DRM in todays PC games

[Cavernio]

Re: DRM in todays PC games

"Now the problem here is trying to both please the base that just wants a different iteration of a similar style and the group who wants creative innovation on multiple levels. "

It is a rare game indeed that appeals to everyone. It seems, forgive me, downright stupid to try and market to everyone, and if a company were to do so, they'd be out of business so fast their heads would spin. I can't even think of a game that's intended for the entirety of gamers as their audience. This unfortunately makes much of your following post moot.

Now I know all my friends aren't all civil rights activists, far from it, and yet I've had discussion where everyone's agreed that DRM is annoying and doesn't actually target the people who want to pirate. I prefer to think that people who aren't anti-DRM are largely unaware of what their effects have, simply because they haven't thought about it enough. In the gaming industry, DRM has had an affect beyond merely giving CDs keys and burn protection. xbox 360 is a prime example. You can't access the content you've paid for unless you're either 1. on your own console or 2. logged into xbox live with your account. Seems fair enough. This has proven remarkably annoying for many xbox live owners though. If your xbox broke down (which many of them have/will), and you sent it in and got a new one, you no longer had your original console, and so you had to be logged into xbox live. ie: you had to have an internet connection in order to play games which had absolutely nothing to do with the internet. Microsoft eventually fixed this problem by allowing you to go through a process which essentially make your new console 'your' console again, but for a couple years this was a problem for many paying consumers. There was another way around it I suppose, where you had to go through a painful process of getting a new ID through talking with customer support. Fun!
DRM isn't a problem if it only stops people from pirating. Well, I'm not sure I agree with that, but for arguments sake, I'll say I do, because regardless, it most certainly IS a problem when it interferes with paying consumers who've done absolutely nothing wrong.

[Vendetta21]

Re: DRM in todays PC games

I've had discussion where everyone's agreed that DRM is annoying and doesn't actually target the people who want to pirate.

Could that be a part of the purpose of DRM? Does that render it ineffective?

On another level, do you believe the mantra that "the customer is always rights" still holds true today?

I'm not trying to being antagonistic just trying to just see what you think here.

[Cavernio]

Re: DRM in todays PC games

Why on earth would DRM target people who don't pirate? I don't see why it would be the purpose, please explain if you have a viable idea. If something is not targeted at its target, then yes, that makes it ineffective.

About a customer always being right, I think that's an aside to the discussion. Personally, this is totally idealistic. If technology has unlocked something as amazing as file sharing, which means sharing a huge amount of art work, its petty and unethical to enforce the unsharing of art. Unfortunately, this doesn't fit in well with our capitalist society, and I think you already know how I feel about capitalism.

[devonin]

Re: DRM in todays PC games

I think it is viable as part of a goal to reduce the number of people who pirate, because without DRM it is ridiculouly easy for me to get games, especially games that I wouldn't otherwise buy. Like The Witcher

The issue here is though, you woudln't buy it. So by using DRM as a precaution, you simply don't have the game at all because you don't consider it worth buying. But then, the simple matter is "You don't consider it worth buying" which means whether there was DRM or not, you woudln't pay for the game.

However, if the game were not protected, so you -did- pirate it to try it out because while you wouldn't pay, you'd still try it free, you might discover that you like it so much that you -do- want to pay for it and go buy it. Or perhaps a friend is watching you play, likes it, and decides to go buy it.

DRM seems to really only prevent people from getting the game who don't particularly want the game in the first place anyway. Sure, it stops pirates from pirating, but it doesn't make pirates go pay for it, or the fact that it was protected wouldn't matter to them anyway.

I've ended up going out and buying several games that I never would have paid for, but because I pirated and enjoyed them, ended up paying retail either for additional features (such as online play of Blizzard games) or because having enjoyed the game, I wanted to support the creators thereof. Conversely, there is a whole host of games that are bogged down with as much security as they can manage that because I can't try the game without paying retail for it, I will simply never ever play.

so when another more hardcore PC gamer is unable to pirate a game, he would probably buy it, unless he is philosophically against DRM.

Most hardcore PC gamers play hardcore PC games which tend to revolve primarily around company-supported multiplayer options that basically demand that you own a legitimate copy.

Needing a unique copy of the game to access the feature you are primarily buying the game to engage in is a more effective form of copy-protection than anything physically enforced by the software.

