has issues with employees doing things like taking food home from the free cafeteria (if you have one), walking off with tools or duct tape, or even simple office supplies since pens, pencils, paper and such all add up. It's not a good thing (especially when it's intentional theft of something like tools), but in the end cracking down enough to stop it costs you more by turning your company into a police state, hurting morale, and causing people to quit. Not a perfect analogy, but the point is that the damage things like DRM and anti-piracy scams cause to legitimate users is obvious, while the piracy it's meant to address is nothing but an annoyance. What's more it's hard to have sympathy for some guy sitting there basically going "Well gee, I could have a second Lamborgini if it wasn't for those blasted pirates".
I use company shrink as an example because I used to be involved in protecting company assets for my previous employer. One of the big things to learn (as management will even point out) is to tell what's a big deal, and what isn't no matter what the bean counters
say. You shake everyone down constantly and it does damage. If you "write up" or even get someone fired for something stupid like walking off with a company pen, that's going to get people to look for other jobs. It's a common sense kind of thing. The world is full of irony when it can be even more wrong to stop something that is wrong.
My basic attitude is that the pirates have been there as long as gaming has, and the industry has flourished despite the accusations of mass piracy, which I feel are greatly exagerrated to begin with. Simply put people have obviously been making enough money off of this despite piracy to turn game design from something done by a couple of guys in their basements, to a billion dollar business with constantly increasing budgets and profits.
It's like this, looking at say Maxim's article, or heck even just the numbers (which means Maxim understated things if anything) going towards paying human resources/coders/etc... the guys doing these games are making big bucks. What's more even the producers/investers are seeing massive returns since they keep coming back with more money to feed into these projects.
The industry is simply greedy, and wants more and more. Hence all the DLC, micro transactions, charges for online play (X-Box Live), and similar things. The whining about pirates has always been there, but even if they were right about how stopping pirates is going to increase sales numbers, your basically looking at a bunch of people with mountains of money, wanting even bigger mountains of money.
See, I'm all for capitolism, but there is a point where I as the consumer feel like I am getting unreasonably gouged. I also tend to get a bit miffed when the people who are getting greedy try and justify the behavior as somehow being nessicary and motivated by anything else. The point being that I think consumers should "buckle" a lot quicker than we do as it is. No problem with people making money and getting rich, but when your dealing with people who are already rich treating you like a moronic money bag with legs and deciding to get even richer off a product... well that's something else.
The thing with the piracy is that while it would be nice if it could be stopped, the cure is worse than the disease since it punishes legitimate consumers. What's more you can't even consider it a major problem because it's not like piracy has put the industry in jeopardy or anything since the industry is flourishing despite it's existance.
I'm not going to sit down and claim piracy is anything but theft, or talk about a symbiotic relationship between pirates and the industry. But I will say that the issue is similar to company shrink. Every company has issues with employees doing things like taking food home from the free cafeteria (if you have one), walking off with tools or duct tape, or even simple office supplies since pens, pencils, paper and such all add up. It's not a good thing (especially when it's intentional theft of something like tools), but in the end cracking down enough to stop it costs you more by turning your company into a police state, hurting morale, and causing people to quit. Not a perfect analogy, but the point is that the damage things like DRM and anti-piracy scams cause to legitimate users is obvious, while the piracy it's meant to address is nothing but an annoyance. What's more it's hard to have sympathy for some guy sitting there basically going "Well gee, I could have a second Lamborgini if it wasn't for those blasted pirates".
I use company shrink as an example because I used to be involved in protecting company assets for my previous employer. One of the big things to learn (as management will even point out) is to tell what's a big deal, and what isn't no matter what the bean counters
say. You shake everyone down constantly and it does damage. If you "write up" or even get someone fired for something stupid like walking off with a company pen, that's going to get people to look for other jobs. It's a common sense kind of thing. The world is full of irony when it can be even more wrong to stop something that is wrong.
I know this is going to sound crazy but... More DRM!Not G. Ivingname said:
I know, duh dah DAHH!
But not JUST DRM... give an incentive to actually play even the single player game while connected online for most of the time with ADDED FEATURES!
By owning a legitimate copy of Team Fortress 2 on Steam you have such a steady and constant stream of patches, balances, new content, tweaked content, new upgrades and the legitimacy (mostly) that if you have a certain hat then you have likely EARNED it and not just copy-pasta some code or crack.
but what about single-player?
Obviously there should remain a mechanism to play single player in offline mode, but with limitations like you have to check in every week or so but not JUST to prove you have the real deal.
Take Demon's Souls, it is a great example of not an MMO but an MSO, Massively Singleplayer Online. Everyone plays through the single player by themselves but their experiences, advice and warning are shared with the rest of the network.
This can be so useful for play-craft, learning new moves and techniques, make it MUCH MUCH MUCH easier for anybody to join in co-op, counter-op or parallel op, as in both people play through the same game at the same time, interacting... but only in subtle way (take queues from quantum mechanics/parallel universe interaction).
Take the case of Assassin's Creed 2, where apparently key code for the game's AI and key events are controlled by data sent from a central server, why not make that server do more than just return a boring page file how about it DOES SOMETHING USEFUL, something that your home PC cannot do. How about enhanced physics, AI, how about if the boss always fights slightly differently each time from week to week depending on the animation algorithm that the developers make for that week to upload to the servers?
