Which is the bigger problem? Piracy or DRM?

[fletch_talon]

Piracy.
DRM has yet to affect me in any negative way and this is from someone who owns Spore and the PC version of Assassin's Creed.

Piracy doesn't directly affect me either but it does piss me off to no end knowing there are certain self entitled individuals out there steal their games whilst I continue to support the people making them.

Its the same reason I think theft is a bigger problem than security devices in stores. I may work in retail, but I don't personally lose anything when someone steals from our store, that doesn't stop me from considering the thieves absolute scum and wanting to see them get caught.

preferably by me and a nice heavy cricket bat...

I'm not as peeved by pirates but they still irritate me.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

Drm is their to stop piracy. If piracy disappeared then drm would too. So my vote is that piracy is the bigger problem, and i hope one day piracy can be eliminated so the developers/publishers can just worry about crafting a great experience.

A very naive stance. Thievery of any kind will never go away. It's simply human nature; some are obviously better at resisting it than others, but every person feels the urge to take something that isn't theirs. If you can honestly say that you've never had this urge, then you are a liar, plain and simple. You might be great at resisting the urge, even to the point where you barely notice it, but it's there none-the-less.

The problem is when companies start to become too draconian in their practices. We're seriously not too far-off from having companies roll down to your house and lob-off your hand if they find a couple of MP3s on your computer that you can't prove you bought.

 

[cerebus23]

simple answer both.

overly obtrusive drm ruins games for the paying consumer. i would point to darkstar one as a game that was unplayable with all the built in disk checks that made the game lag like hell unless you cracked it. eventually they patched the game to remove a bunch of the disk checks, because the only people could play it wo issues was pirates.

ubisofts online drm was a royal pain if their servers were down, which happened enough to annoy consumers and was of little consequence to pirates, by the 2nd and 3rd game it took pirates a day or two to hack the server values and have totally working cracks that bypassed the drm completely.

EAs limited activation bs 3 install limit was such a disaster they had to issue a revoke tool to appease customers. spore was just such a bad case because the game was pretty meh to begin with.

what companies invest in these crazy drms and creating new ones if they just said bleep it and used just basic drm and sold the games cheaper would proably do more to combat piracy than any of these convoluted drm schemes that punish people that actually buy the games. also making better games would go a long way to getting people to buy the games to begin with. and adjusting the games via region and cost of living would help also. piracy is highest in regions where cost of living is low and video games cost way too much compared to the standard of living. ms and blizzard are two companies that have a history of accounting for cost of living and selling software at reduced prices and having some success in combating the rampant piracy that occurs in some parts of the world.

 

[AppleShrapnel]

On the surface, piracy would be the problem; without piracy, we wouldn't have had any need for drm.

But really, the wall-o-text above justifies at least a few small facets of piracy. Money has never been one to grow on trees, and the two-hit combo of a limping economy and the price increase of recent games to 60$ sure isn't helping anything.

 

[CrimsonStrife]

really if you think about it...if we did not have piracy to begin with...then the DRM would not be needed, and we would'nt have this discussion...however that would only happen in a perfect world...a world where you could actually trust a person to act upon common sense...
but alas this is not said perfect world...and i do agree that piracy makes sense in the whole try before you buy aspect...but we also have to consider the likelyhood that someone who pirates a game..and likes it...is likely to go pay for what they already have?...yeah its a good theory...but the likelyhood of it occurring is pretty slim...
i also have trouble seeing it as profit loss for alot of companies...with the prices of most games where they are...many companies remake more than the production cost easily...and considering digital copies do not have the additional fees they would pay for say printing a disc version...then the lost profit from a digital copy being pirated...is likely nominal at best.. its not like we are talking about someone walking in and shoplifting copies...though yes both are stealing.

there have been several companies that have discussed ignoring piracy (not encouraging it..but merely not caring) and simply turning most of the content into DLC thats free to whoever paid for the game...and while yeah that would probly work fine for most consoles...as it comes to pc gaming..we all know that pirates will just hack that too....

i guess in the long run...if we didnt have piracy we wouldnt have drm...but its not true the other way around since piracy existed long before....i personally do not take sides on this arguement however.

EDIT *note that i actually go to school for game design and have had to do several reports on fundamentals of publishing...the licensing for most engines is no more than 10 copies of the game typically...the biggest costs come from the production software...but assuming this is a company with several titles all pulling in revenue...that isnt taking out a huge chunk.*

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

SNIP

Yes, and I did say 'can'.

Yes, I'm aware you said 'can'. My point is that just because something can do something doesn't mean that there's even a sliver of a chance of it happening. If a company is going bankrupt, they can go ahead and blame piracy all they want, but the simple fact is that companies have been staying afloat in the face of piracy for years now. And by years, I mean over 100. So yes, it's entirely possible that piracy can run a company out of business, but odds are far greater that their product just sucked if things get that drastic.

Also, I would guess most people that pirate games can afford to purchase it, they simply choose not to. If they have access to internet and a computer, odds are they have enough of an income to save for a game.

Not necessarily. Take a look at my computer right now; and yet current (and probably for the next few weeks) I cannot afford to buy a single game. Why not? Car payments, car repairs, phone bill, keeping myself fed, etc etc. Just because I've managed to scrimp and save to be able to afford this thing doesn't mean that I have $60 available at any moment's notice. Not to mention other factors like losing a job, maybe the computer was a gift, change in living conditions, and probably a dozen other reasons why someone could have a top-notch computer and still be mostly broke.

