News Good Old Games: DRM drives gamers to piracy

Piracy is killing the pc games market! How many times have you read this statement from a games developer or publisher?

Piracy never in a million years killed off pc gaming. The fact that if I go and buy a PC game its totally valueless as soon as I've installed it because of DRM is why I am very very selective about titles. Now say I buy a game for my son's XBOX 360, I pay £40 and it turns out to be not very good, I put it back in the box take it back to the shop and get a decent proportion of that 40 pounds back, so I can afford to be a little less choosy in what I buy.

IMO that's why a lot of people will download a PC game, 30, or 35 pounds and never ever a chance in hell of getting ANY of your cash back at all.

 

I haven't managed to get the last Red Alert running on Steam in "Offline".
Nor the last C&C.
Nor GTAIV

 

For the comment on DVDs, I agree. Its annoying when I want to watch a movie that I am FORCED to watch a 15 seconds clip on copy right protection, then in a lot of cases be forced to watch 3-10 minutes of previews...MAYBE being able to fast forward them or in some cases actually skip them (heaven forbid!)

I bought the movie, I just want to watch the darned thing, not have to make popcorn and visit the loo after putting the disc in and having it ready.

I haven't run in to any really restrictive DRM for games, but then again I don't buy many either...but bad DRM would deffinitely keep me from buying a game on principal if not for the fact that it would annoy the heck out of me and prevent me from enjoying it.

 

While not strictly DRM, I spent 1 1/2 hours wrestling to get games for windows live working on Saturday so I could get my legally bought copy of Bioshock 2 to work. The game doesn't let you create savegames unless you use this horrendous piece of bloat, and in addition requires two key activations.

After I finally got it up and running after the installer trashed itself a couple of times, this was the end result --



*Every* rig I've used (including friends) seems to have problems with GFWL, at least initially, of some kind. The hoops I had to jump through to get the Fallout 3 DLC working for a friend were ridiculous, and there's no way an average user could perform them. No wonder a lot of people prefer console gaming.

I'd have no qualms with piracy to circumvent this sort of nonsense, only I don't trust torrents... you've no idea where they've been and what they contain.

Ironically it could be the case that torrent releases may contain more easily removable malware than shop bought games, and that's pretty awful, IMHO.

 

I play games on my laptop while I'm on the move. A lot of the time I don't have an internet connection.
As such, I avoid games that require always on connections.

There have been a few lost sales from me there.
I do use GOG for that reason. I've even rebought games from them (eg BG & BG2) that I already own as I don't have to worry about needing a CD anymore.

 

I'm looking for a cracked version of far cry 2, why? Well the game will no longer install on my computer anymore. I payed for a game that no longer works cause of bloody install limits =/

 

"Bypassing DRM" for most comes down to simply downloading a cracked copy via BitTorrent and there are millions of users capable of doing that, it doesn't require much technical expertise.

The long term problem for publishers is where someone has to resort to P2P to access a game they've legitimately bought and subsequently decide to use P2P in future. While there are risks (dodgy downloads, ambulance-chasing lawyers), they are marginal compared to the continual inconvenience of supporting the games industry (registering with an online store, placing an order, having to install extra software to download it, going through activation, contacting customer support when any of the previous steps fail, etc).

Yeah, I didn't appreciate the fake closure either - but GOG did give all their subscribers a free game (Jagged Alliance - Dangerous Games) as compensation so I'm happy to forgive them.

Unfortunately, it is only paying customers that are affected and while only a minority will encounter problems at the very start, it is almost certain that everyone who paid will lose out eventually (the online music industry has multiple examples of this).

This is probably the real reason behind DRM - it gives publishers the ability to monitor (and ultimately control) their products' installation and usage. Once they get week-by-week figures (with no delays or inaccuracies due to, say, retailers) it is probably like a drug - easy to get hooked on and used to justify future business decisions.

Systems that do "per-play" checks and tie people into a single account (Steam being the largest by some margin) also lend themselves to more detailed analysis like: What type of games are most popular during specific holidays? Do world events (natural disasters, conflicts) have an impact on sales, and of which game types? What link is there between hardware setup and games purchases? Such data mining could also be focused down to individual users - find out what games they like best and then charging a higher price for them (wouldn't work on everyone clearly, thanks to price comparison engines, but it should work on enough to make it worthwhile and it would show which users were price-savvy - valuable data in itself).