********

To maybe restate my earlier points in a more useful manner, my point before about how the bleeding edge games have a smaller potential market (hardcore gamers with sufficiently hardcore systems only) than games designed with a lower budget and lower specifications (which have a much larger market of basically 'people who own computers') seems pretty valid to me. The cheaper your game was to make, and the more people who can run it, the less percentage of your market has to actually pay for the game to make it profitable. As a result, you are less likely to need any significant protection from piracy for a number of reasons:

1) A much smaller percentage of your potential customers have to be paying customers to turn a profit.

2) The smaller the budget, the cheaper your retail can be, making people feel less like they even -need- to think of pirating it.

Yes, for many of the biggest companies dumping tens of millions of dollars and years worth of man-hours into a design for a game, they feel obliged to protect their investment. They should. Given the smaller market for the game, the higher retail price for the game, and the combination of those two factors, they'd be idiots not to try and stop people from getting the game for free.

The point was that games like that (High budget, high retail, high system demands, lots of anti-piracy stuff) seem to be the baseline model for video game production currently. It's -hard- to find PC games coming out that don't cost at least 70 bucks new, and require pretty substantial requirements to run at even the middle graphics settings. It seems like the entire market who woudln't care too much about piracy, those people making quirky and interesting games that are engaging without feeling the need to be based around the newest gadgetry are all moving onto consoles.

As a result, as someone who is an ardent PC gamer not a console gamer, my impression of the market is that it is becoming flooded with games that barely interest me, and are certainly not worth an 80 dollar investment in the hopes that I might like it. The last PC game I bought was World of Warcraft. The last game before that was Diablo II.

And I think you'll find an increasingly large number of PC gamers who get the same impression that I have as time goes on, and so as consumers who are less than interested to drop 80 bucks on a brand new game our systems might not be able to run that we might not like, because we lack the option of getting a copy elsewhere to try it, we end up shrinking their market even more, and slowly convert into console gaming, where by and large, piracy isn't even a factor.

[Vendetta21]

Re: DRM in todays PC games

As a result, as someone who is an ardent PC gamer not a console gamer, my impression of the market is that it is becoming flooded with games that barely interest me, and are certainly not worth an 80 dollar investment in the hopes that I might like it. The last PC game I bought was World of Warcraft. The last game before that was Diablo II.

And I think you'll find an increasingly large number of PC gamers who get the same impression that I have as time goes on, and so as consumers who are less than interested to drop 80 bucks on a brand new game our systems might not be able to run that we might not like, because we lack the option of getting a copy elsewhere to try it, we end up shrinking their market even more, and slowly convert into console gaming, where by and large, piracy isn't even a factor.

$80? The top-end of prices I see in target and gamestop are $50, and the downward trend in pricing for games that aren't top-tier is incredibly evident. I see price-drops to about $30 for any game that isn't a big hit fairly quickly.

Also, DRM is a pretty wide term, and I've never seen a game in the last five years that didn't have DRM, so I think what we're talking about is invasive DRM. Bioshock's DRM was annoying but it wasn't invasive. Spore's is apparently invasive or something and people get upset by this.

I understand what you're saying entirely, but it doesn't seem too far a stretch these days to have a CD-Key and internet activation on every game. This is the route that a large chunk of the PC software market has gone. It seems like it is going to be a pan-market trend from now on. I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard did so on Starcraft 2. That doesn't mean pirating won't break these mechanisms, but I think the idea is to make it prohibitively harder to pirate.

If you aren't tech savvy, and you already look at pirating and think it is too complicated to try, then if it becomes more complicated you will be less willing to try it. Get what I'm saying? If the barriers towards being a pirate stay the same, pirates will come up with more and better ways of their practice, and it will become easier, and thus more people will be willing to engage in it. This is central to the idea of DRM, because every software developer knows that there is no way to stop the pirating community. Or if they don't then they are really, truly idiots, but I'm willing to believe that they understand this.

If we were still running on the DRM they used in the late 90s, it would be so immensely easy to pirate anything that I would pirate everything. I almost considered buying a Wii when I heard about that isoloader where you could burn Wii games onto a DVD. And I've bought Wii games before. But I wouldn't ever again. Why buy what you can get for free?

The idea of the egalitarian market model where information-products are free and they generate revenue through donations or purchases after the user has used them is deceptive because it is successful for some models these days, but it is only successful because these models are rare and are aimed at audiences where that is effective. If this was the market model as a whole I don't think it'd be as effective. I realize this isn't the same as the point you were making, and I'm not trying to say it is, because it isn't.

