Why Bother With DRM? 376
Brad Wardell of Stardock and Ron Carmel of 2D Boy recently spoke with Gamasutra about their efforts to move the games industry away from restrictive DRM. Despite the fact that both have had their own troubles with piracy, they contend that overall piracy rates aren't significantly affected by DRM — and that most companies know it. Instead, the two suggest that most DRM solutions are still around to hamper a few more specific situations. Quoting:
"'Publishers aren't stupid. They know that DRM doesn't work against piracy,' Carmel explains. 'What they're trying to do is stop people from going to GameStop to buy $50 games for $35, none of which goes into the publishers' pockets. If DRM permits only a few installs, that minimizes the number of times a game can be resold.' ... 'I believe their argument is that while DRM doesn't work perfectly,' says Wardell, 'it does make it more difficult for someone to get the game for free in the first five or six days of its release. That's when a lot of the sales take place and that's when the royalties from the retailers are determined. Publishers would be very happy for a first week without "warez" copies circulating on the Web.'"
Hmmm (Score:2, Interesting)
Saw It in Music! Coming Soon in Games, E-Books (Score:5, Interesting)
Brad Wardell of Stardock and Ron Carmel of 2D Boy
I don't know who that is but a few days ago I submitted a story on an interview with Sony's CEO [slashdot.org]:
In an interview with Nikkei Electronics Asia this month [nikkeibp.co.jp], Sony CEO and chairman Howard Stringer revealed an interesting point about open technologies: 'Customers will refuse to accept it unless the technology is open. Youth in particular really dislikes closed technologies, closed systems and the like. I think the failure of AOL LLC of the US is good evidence of this. When the Internet was just beginning to spread, AOL boosted its subscriber base by providing special services only to its customers. After a while, though, customers began rebelling, complaining that they weren't children. Because AOL wanted to keep them locked up in a narrow portion of the immense Internet cosmos, open technology was created. Sony hasn't taken open technology very seriously in the past. Its CONNECT music download service was a failure. It was based on OpenMG, a proprietary digital rights management (DRM) technology. At the time, we thought we would make more money that way than with open technology, because we could manage the customers and their downloads. This approach, however, created a problem: customers couldn't download music from any Websites except those that contracted with Sony. If we had gone with open technology from the start, I think we probably would have beaten Apple Inc of the US.' He then mentions that Sony has a chance to provide something that Apple can't. Sounds like somebody should inform him of DRM-free iTunes [slashdot.org]. However when asked about customer confusion over too many open technologies, he claims that the customer will always like choice so the more the better.
Didn't get published so I thought I'd post it here as evidence that even the music distribution companies are saying, "Why bother with DRM?" Not surprising now that Amazon and iTunes are doing it though. I predict everyone will eventually pull their heads out of their asses, it just will take some longer than others.
DRM for DVD is bad... DRM from network is evil. (Score:1, Interesting)
Stardock can claim all they want against DRM. Their own "online" registration of game architecture, remove the first sale law for every American.
You can't sell a Stardock game because it is tie to your account, and tie to your PC.
Want to install the game on your girl friend PC? On your children PC? Yep... install it, but you will not get update of your game. So,... they simply release buggy version that need update and user tie with their new DRM network solution.
BRAD, STOP claiming you are on the good guy side, when you simply remove the restrictions from DRM on the DVD and put the same restrictions, over your network.
Re:first weeks is exclusively "warez" (Score:3, Interesting)
SaaS is the Answer (Score:2, Interesting)
Used games don't make Publishers any money.
Pirated games don't make Publishers any money.
Solution: Games should use the Software-As-A-Service Model.
Imagine paying a "small monthly fee" for say GTA-IV, or a library of GTA games.
Your "small monthly fee" would cover :
- Saved game storage
- Game updates
- Technical Support
Imagine paying to receive a brand new PS3, and a full library of games.
When you are bored with one game, simply pay to play another!
For other small monthly fees, the publisher would also retain your saved games per month.
Nothing to update, nothing to activate, nothing to buy/sell or worry about.
No games to lose, backups to make, etc. All your games are available, simply replace the hardware, which could be covered by another "small monthly fee".
Computing is a commodity, like electricity. People should get used to paying as they use it. Nobody needs their "own" "Personal" computer, just use a cloud service of some sort.
Re:Encourage piracy? (Score:3, Interesting)
Used console games are where the real heartache is. I'm not aware of a way to play pirated xbox360 games or ps3 games in a way that doesn't void the warranty (very important with the RROD floating around) or online play. That being said, if I have the choice between paying 35 for a new copy, or 20 for a used copy (with cd-inspection, or course), guess which I'm going to pick? Or even better, if I have the choice between the inflated $60 or a discounted (with membership card) 45 for a 3 day old game that someone bought and then sold back after beating, which do you think I'll pic?
Granted I haven't bought a game form eb or gamestop in over a year, but for average joe halo, the choice is just as clear.
How'd the DRM work out for Spore? (Score:5, Interesting)
Let us consider, for a moment, a DRM-loaded game from the past year.
Spore.