Control of course, is even better from the publisher's side of the fence. Unfortunately, as long as a significant portion of the gaming public are prepared to "tolerate" it, such DRM will almost surely continue.

 

I only have mobile broadband so an always on connection is bl**dy expensive to play a game.

A one time activation online is fine (as long as I can get online!).

As for the DVD issue - I hate it when a disc refuses to play in my PC (which is a bit of a pain as it is my media centre).

 

Completely agree, when i built my current computer I took it to my friends house for a mini lan session to test it out, got to his house, installed windows, installed firefox, downloaded updates, Then installed GTA IV, it was quite literally the 3rd thing installed on my computer, and it still said my disc was invalid. Ended up downloading a cracked copy that worked first time.

 

"No wonder a lot of people prefer console gaming."

What's the rate/level of piracy on Xbox/PS3 I wonder?

 

Probably quite high. I'm sure they mentioned on one of the old CPC podcasts that they'd had a work experience lad who was "very knowledgable" about that sort of thing.

 

please, bit tech.. get rid of the auto-playing videos ... I just enabled my flashblock to turn it off

also - I will definitely be buying The Witcher II if nothing else to support CD Project's anti-DRM business practices ... (oh, and I enjoyed the first one as well )

 

Random maths time - feel free to correct me. I just went through some data to compare PC torrents to PS3 and 360.

The highest seeded games on their relevant formats:

Highest PS3 game seeded 220 times.
Highest 360 game seeded 466 times.
Highest PC game seeded 5226 times.

Quite a discrepancy between PC and PS3 and 360. But, to bring the PC down to the same level I just totted up pages of various PC games right down to a game on the PC being seeded 449 times. So not the same as PS3 but not far off 360.

The grand total was 121,852 individual PC seeds HIGHER than the highest 360 seeded game. All of these seeded games are constantly being leached.

The PC is a very accessible machine that helps us achieve a lot of different things. Including having 261 times (261x) more seeds available to download. Not driven by DRM. Driven by a lack of DRM.

 

I'll buy this game for the simple fact that it is DRM free.

 

I've done that to my games before. I've had games that I bought refuse to start because it detected other programs that emulate programs on my computer. I ended up having to crack it so I can play my legally bought game!

 

I'm gonna buy Witcher 2, not only because the game seems awesome but also as a statement. As I say to my roomate who bought ACII and creashes almost every two hours due to our connection; Vote with your wallet, they'll listen.

 

Couple of points...

@Leveller ...to what extent does the higher PC number reflect the number of PC's out there compared to number of consoles AND the relative ease to torrent on a PC compared to consoles (I have no idea as to the ins and outs of console pirate downloads)?

@those saying "gonna buy Witcher 2 'cos of no DRM" ...could it be this article was a sales pitch? And you've bought in to the programme?

Cynic? Moi? Nay!

 

A company that's trying to pioneer a new business model is looking to get sales? No way!

The Witcher 2 having no DRM has been announced months ago. Don't you agree it's a good thing though? They've already given me an unprecedented and excellent service with gog.com so i fully intend to support them with my purchases.

 

Too often I have had to use dubious and sketchy software (cracked exes for the most part) just to get certain games to work, most recently GTA IV. That's what DRM has done, made my experience more troublesome and i'm sure Rockstar would brand me a pirate and punish me, for spending my good time to play their games, despite the fact I've already paid good money for it.

DRM really just makes me think twice before purchasing a Windows title now, because I'm afraid it will be more trouble than it's worth.

 

as i keep saying over and over. lower prices will reduce piracy not drm. a game can make just as much money, if not more if they were to sell it for $5 -15 instead of $50. they just have to be willing to make their money on volume sold rather than fewer high cost sales. often games end up in that price range anyway after a year or three. it makes sense to me to have a lower price when it's new and 'hot' to encourage a large number of sales. you'll still have piracy even then, but i would speculate the number would be far less than it is now.