[Cavernio]

Re: DRM in todays PC games

I understand what you mean now Devonin, and I almost agree with you. The PC game is becoming extinct, and I think that is partially because of the design of the games made for it and that you can't try them out. But the most important reason for that is that I think that consoles, particularly the xbox 360, have done just about everything right in terms of getting people to buy them and games for them.
As I mentioned earlier, creating a game that must be used specifically on a console is itself DRM. The only console where I wouldn't consider it being so is actually the Wii, because the hardware and that the gameplay necessarily requires a TV (or a screen that's fairly large). Well, that and I suppose portable 'consoles' like a DS or PSP. Xbox's and PS's offer nothing new that a computer doesn't already have. It merely offers a specific piece of expensive hardware whose purpose is to solely run games which must be made specifically for it, instead of using a piece of hardware that everyone in their household has. You don't need to worry about pirated games for consoles. However, the expensive 600$, 400$ or 200$ is cheaper than getting an entirely new computer. Consoles also free play tests of just about every game, as well as offering cheaper, smaller games on the console itself, for a reasonable price.
Consoles have also always come out with a huge hype surrounding them; they're something novel, exciting, and once you have the console, you're going to have to buy games for it. Computers just don't have that going for them.

Games prices? Well, I don't have a Target or gamespot near me to rely on. I have EB games, Walmart and ToysRUs. Newer games I see are around 60$. Older games that aren't used are all of 5$ cheaper than they were new (I bought diablo II a year ago or so for something way too expensive), used games are all of 10$ cheaper and are, well, used, and unpopular games, contrary to what vendetta says, simply aren't available for purchase after the first, small shipment sent to store is gone. The only games I see for 30$ are Wii games, and there are few of them.

[Coolgamer]

Re: DRM in todays PC games

PC games becoming extinct? Nonsense. The independent movement is booming with freeware and shareware, and with games by non-corporate players. Mods are plentiful. The era is just beginning.

[xinpig]

Re: DRM in todays PC games

Crysis was one of the most pirated games of all time just because of the really high system specs for the time. DRM turns some people to piracy. On amazon.com many people expressed their annoyance at the DRM and refused to buy it, as well as one star rated it. I think Steam is going somewhere with how they are selling the games. Have the program be entirely online, so then you dont need checks to play since you are already online.

[Vendetta21]

Re: DRM in todays PC games

Games prices? Well, I don't have a Target or gamespot near me to rely on. I have EB games, Walmart and ToysRUs. Newer games I see are around 60$. Older games that aren't used are all of 5$ cheaper than they were new (I bought diablo II a year ago or so for something way too expensive), used games are all of 10$ cheaper and are, well, used, and unpopular games, contrary to what vendetta says, simply aren't available for purchase after the first, small shipment sent to store is gone. The only games I see for 30$ are Wii games, and there are few of them.

I went into EB yesterday and Fallout 3, Red Alert 3, and FarCry 2 for PC were all $49.99. PC games rarely go up to $59.99. If we are talking about Xbox 360 and PS3 games, then that's a different story because I don't buy them. And DRM is wholly a moot argument there because to evade the in-built DRM requires voiding your warranty and serious technological expertise, and even hard-core pirates often don't dabble in that because the machines are expensive and they don't want to take risks with them.

Wii games also seem to top out at 49.99, and DS and PSP games top out at 39.99.

The downward pricing trend seems to operate on something of a 2 month cycle, and it is especially apparent with PC games. Stores like Gamestop don't often downward price something, but stores like WalMart and Target do because they turnover product lineups like crazy and they want to expedite the removal of surplus. Age of Conan was $50 four months ago, then it was $30 two months ago, and now it is clearance for $12.28. This model for AoC is indicative of most PC games that aren't big sellers.

Though the titles you probably want, for the most part, will stay at their release price for 6 months to a year, they will come down a notch when their sales start coming down. Mass Effect is now $40, and this was effective around 6 months after release.

[Cavernio]

Re: DRM in todays PC games

Touche cool-gamer. I'm bitching too much.

Vendetta: Guess I'm wrong about a lot of prices, although there still may be differences between the US and Canada, if you're American.

[Vendetta21]

Re: DRM in todays PC games

Canada.

Oh. Sorry rofl. Yeah you guys get the crap deal on everything. Like when the Canadian dollar was worth more than American dollar and stuff at WalMart in calgary was still like 30% more expensive than the dollar I was like "Wow they really get reemed on prices here."

And it was negative 44 degrees celsius out and you couldn't even make a snowball with the snow it was just a frozen shithole where every time the wind picks up a little any exposed piece of skin gets obliterated, and I was like "Stuff is more expensive, there's nothing but oil and snow here, and the potato pancakes at smitties don't taste like potatoes. Why the hell would you want to live in Calgary."

