Of course, Bioshock 2, protected by no fewer than 3 layers of DRM for those who bought it from Steam, was available on filesharing networks, bittorrent and USENET the day before its release date, in an unimpaired form that did not require nearly an hour of fucking around to make it work.
I invite advocates of DRM to consider what this implies about its effectiveness, and the incentives it creates to pay or not pay for the product.
If that is the reason, they are making two very risky (and possibly outright stupid) bets.
It will take a long time for pirates to work around the DRM.
The number of would-be pirates who decide to buy the DRM’d game instead of waiting is greater than the number of lost sales who don’t want to deal with the DRM.
It seems so absurd on its face that I still suspect a more subtle reason behind this. It could be part of a longer term plan, in which they fully expect the DRM to hurt their bottom line on this game, but want to gradually get the public used to more and more intrusive DRM. Or, perhaps more likely, they just don’t really want to release the game on PC at all, so they put out the worst possible product in the hopes of driving people towards the console version.
There is a difference between ‘going down’ and ‘a bad connection’. Testing reveals that this happens more frequently than you think.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=235290&site=pcg
Further, also doesn’t work if their master servers are down. Or five years from now when they shut the server down. Or one year from now when they shut the server down. (EA just shut down a '09 game’s server.)
No, you couldn’t. That’s the point i’m trying to make. If you’re playing an online multiplayer game, then everyone is sending their data in and recieving it back from a central server. If you drop out, if your game crashes, the data on your computer may well be lost, but it’ll still be on that server when you manage to connect back on it. Of course, you may well be screwed if the server goes down, but that’s true with this system, too - oh, except that if the servers go down, which they are somewhat wont to do, you’re screwed even if you have a perfect connection.
Congratulations on your excellent service. Others aren’t so good - including mine. Luckily, I played AC2 on the PS3, which I could do even when I had no connection at all.
I agree with both of those risks, but what’re they going to do instead? It’s pretty much try the newest DRM, make an MMO, or invest so little in the game that piracy doesn’t matter.
If they didn’t want to release a PC version, they wouldn’t release a PC version. Why would they need to play games like this?
Pirated games are not lost sales, pissed off customers ARE.
That’s ridiculous. Some people will pirate the game instead of buying it. Those are lost sales. I’m not saying every download is a lost sale here.
Palooka, I’m really sorry bud, but you don’t get it. At all. Pirates pirate because it’s fun and easy. They’re not going to go out and buy the game just because they can’t get it on rapidshare. The amount of lost sales are minimal, at the very worst.
Crap like this is the cause of declining computer gaming, not a response to it.
This is crazy. Like everyone I knew who was playing beta 2 back in '00 was using the same cdkey because WON.net didn’t enforce the check because of some sound card conflict. Once that was patched and everyone couldn’t use the same cdkey anymore, everyone bought their own version of Halflife. If the DRM was never put in, those sales wouldn’t have happened. That’s one of many times I can think of piracy preventing sales. I know I’ve pirated games that I would’ve bought because I could. If I couldn’t have pirated them, I would have bought them. (I don’t do this anymore since I realize piracy is killing PC gaming.)
Why do you think no one who pirates a game might have bought it?
You guys live in some fantasy world. There are 2 reasons why PC gaming has declined, and probably will disappear eventually:
and
Why PC gamers have such a hard time blaming the pirates is beyond me. They always blame the companies who make the games (or choose not to make them) for some reason.
Because when we pay for a game its the company fucking us not the pirates. Blaming pirating is nothing but an excuse for releasing shitty broken overpriced games, the reason consoles are doing better than pc is because when you put a disc in your console IT WORKS.
How many of those sales do you think would have happened if they HADN’T pirated the game first? a story about a lot of people buying a game because they enjoyed playing it after they pirated it doesn’t exactly help your point that pirating is harming sales at all you know.
Because the game companies are the ones going to extraordinary measures to inconvenience their paying customers, and they only inconvenience their paying customers. Somebody looking to pirate this will go online, find a cracked version, and play it. No problem. For them it will be like this DRM never existed. Meanwhile, somebody who actually paid is going to have their game crash anytime their internet goes out and whenever Ubisoft’s servers go down.
What is the point of putting this DRM on there at all? What is being accomplished besides pissing off the people that tried to do the right thing and pay you for your product or convincing people that might have paid into looking for a cracked copy because the cracked copy is better than the real one.
Piracy is a problem, fine. But it’s not my problem, it’s theirs. If they want my money they need to find a way to deal with it that doesn’t make their product actively annoy me. There’s no way I’m going to pay for any game with this stupid DRM on it. I’ll probably just wait a couple months and pick up a copy for the 360, used, from Gamestop.
Oh, D2 required you to have an active internet connection to play a single-player game? I didn’t realize that.
The debate about the validity of software piracy isn’t even relevant to a discussion of DRM. The salient points are:
DRM impacts legitimate use in a substantial portion of the user base, sometimes rendering the product unusable or placing severe enough limits on it (like the current example) that people will refrain from purchasing it at all once forewarned.
DRM does not deter or slow organized piracy in any way. Never has, and never will, without hardware locking. Arguably not even with - there’s organized piracy even for locked consoles, it just requires some electrical engineering knowledge.
DRM has a substantial implementation cost, from licensing fees to manufacturing requirements to technical support for customers running afoul of it.
What DRM targets is “casual” piracy - borrowing, renting or purchasing a game and then copying it, retaining the copy after the original is returned.
With widespread broadband and anonymized torrenting making organized piracy accessible to everyone, and software retailers implementing draconian return policies, casual copying is a shadow of what it used to be.