 

[TheComedown]

Its just a stupid endless cycle, pirates pirate games hiding under the excuse that the DRM isn't worth the price of admission, but if they weren't pirating in the first place there would be no DRM, it had to start somewhere and publishes wouldn't have come up with DRM if there were no threat, logic dictates pirates are worse then DRM, because pirates create DRM.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

Depends what we're talking about, people. Pirating a game you already own to get around DRM? That's fine. You've paid the fee necessary to own the game. Pirating just straight out? No.

 

[Primee133]

Piracy caused DRM to be created. Therefor, for a problem to be so big it created another problem, has to be a pretty big problem.

 

[CrimsonStrife]

SNIP

Yes, and I did say 'can'.

Yes, I'm aware you said 'can'. My point is that just because something can do something doesn't mean that there's even a sliver of a chance of it happening. If a company is going bankrupt, they can go ahead and blame piracy all they want, but the simple fact is that companies have been staying afloat in the face of piracy for years now. And by years, I mean over 100. So yes, it's entirely possible that piracy can run a company out of business, but odds are far greater that their product just sucked if things get that drastic.

Also, I would guess most people that pirate games can afford to purchase it, they simply choose not to. If they have access to internet and a computer, odds are they have enough of an income to save for a game.

Not necessarily. Take a look at my computer right now; and yet current (and probably for the next few weeks) I cannot afford to buy a single game. Why not? Car payments, car repairs, phone bill, keeping myself fed, etc etc. Just because I've managed to scrimp and save to be able to afford this thing doesn't mean that I have $60 available at any moment's notice. Not to mention other factors like losing a job, maybe the computer was a gift, change in living conditions, and probably a dozen other reasons why someone could have a top-notch computer and still be mostly broke.

Oh, so money is the problem?

Why not just steal a car instead of paying for it?

Piracy - excuses for it are pathetic.

i doubt he is supporting piracy...or even trying to excuse it...but merely pointing out there were flaws in your statement that

If they have access to internet and a computer, odds are they have enough of an income to save for a game.

 

[Fenring]

Seeing how for some games are pirated more than they sell, and DRM would not exist if it were not for piracy, piracy is the problem. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either a pirate, wrong, lying, or an idiot.

 

[CrimsonStrife]

Depends what we're talking about, people. Pirating a game you already own to get around DRM? That's fine. You've paid the fee necessary to own the game. Pirating just straight out? No.

i think in most cases nowadays these are merely fixes applied to the game...i know from first hand (having used numerous no-cd patches on games since i prefer to play while traveling and dont like lugging a stack of cds) that most of the time you can avoid drm without ever actually pirating the game itself.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

Depends what we're talking about, people. Pirating a game you already own to get around DRM? That's fine. You've paid the fee necessary to own the game. Pirating just straight out? No.

i think in most cases nowadays these are merely fixes applied to the game...i now from first hand (having used numerous no-cd patches on games since i prefer to play while traveling and dont like lugging a stack of cds) that most of the time you can avoid drm without ever actually pirating the game itself.

I'm using the term piracy broadly in that sense. Since a lot of the time pirated games are just the original stuff plus a no-cd crack it makes sense anyway.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

Oh, so money is the problem?

Why not just steal a car instead of paying for it?

Piracy - excuses for it are pathetic.

Such a tired and erroneous analogy. The big difference between a car and a pirated copy of a game is that the car is a physical product where the game is a digital product. If a physical product is taken then the car is just gone; meanwhile the digital product could be copied endlessly. In short, the car dealer actually loses something, the game publisher doesn't. A better comparison would be to say that I'm going to build my own Mustang rather than buying one from Ford.

Also, what makes you think that I'm in favor of piracy?

 

[chaos order]

Piracy. Blaming someone else for your misbehavior is the hight of immaturity.

Because it's fun to blindly spend $50-60 only to find out what you just bought is horse crap (or not to your tastes), amirite?

sort of a silly excuse though. i mean by that logic i should steal a car so that i dont blow thousands on a car that could break down.

more on topic i think piracy is worse because drm is put in place in an attempt to prevent it. so i guess drm is an indirect cause of piracy. although i do realize it does have adverse affects on some of the legitimate buyers, but they're simply trying to protect their products. (that and a touch of greed)

 

[Om Nom Nom]

sort of a silly excuse though. i mean by that logic i should steal a car so that i dont blow thousands on a car that could break down.

Car dealers don't do test drives in your country, I take it?

 

[CrimsonStrife]

Seeing how for some games are pirated more than they sell, and DRM would not exist if it were not for piracy, piracy is the problem. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either a pirate, wrong, lying, or an idiot.

...And claiming anyone who would argue against you is wrong makes you a fool, and an imbecile. Everyone has an opinion and the right to express it...and quite frankly we can all go about this argument for weeks and never reach a decision. I think it is pretty obvious that DRM really came about due to piracy...but that has of course been around a long time, the media is only getting on it more due to the economic issues...piracy apparently does not cause too much damage to companies on average or we would have seen this kind of action long ago...and to be honest if prices were not so high on games it is unlikely we would see as much pirating... there is simply no real need to charge $60 a copy..that more than recoops the production cost in the short term...the fact of the matter is the big suits have just gotten more greedy and want to stop their enormous pile of money from becoming a slightly smaller enormous pile of money...piracy was here before DRM thats true...and its also true that if we didnt have piracy we wouldnt have DRM...but DRM is making piracy worse...it seems more likely from this standpoint that greed from the suits is the primary problem.

 

[Flour]

DRM is worse.

Most pirates wouldn't buy the games(potential sale lost*) while DRM has stopped people from purchasing games(guaranteed loss).

*[sub]I hate using "potential sale" but I guess it fits here.[/sub]