How about the data that is sent TO the central server is handled as well, such as beta testing doesn't end on release date, the developers are getting constant feedback on what gamers are doing, where they are getting killed, where they are getting most kills, how many people ACTUALLY EVEN LOOKED at the super expensive graphical effect that was [/i]just to their upper left... but they were too distracted by an ammo crate on the lower right of the screen.
Maybe they should have repositioned it or done something to draw their attention up there? Things like this aren't caught in beta.
Are people rage quitting all on the same boss or level? Give the gamers an opportunity to directly IN GAME send notes to the developers like "WHY SO LONG SINCE A CHECKPOINT!" or "Fuck you guys, I hate DRM! cool game tho
"Now if you are constantly online it is possible to put ads on the loading screens and ad-companies will pay for these as they know when people (and which people) have seen them, how often and so on. This CAN be used to subsidise the cost of games and make PC a far more lucrative market for publishers as games keep on giving. This would be the best time to sell game related advertising (headcrab hats FTW!) or VERY game related media like District 9 on DVD is a good film to sell to someone playing Half Life 2 (aliens and all).
These ads will have to be VERY carefully placed (especially considering the number of games that strive to be loading-screen free) so it will likely be whenever game continuity is broken like when first loading or leaving a game.
And of course in all this there must be allowance for mods and they should be allowed to set up mod servers as well (though still have to call the master server... maybe).
I can really see a company like Valve doing something like this.
At first everyone will say "Oh GAWD NOOOO! FUKKIN Valve, doign the same thing as Ubisoft, this SUCKS! Just like Left 4 Dead 2... GRR!"
Only then people will realise it's not what you do but HOW you do it. Just like with L4D2.
Bottom line, I think PC gaming needs DRM like Ubisoft but it needs to be FAR more coherent and needs to strike the balance of the benefits FAR outweighing the costs and not be so dogmatic, give some leeway to play online if your internet is down for 48 hours.
Anybody think of any other thing Developers can to to IMPROVE GAMEPLAY if the singleplayer was online connected to dedicated servers?
People who want to pirate, will pirate and always find a way.
The best way is much like Caliostro says - treating the customer as king.. realising they're spending £40/$60 on something to really throw themselves into for often weeks / months.
I personally like registration with competitions / freebies / discounts on games and things like soundtracks to make it more of a package than just 'disc, manual and box'
The best way is much like Caliostro says - treating the customer as king.. realising they're spending £40/$60 on something to really throw themselves into for often weeks / months.
I personally like registration with competitions / freebies / discounts on games and things like soundtracks to make it more of a package than just 'disc, manual and box'
Pay gog.com $6 and they'll give you an installer that will set it up for you. Plus, you get the warm fuzzy feeling that is the knowledge that you are supporting DOSbox.Fingerlicking said:
On topic, the only really effective solution is loads of patches, loads of bonus content and (for multiplayer games) dedicated servers for people who you know are customers (e.g. CD Keys for online access, Steamworks et al.)
If the pirate a) can't find the latest version, or b) only wind up in crappy servers, they are likely to not bother.
Better: smash the major (and minor) torrent trackers (see Hopeless B's post).
1) If you want to stop DRM, stop downloading pirated crap. You're as much a part of the problem as the producers, and the reason DLC doesn't work and piracy won't stop is because you, yourself, will find ways to steal. Seriously.
2) That said, DrM just postpones access to the game. What producers need to do is stop making 7/10 rating disposable games, and make games that players want to keep playing. Instead of investing tons of money in something that profits or losses in the first week, make a revenue stream.
Observe Blizzard... no not World of Warcraft, but the OTHER games they've made. They STILL sell them, retail, and make money off of them. Years later. And not -small- amounts of money. They don't have harsh DRM, they have a product that is salable and relevant beyond the first two weeks. Persistancy is the key here.
Blizzard is in the business to make profit, and they have a business model that is beautiful: Make games people love, and don't stop selling them. Ever. Are their games pirated to hell? Yes. Are they still profitable? YES.
Instead, we have the big companies putting out 'hit' after 'hit' and yet they don't have profits. Nor are their games relevant a month after release. DRM doesn't stop their game sales as much as a lack of concern for selling games past the initial period. Less Digital Rights Management, and more Dollars and Revenue Machines.
2) That said, DrM just postpones access to the game. What producers need to do is stop making 7/10 rating disposable games, and make games that players want to keep playing. Instead of investing tons of money in something that profits or losses in the first week, make a revenue stream.
Observe Blizzard... no not World of Warcraft, but the OTHER games they've made. They STILL sell them, retail, and make money off of them. Years later. And not -small- amounts of money. They don't have harsh DRM, they have a product that is salable and relevant beyond the first two weeks. Persistancy is the key here.
Blizzard is in the business to make profit, and they have a business model that is beautiful: Make games people love, and don't stop selling them. Ever. Are their games pirated to hell? Yes. Are they still profitable? YES.
Instead, we have the big companies putting out 'hit' after 'hit' and yet they don't have profits. Nor are their games relevant a month after release. DRM doesn't stop their game sales as much as a lack of concern for selling games past the initial period. Less Digital Rights Management, and more Dollars and Revenue Machines.
I'm all for us developers boycotting the consumer for a while and simply not releasing anything for a year.