I'll admit the metro system and the 9 miles of covered walkway between shopping centers was pretty rad, but seriously, Calgary sucks, and in this instance it is a microcosm for most of Canada.

[Coolgamer]

Re: DRM in todays PC games

The thing is, if you know where to look, games that are made by third-parties or that are DRM free are literally everywhere.

http://www.manifestogames.com/ has made a successful business model from providing games made by individuals and small corporations, for very small prices, with NO DRM. You can get a relatively good game from there for just $5 and download it instantly. The money is mainly used to directly support the makers of the game, eliminating the middle man of the corporate powers pocketing money.

For regular corporate games that support it, modifications and user made patches are plentiful. For example, there's a patch for System Shock 2 that totally overhauls the graphics and textures to maximum effect, making it seem almost like a new game.

User created content is something consoles have generally not supported, and only now consoles are connecting online to support it. However, they still monitor the content to fit "company policy". PC Gamers don't have to deal with that. We can literally hack games code by code, release custom patches to fix things, release content. Want to make Unreal Tournament 2003 a racing game? There's a mod for it.

Companies that use DRM will either continue to use it or learn that people will find alternatives.

[UserNameGoesHere]

Re: DRM in todays PC games

I think it is simple.

DRM or any sort of copy protection or binding, while apparently designed to protect sales and prevent piracy, serve only to hinder legitimate customers and thus discourage them from future purchases.

It serves the opposite of its theoretical intended purpose.

Software pirates either crack the protections themselves, patch the software, then distribute it, or they download such crack-patched software that others have uploaded somewhere. They get to play an unencumbered game.

Legitimate customers buy the software and are subject to any and all idiosyncratic whims of the copy protection of that software. It is the case sometimes that a false positive happens, which means that a legitimate customer is accused of having pirated software, and thus the software will refuse to run for that user. The software pirate, meanwhile, is not faced with this. Is that fair?

Anyone who does any serious computer work understands these issues. They understand that DRM or any sort of copy protection is a failed attempt and can only serve to hinder and discourage actual customers while not serving to curb piracy in any statistically significant measurable way.

The problem is that those who understand these things are not those who are making the decisions to put the DRM or copy protection in there in the first place. They are told to do so by their bosses (or their bosses' bosses, etc...) who likely do not have a firm hold on technical knowledge and, instead, have been convinced somewhere along the line that such "solutions" actually work. In any case, faced with the situation where your boss tells you to include something, you include it in the software or you go find a different job.

It is really unfortunate, in my opinion, that the business types are the ones making technological decisions. It should be the technological types making technological decisions and business types making business decisions.

Also you will notice there are some companies which do not encumber their software with DRM or other forms of copy protection. I would encourage each and every one of you to consider purchasing from such companies before you consider purchasing from DRM/copy protection advocating companies.

There are many free demos of things out there as well. I would also encourage each of you to try out a free demo of whatever game (or software) you were going to buy before purchase. This will let you know if it will work well on your computer beforehand. If a company won't make a free demo available, then how should you know it would even work correctly on your computer without risking purchasing it just to have it possibly fail and to be out however much money it cost?

Surely, software piracy in any form is a bad thing. But it is my personal belief that aggressive forms of copy protection are far worse. I think companies need to extend goodwill towards their customers by not shackling them with DRM or others and, instead, rely on this goodwill to further sales. Yes, there will be piracy with such a system in place but there would be piracy regardless. At least you aren't harming your legitimate customers this way.

--my thoughts

[tsugomaru]

Re: DRM in todays PC games

I still think that DRM is a bad idea, but regardless, there are plenty of legitimate customers out there who aren't too bothered by the idea of DRM. In theory, DRM ruins customer experience if they aren't able to correctly install the game within the number of times you are allowed to use the game or if you have to download the game on multiple systems. However, for your typical customer, they are able to correctly download the game on their computer and play it once or twice and put it away, never to be touched again. I have several friends who bought a legit copy of Spore, played it once, and have never touched it ever again. They didn't say their experience was extremely good, but I believe that's more of the game's fault than the DRM protection. They also didn't say their experience was ruined just knowing that they were limited to X amount of installs or the fact you had to play online. I don't think being online is such a big issue anymore because a lot of people always connected anyway.

~Tsugomaru

[Cavernio]

Re: DRM in todays PC games

I dunno if this is DRM or not, but I can't seem to stream video from my computer to my xbox through my wireless connection if I have iTunes installed. I suspect that DRM on the part of iTunes is preventing the proper sharing.