So DRM doesn't stop piracy... what do you think developers should do instead?

[Gunner 51]

Just not bother with the DRM.

If it doesn't work, it should be discarded. With the money saved from not pirate-proofing, the publishers can give it to the devs to make the game better or longer.

Plus Joe Public won't have to put up with all this DRM gubbins which slows down their PCs.

They can't be seen to do nothing. Most DRM is a token effort to keep bakers happy. THey have to keep producing new systems (backer arent completely stupid) to show that they are continuing to fight back.

Be that as it may, DRM is getting more and more intrusive to the paying majority of gamers and it's getting to the point where the pirates will be seen as the lesser evil in comparison to the publishers and stop buying legitimate games.

The pirates can NEVER be defeated no matter what measure are taken. It's just something that the publishers are going to have to live with.

 

[Danpascooch]

They should do what Steam does, and make it so people don't want to pirate, because they don't want to miss out on an online network feature

 

[Maxman3002]

What ever happened to the CD-Key solution?
I know it's pretty basic, but the idea is solid: Can't install without a CD-Key.
Turn that up a bit, so they can't play online without a registered, unique CD-Key.
You can't access patches without a registered, unique CD-key.
It's not perfect, though.

It's a hard thing, really.
On the one hand, no consumer wants annoying or intrusive DRM. That sucks.
On the other hand, no company wants anyone getting a product they created for free. That's a dick thing to do.

Honestly, were I a developer, I'd probably drop the PC as a platform.
I know that's harsh, and there is a huge market there, but at what risk and what cost? Having a team full of people pouring hundreds or thousands of hours into a game, releasing it, and then firing a bunch of people a few months later when it's pirated at a higher rate then sales?

The fact that companies are even bothering with DRM should show that they want to develop for the PC gamers. They want to reach that market. But they want to get their due. It costs a lot of money to make a game, and it's not unreasonable to want to be paid for that work. Piracy is just a slap in the face of those who worked so hard on that game. You're effectively saying to the developer that you don't think his hard work and time and effort is worth the money to buy a product, but it's obviously worth the time to download and play.

I don't think piracy will end, really. People are selfish and you can't change that. Joe Blow sitting behind his computer doesn't care about the guy who is trying to pay his mortgage with the sales of the game they just made, he just wants to play a game for free.

Games may be pirated more for the PC than for any other format but the PC base has an almost non-existant 2nd hand market compared to the console market. Most people buy their console games 2nd hand (knocking off at least £10 if not more depending on thier patience) which is probably just as much a loss of profits for the console base. What they both need to do is take on the idea of registering your new game or buying a registration code (Project $10) and then just offering every expansion for the game that way.

If they brought back the 2nd hand market for PC games and then implemented free stuff for registering your game they'd probably find that piracy will drop slightly and more people will at least pay them something to get the online content

 

[Jandau]

Downloadable extras for registered games. Not stuff removed from the game but more stuff added to it. I often dont like EA but project $10 is a good idea. It helps them with both piracy and 2nd hand gaming. Sure people can still pirate the games but if they cant use downloadable content without paying a $10 fine to the company then most people will just pay it. People often make excuses that they pirate games because of cost but if expansions for the game are downloadable and (in my opinion) afforable then people will still buy them for pirated copys and not all is lost to the developers

Obviously theres the possibility of pirating the downloadable content. But if you base that part of the game on a cloud server and make it perfectly clear that 2nd hand copies (and so by proxy pirated copies) can pay the $10 charge and get the extra stuff online, then people will still buy them. Extras for a game based on a cloud server are less likely to be pirated because of the size, difficuly to pirate, difficulty for others to install and lack of demand

Also this helps combat the 2nd hand market which is probably the biggest loss to the industry. I personally buy every game I own 2nd hand off ebay and then sell them back on through ebay. Technically ive not spent over my £150 float that I use for gaming because of this strategy and ive played well over 100 games in the last 4 years

Actually...

While I also think Project $10 is a neat idea, the fact of the matter is that DLC for P$10 can also be pirated. Case in point, I was unsure if I wanted to get Return to Ostagar for Dragon Age, so I looked it up, and lo and behold it was available for download. I did buy it later on, but the DLC is still there to be pirated.

Project $10 is more a shot at the Used Games Market, just like DRM. Neither does much to reduce Piracy.

 

[Baby Tea]

Charge a reasonable price for a reasonable product.

£40 for a 4 hour game seriously ? Fuck that noise.

Well, consider that you play 4 hours on the single player (Less then that for me, really, unless we count Spec-OPS).
Then another 60 or more on the multiplayer.
So, really, you've got a 65+ hour game for £40.

Not everyone is into multiplayer, that's true, but I would say those are in the minority.The majority of people buying a game like MW2 are going to play it online, and that greatly increases the game's length of play.

 

[Xaryn Mar]

They should drop DRM altogether. All it does is hurt the customer AND the company (it is expensive to make and doesn't work).

Perhaps even lower the prices a bit.

 

[DominicxD]

Make good quality products that make people want to contribute to the cause.

I pirated Mass Effect and then bought Mass Effect 2, so it got to work on someone else too.

 

[ThreeKneeNick]

Developers or publishers need to invest a little into figuring out WHY people pirate, do some research about it, and then when they know the reasons, they can act on that. So instead of dumping money into the bottomless pits known as SecuROM and the like, they should use it to better understand the problem.

If you figure out what portion of pirates do so because they can't afford to pay full price, maybe you could figure out an alternative way for them to pay. And if you figure out what portion of pirates do so out of sheer spite, and what is the cause of this spite, maybe you can react to that too. If you conclude it's worth it.