Its DRM was considered by some to be so limiting that some people simply never played the game. People were exasperated that, at release, it allowed only one user account per copy. That installs couldn't be "restored" by uninstalling the game (many of these things have been added since).
OK, so all that said, copies of Spore were still readily available for download a week prior to release on torrent sites all over the world. Despite cumbersome DRM, that in some cases prevented actual customers from being able to extract full enjoyment from the product they purchased, anyone that wanted a DRM-free copy could still have gotten one prior to the release of the game.
Lesson: It. Doesn't. Work.
Maybe...maybe it prevents someone from taking the game to a friend's house and installing it, or the like. But it isn't preventing wide-scale piracy, even during that "critical first week".
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Lost Sale Fallacy (Score:3, Interesting)
The great flaw in this argument is that you miss one case: People who will pirate because it's cheap, but do have the money and would buy it if the free option didn't exist.
Yes, those people exist. Yes, most people will choose "free" over "not free" any day of the week, especially those who don't consider copyright law to be worth the paper it's printed on.
I mean yes, the numbers thrown around by the BSA are complete nonsense. But the number in most cases for lost sales is > $0. If actually effective DRM existed, you'd see it adopted a fair bit.
Re:Play at your friend's house? Sell a game? Nope. (Score:3, Interesting)
At least with Steam you can download it as much as you want, so there's that.
I get your point, though, and now that you just about have to have multiple copies of a game to fire it up at a LAN party I imagine we'll just stick with UT2K4 and earlier, plus L4D (a special case, and something that we'd all been dreaming of for years, so of course we all bought it). Certainly, the bar for buying a multiplayer game has risen since it became impossible or complicated to install one copy on several machines for a quick LAN session, at least among the people I game with. If we don't all want to buy it, there's no reason for anyone to buy it, and only with very rare exceptions (L4D) do any of us do much multiplayer FPS gaming outside our rare LAN parties.
It's kind of like board gaming, which we also do a lot of. If we all had to have a copy of each game to play, I doubt we'd do it as much, and we'd buy way fewer board games.
It's a pity none of us can stand console FPS games. The last one we had fun playing (rather than just frustration) was Perfect Dark, which we still break out from time to time. Oh well, there's still SSB.
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
First Sale Doctrine much?
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
No, the game companies ought to give the games away for free, and charge people to connect to their servers.
UsernameID should be enough to satisfy DRM, since it is tied directly to a user. People buying a RETAIL copy of a game should get a certain number of USER registrations (suggested value = 5) for people in a house.
If they did this, then they would have their cake, and eat it too. Single people could share their Install Code 4 times and spread the popularity and such.
The solution is EASY if one can just wake up to it.
Re:SaaS is the Answer (Score:5, Interesting)
Also the moment I have to pay every time I open up a text document is the moment I stop using computers at home period and I'm a developer. There is no reason for every company in the world to nickle and dime me. I won't pay a monthly subscription to play a game I already paid $50 for and I won't pay a monthly subscription to do basic things with my computer. I also wouldn't pay for a single listening instance of a song.
DRM, the First Week, and Gaming on the Long Tail (Score:3, Interesting)
I never buy a game in the first month, let along the first week of a release. Mostly, I'm waiting for the quality of the game to become apparent after some play in the real world, and also I don't like the bleeding-edge prices of new releases.
Avoiding weird DRM is another benefit.
After a few days or weeks, the real effects of whatever cockamamie DRM scheme the publishers crowbarred onto the game become apparent.
After a few weeks or months, applications like Alcohol 120 will adapt so that I can be assured of making backups.
After a few months to a year, the price starts to dip into my admittedly modest range. By then, I know whether I can keep the game for myself if the company goes out of business, whether I'm facing potential hassle in making my own backups, and whether the game is worth it in the first place.
After a few years, the game may re-release with digital distributors under no-DRM agreements geared toward truly enthusiastic gaming communities. Witness GOG.com [gog.com].
Gaming on the long tail rules -- provided you're not desperate to get hopped up on the Newest, Shiniest Thing.
Re:How'd the DRM work out for Spore? (Score:3, Interesting)
SecuROM found process explorer, refused to launch
SecuROM didn't like certain brands of DVD-R/RW drives, refused to launch
SecuROM found debugging applications, refused to launch
SecuROM found burning software, refused to launch
SecuROM installed shell extensions and hooks
All this from a supposed "disk check." Luckily, they packaged SecuROM in the launcher, not the executable itself, so you can bypass the DRM by simply running Fallout3.exe instead. On the bright side, at least it wasn't the version that requires internet connection and server authentication to play the game...
Re:SaaS is the Answer (Score:3, Interesting)
That model would mean the death of so much of what I love about games, that I'm not sure I'd bother to keep playing new ones. Certainly I've got a long enough backlog of older games to play that it'd take me a few years to get through, and that's not counting any re-plays.
I like being able to re-visit older games, like a book. I like mods, and very often they make the game so much better that it's hard to imagine playing it without them (Morrowind, Oblivion, Rome:Total War). I only play console games on the assumption that by the time I want to re-visit them, if I can't get the game and hardware legitimately then there'll be a PC emulator for it and a .torrent somewhere.