The argument to be made is that the obvious and non-negligible costs of DRM are larger than the costs, however exaggerated, of casual copying. It’s not only aggravating to the end user, it simply does not make sense even from a business point of view.
I disagree, i think the main thing DRM is supposed to stop is perfectly legal reselling of games.
We don’t really know how well PC games sell at the moment unless publishers release the information themselves. This year digital downloads will start to be added to sales figures and we will start to see the real state of PC gaming. I imagine it’s a lot healthier than some think…
If I was going to buy the PC version, I would buy it, put it on the shelf, then download the cracked version. But somebody got me GTA IV for Christmas, and after thinking about it I just couldn’t bring myself to install it. I’d already finished the PS3 version, I didn’t want to go through all the DRM and MS Live crap just to play it with a mouse and better graphics.
My internet connection sucks. On a day to day basis I don’t know how it’s going to behave. Some days (heck weeks) at a time it’s stable works fine and I never have to worry.
Some days (like this whole last week) it drops constantly. Goes slowly or in general acts like crap. Even if I’m having a good week however it always drops if the phone rings or I make a call.
If I’m on a WOW kick I know I have to tolerate it to some extent. I just play on the days my internet is behaving but there’s no way in hell I would tolerate this for a second for a single player game.
As for people blaming the pirates? Sure they may be part of the problem but if I was frisked everytime I go to the grocery store and then followed home to make sure I only have the items I purchased and then have to call them up and check with them if I choose to eat an apple I bought there meanwhile the shoplifters can just walk into the back door they forced open and are free to do as they please I wouldn’t be blaming them for how I was treated by the store owner. Sorry that’s a bit of a nonsensical simile I’ve had a long day.
You’re making some pretty broad and debatable assumptions.
This is true, however there’s little data on how many people are annoyed and impacted and how many of those people really don’t but the product. I suspect a sizable portion of the people across the internet railing on this will indeed buy the product regardless, and of those people a very small percentage will be adversely impacted enough to be unhappy with their purchase.
Some variables:
A = number of users who don’t buy because of DRM
B = number of users adversely effected after purchase
It doesn’t slow the aggressive pirate for sure. People who will never pay full price for a game under any circumstance will always be ahead of the curve. Whether it deters those casual pirates and those computer users too afraid of viruses or unfamiliar with editing system/programs folders and registries is up in the air. It’s very obviously greater number than zero though. Maybe people find navigating the foreign websites, installing torrent programs and installing unknown executables much more annoying and troublesome than DRM.
C = number of casual, novice pirates deterred who purchase instead of download
It’s not substantial in any meaningful way. It’s far, far less than the rights fees associated with developing for one of the consoles. These costs amount to a very small fraction of a percent of overall sales and if it leads to even 1 out of a 100 sales it’s been paid for many times over.
D = number of sales required to offset DRM costs
I think you’re wrong here. Yes piracy has cut into casual copying, since it’s more immediate than having your friend loan you a disk, but casual copying would still cut into sales. The reason casual copying has declined is because of the rise in console gaming above all else, but services like Gamefly, Gamestop and the ubiquity of Craigslist and Ebay have kept it as a real concern. DRM targets both casual copying and casual piracy in equal measures.
E = number of casual copies prevented which lead to sales
DRM targets casual pirates of all shapes; game renters, buy and return scammers and borrowers who don’t delete the copy on their machine. Non-hackers who will install a NoCD crack or install a pirated ISO with attached Key from a trusted source. It doesn’t target hardcore hackers, they are a lost cause.
Basically the math is something like this, is (E + C) > (A + D + 0.5*B)?
I tossed in that half credit for unhappy users, since they bought the game once but may not buy the sequel.
I’m betting the experts at Ubisoft have done the math and research and have decided that those casual pirates far outweigh the disgruntled users and bad press. When you take a step back and think about it it makes sense. No one is fighting over the hardcore pirates, that much is agreed, but it’s far more than just some vanishing proportion of casual copiers. If not for DRM casual copying would be booming and Gamefly and Blockbuster would be cranking out rentals like crazy. Ebay and Craigslist would be the hottest game marketplaces out there. The number of casual pirates who are still afraid of viruses and the uncertainty of bittorrent and rapidshare still far outnumbers the hardcore pirates and adding extra layers of hacking/patching to your DRM scheme goes a long way to moving where that line is drawn between the two.
I consider myself to be a good example, I know how to hack a game and I know where to get it. Generally if it’s more complicated than copying a NoCD patch I won’t bother and if game updates constantly break that patch I’ll deem it fruitless. If I have to look too hard or download too many executables to break the DRM the risk of viruses gets too large. I like NoCD cracks because using CDs is annoying and I don’t keep them next to my PC, not because I pirate, I’m not a avid enough gamer to want to risk a virus by doing much more than that.
Additionally, for all the talk of the bad press (group A in my equation) this stuff gets, I bet it’s a very small audience that cares or notices it. That audience who complain most vocally about DRM are probably the exact same people who are the aggressive pirates (or are in denial about their casual piracy). The game makers don’t really care about the hardcore power users who scour the insider blogs and tech reports, they are a small percentage of buyers and they are the ones who will foil DRM most easily. They care about the casual buyers who shop based on TV commercials and box covers, and the DRM isn’t invasive to them and they’d generally be too bothered to pirate if it’s made even moderately annoying.
I hate DRM and I think there needs to be a better way. I think crippleware is probably the wrong strategy since that group B is important to protect. But, abolishing DRM isn’t the answer.