Or just go the evil way and do what Shamus Young wrote about: clicky [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/experienced-points/7467-Experienced-Points-Impossible-to-beat-DRM]. Sure, players would be outraged, but the dust would eventually settle and we will accept it and move on. Surely, if Blizzard did such a thing, no one would even mind. I've already read that they plan on making Starcraft 2 use a similar approach to Ubi's 'must be online' thing. I'm positive no one would dare say a thing about it.

 

[Maxman3002]

Snip

Actually...

While I also think Project $10 is a neat idea, the fact of the matter is that DLC for P$10 can also be pirated. Case in point, I was unsure if I wanted to get Return to Ostagar for Dragon Age, so I looked it up, and lo and behold it was available for download. I did buy it later on, but the DLC is still there to be pirated.

Project $10 is more a shot at the Used Games Market, just like DRM. Neither does much to reduce Piracy.

But if they made the Downloadable content harder to pirate by using account systems like steam it will put off a lot of the pirates simply due to ease. A lot of people pirate games and dont have a massive idea about how to do more than download and run off a virtual cd-rom drive. Putting DRM onto it will hurt consumers less as their actual game will work and will encorage even 1% of the pirates to at least buy the registration code, this way they can still get a little money from it.

To do this they really need to bring back the 2nd hand market to PC gaming. It might not make them any money but it will at least turn some pirates into 2nd hand gamers

 

[Orcus The Ultimate]

Nothing, nobody can stop piracy it's like if you wanted to eliminate Lobby's that corrupt the Government systems around the world... it's just not very liable.

 

[Weaver]

Maybe make games that are longer than 5 hours, that helps.
Like Demon's Souls, I could have payed $150 for that and I'd still have gotten my moneys worth and then some.

 

[Petromir]

Just not bother with the DRM.

If it doesn't work, it should be discarded. With the money saved from not pirate-proofing, the publishers can give it to the devs to make the game better or longer.

Plus Joe Public won't have to put up with all this DRM gubbins which slows down their PCs.

They can't be seen to do nothing. Most DRM is a token effort to keep bakers happy. THey have to keep producing new systems (backer arent completely stupid) to show that they are continuing to fight back.

Be that as it may, DRM is getting more and more intrusive to the paying majority of gamers and it's getting to the point where the pirates will be seen as the lesser evil in comparison to the publishers and stop buying legitimate games.

The pirates can NEVER be defeated no matter what measure are taken. It's just something that the publishers are going to have to live with.

DRM goes in cycles, for every new one that annoys people, another one has a similar effect on the bakers confidence, without pissing people off.

People only tend to remember the systems that annoy them (hence the common but false belief that game DRM only exists on the PC).

Publishers and developers know they are unlikely to ever beat the pirates, they arent really trying to (no matter what they say, as admitting this would lose their finantial backers). They do have a tendancy to miss judge how much people will put up with, and how much something may affct someones experience.

That said I've yet to find a DRM system thats caused me half as much faf and effort per game as alot of DOS games did, or the tranistions to win 95, or to XP ever did.

Most games these days pratically install themselves comapred to Dos days, set themselves up, and even tell you your current drivers are out of date and may not work. In the DOS days half the games required you to make a disk to boot your PC into a state where you could even begin to do any of that, pre universal internet unless you had a mate to do it for you, or with an almost identical set up to you yo had to do that yourslef.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

I am so depressed that when I google a game name, like Morrowind, one of the search suggestions is "Morrowind torrent". Right up there with mods, cheats, wiki, walkthrough, and the other major suggestions.

 

[Peta Michalek]

Making demos would certainly go a long way.

I mean if I cannot try out your product in any way without stealing it first, you're doing it wrong.

 

[Caliostro]

NOTHING.

Instead of focusing on trying to fuck over the pirates, and inevitably hitting your legitimate customers with the fallout, give your legit customers incentives to hold on to the legit game. Things like including the soundtrack, appealing box art and booklets, bonuses for registered games, free DLC... etc. It's all good.

At the end of the day, no matter how horrible and complex your DRM is, it's a matter of time until it is reverse engineered and broken, and when that happens it usually turns out that the legit customers are paying money to have "additional malaware" and inconveniences that the people downloading it for free don't have to put up with. Then why pay?

 

[erbkaiser]

The Stardock/Valve method: more benefits for legit customers.
Accept the fact that many people will steal it, but make the experience for people who buy it better by giving them multiplayer, extra content, etc.. Do this by checking the 'CD key' or by tying it to an Impulse/Steam account. Just do not tie it to a physical medium since this pisses people off, or add a SecuROM or Ubisoft DRM that makes the game impossible to play.

Won't be 100% proof, but no pirate will ever become a customer anyway. So you can either pull a Ubisoft and harshly punish those people that actually paid for it, or reward the people who actually earn you money.

 

[Kouen]

How about invest the money that would have gone to DRM into the Creativity Department so we can stop rolling out like Final Fantasy 21, Mario party 10, Street Fighter 5 EX + Alpha MC Squared Turbo ect ect. (Yea I think some lines of games have gotten way outta hand!)

Something new and fresh and of such a quality that maybe people feel compelled to buy it

 

[Peta Michalek]

The Stardock/Valve method: more benefits for legit customers.

How is having to run third-party software in the background(which requires internet connection no less) a benefit for the legit customer?

At least SecuROM and StarForce have enough decency to run "hidden".