News EA: Nobody cares about DRM

[CardJoe]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/10...es-about-drm/1

EA Boss John Riccitiello has voiced his own personal thoughts on DRM, but claims that the majority of gamers don't care.

[Hamish]

the 'majority of gamers' buy every rehashed release of <insert generic EA sports game here> so tbh, he's probably right...

[Grasshopper]

"I personally don't like DRM. It interrupts the user experience. We would like to get around that. But there is this problem called piracy out there,"

There is that problem called stupidity out there too.

[impar]

Greetings!

Informed gamers care.
Just cancelled my pre-order of FarCry2.
It comes with limited installations courtesy of Securom.

Unbelievable the amont of money I have saved not renting these games.

[airchie]

Interesting to hear he realises that DRM interrupts the user experience and doesn't like it yet he seems to think its a solution?
Since when did any DRM solve piracy?
I'd love to hear some high-level exec answer the question of "Why use DRM if it doesn't stop piracy?".

[Flibblebot]

The problem is that pirates don't care about copy protection. It's ripped from games quicker than you can type SecuROM, so the whole piracy excuse is a fallacious argument.

[ChaosDefinesOrder]

DRM doesn't do a damned bit of difference to piracy - the pirated versons have been cracked to remove the DRM sometimes weeks before the main release - the ONLY people affected by DRM are the legitimate buyersrenters of the games!

Unfortunately, companies like EA still hide behind their rocks claiming that it makes a difference. Those The Witcher guys have the right idea - try and create a game worth buying in the first place and just ignore the inevitable piracy as it's going to happen whatever you do!

[shigllgetcha]

0.2% sounds very small but in real terms but with over 1 million sales it amounts to 20,000 "having an issue"

DRM is really just painting everyone with the same brush and treating everyone as a criminal/pirater.

i dont know but at the end of the day your either gonna be interested enough in buying the game or your gonna pirate it and you were never gonna buy it anyway.

[Jordan Wise]

what a stupid thing to say, why doesn't EA take note of what Cliff Harris is doing. It's just like music piracy all over again

[N19h7m4r3]

I recently felt like buying a new game for the lady and I but after reading about alot of them I won't be buying most of them, if any at all.

I was going to get Spore for both of us, but the lady friend is always on the move so likes her games on her Main PC, laptop and pc at folks place to game when she visits. So even though we both wanted quite a few EA titles they are not getting our money.

Instead we both bought Team Fortress 2 on steam and are enjoying it alot

[steveo_mcg]

Only music is a much larger industry with less technical customers, it can afford to piss them off.

[liratheal]

Personally, now I lack internet at home until BT pull their thumbs out of their rear ends, I'm finding it a shade annoying.

I wanted to play a few games, only, I can't play half of them because I have no internet.

If only I had the forethought to get a patched exe..

[AlexB]

Sigh. DRM doesn't stop piracy.

[Kúsař]

He's right! People who cares about DRM usually avoid buying it . That's why he said 99.8 *users*.

Originally Posted by liratheal

If only I had the forethought to get a patched exe..

Patched exe .

Actually, I bought ArmA Gold a week ago just to find myself surprisingly backstabbed by starforce(cz/pl... version). At last I resorted to downloading official patch 1.14 and...they patched starforce out. Good for me & them because I would have it returned(and there was not even single word it contains starforce. Double checked EULA, manual, CD...). Some publishers care about what customers are saying, some don't...

[bigniall]

Originally Posted by shigllgetcha

0.2% sounds very small but in real terms but with over 1 million sales it amounts to 20,000 "having an issue"

That would be 2000 actually........

[Dreaming]

I've actually corresponded with my MEP on the issue of DRM who has acknowledged that the issue of lack of information being passed to customers prior to purchase about DRM restrictions on intellectual property goods is an important issue, and as such has referred the issue to the European Commissioner responsible for the Internal Market to get his thoughts.

[xaser04]

Originally Posted by shigllgetcha

0.2% sounds very small but in real terms but with over 1 million sales it amounts to 20,000 "having an issue"

DRM is really just painting everyone with the same brush and treating everyone as a criminal/pirater.

i dont know but at the end of the day your either gonna be interested enough in buying the game or your gonna pirate it and you were never gonna buy it anyway.

0.2% of 1 million is 2,000 not 20,000.

[Tyrmot]

Personally, I think his figures are pretty wide of the mark, just like the other 87.8% of statistics that are made up on the spot.

In any case, I'll be sticking to my guns of never buying any SecuROM off of EA, so far they have lost over £100 of my money and counting... If you multiply that by the 1000s of people doing the same, that is adding up to a fairly large loss of revenue for EA. Maybe they think that's less than piracy is costing them, but it seems they're just kidding themselves.

I get the feeling personally it's probably more to do with the psychological feeling that they are 'doing something' about piracy of their games rather than a cold economic assessment of what it's actually costing them vs what they are gaining (which is of course a figure it's probably impossible to accurately work out).

[trickster]

I'm not sure I entirely understand all the problems people have with DRM etc.
i've recently bought and played Mass Effect (wanted PC version not X360), Spore, Crysis: Warhead and others (Farcry 2 on pre-order) and never had a single issue. I don;t find the need to constantly re-install software and I change bits of hardware maybe twice a year so the limited installs thing never becomes a problem.
i certianly won't cut my own nose off to spite my face by not buying something just because it has SecuROM.

I get that all this DRM stuff does nothing to stop piracy but then again, EA may put poor sales of a good game down to piracy when actually its just people not buying (or playing) the games in protest.

Not buying a game only hurts the industry and the individual who doesn't.get to play the game.

[steveo_mcg]

Gamers are not here to support the industry, the industry is here to provide a service to gamers. I'm not going to buy a game just to avoid "hurting the industry" if i don't want it or disagree with its policies then tough, i'm not going to continue to support and industry who is not listening. Much the same way as i no longer buy cd's and very rarely go to see movies. I really don't care if the industry folds if this is the way it wishes to treat its customers, if EA fails tomorrow 5 other companies will take its place no loss.