It doesn't sound like there'd be much room in that model for me or other gamers like me, so we'd just find other stuff to do. God knows I've got enough books on my "to read" list to last me for a decade or so, even if I stopped gaming completely and did nothing for entertainment but read. There's so much good entertainment I haven't seen/read/played/heard yet, in every form, that there could be no more music, games, movies, books, etc. made starting tomorrow and I doubt I'd even care for 15 years, if not more.
So, in other words... (Score:1, Interesting)
So this isn't so much about preventing piracy as it is about circumventing the first-sale doctrine?
No sympathy. If this is really the goal of such DRM systems, then their authors should go to jail. The first-sale doctrine is too important to allow to be subverted in this manner.
Reasonable Copy Protection (Score:1, Interesting)
In predominantly client-server based multi player games there is no real need for copy protection mechanisms as the account you are playing with is ultimately under the control of the provider. You can install the game on a thousand systems but without that account token you're unable to play the game.
For software aimed predominantly at a single users or users within a small LAN however (RPGs, Racing Simulators, etc) there is definitely a need for at least basic copy protection to prevent trading between players. Not that long ago (5-10 years?) the original installation media was generally considered prohibitive enough for the average user. These days with near zero day cracks and widely distributed and easily cloned installation media it just isn't.
I think most people can reasonably see the need for these protections to be in place and most understand the implications of downloading and using pirated software. The question is simply where the line is drawn for the obtrusive and sometimes downright malicious DRM in software today.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't speak for everyone, but I don't want to connect to a server if I don't have to. Most of my favorite games are primarily single player (ie. Civilization). A lot of them have a multiplayer component, but there are tons of people that never touch that.
For games that are primarily multiplayer, I agree that a small fee for the initial install along with a monthly fee is reasonable, but not for single player games. I think this is dangerous territory too. It could lead to separate single/multiplayer editions where they get to charge you extra for small additions to a game.
Re:Lost Sale Fallacy (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:SaaS is the Answer (Score:3, Interesting)
Here is the problem with SaaS: what happens when the internet connection goes down? Not Possible? Well it just happened to us due to mother nature.
We had 100MPH straight line winds here last Friday. I have an iPhone and was able to keep on top of Email, but we just got power restored today. We won't have internet until next week sometime and maybe even the week after. It's a problem. So much so that I had to leave town and stay at my Dad's house because we run a SaaS platform.
Fortunately, we don't host our own servers. They are in 3 different data centers managed by 2 different company in different parts of the country expressly for this purpose. So all of our clients not in the weather affected area were okay unless they tried to call for tech support because the phones where out.
As it stands now, we have power at the office. But they are cut off from email and the web still. Normally we use Google Docs a lot, but everyone has either MS Office or Open Office. But the developers outside of me are cut off. Our SVN repo is remotely hosted. No internet, no SVN updates.
At homes now, at least people can pop in a play-station disc or CD-ROM game and play it for a few hours without the internet.
Re:How'd the DRM work out for Spore? (Score:3, Interesting)
DRM is Digital Restriction Managament (Score:2, Interesting)
Besides preventing certain media players from being able to play certain music files or preventing DVD's from being able to run on different Operating Systems, DRM fails to make a proper case with digital media.
I don't think allowing open copying of commercial DVD's is a good idea but I also don't think blocking music files with a DRM is a good idea. There is no need to eliminate the idea of DRM but I think we have to put a logical cap on how we use DRM.
One of the biggest problems with DRM is OS support. Windows and Mac deal with DRM fine, but Linux and Unix don't cope well with DRM. I think if were going to allow DRM to live then we need to make sure it works 100% across all platforms. and not only on the most used platforms.
In the end DRM serves really no good purpose. DRM is really only a way to introduce problems into media and the Operating Systems that have to work with the media.
Thanks
Docmur
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with your scenario is that it assumes that the one would have purchased it anyway. There is no such guarantee.
Further your assumption suggests that DRM prevents the same thing from happening. I doesn't prevent it from happening, it only makes it difficult.
Third thing to consider is that many people who rightfully bought the game, but resorted to cracked version because the DRM version was horribly broken, now are telling people how to get the cracked version for themselves. Which means you haven't solved anything yet.
Why do people pay for ITMS or Amazon (or any of the other MP3 stores) for MP3s when they can be had for free (gratis) using a filesharing program?
My proposal suggests that most people want to do it the right way. Which is a reasonable assumption.
As opposed to the alternative assumption that DRM assumes, which is that your customer is a criminal.
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
Make it easier to get the game than to pirate it.
People who don't want to pay for the game won't care about which is easier.
Who cares about finding a Torrent or cracked version that isn't spyware/virus plagued when it is just as easy to go get it from the source?
People who don't want to pay.
The point is get to a point of "why would I need to Crack and Torrent something that is so easy to get from SOFTGAMECO?"
So that you don't have to pay.
If you offer a good product and service at a fair price, you'll have customers. Yes, there will be people who STEAL (yes I said steal) the game to play, but that is not the software company's problem. They are going to do it anyways.
True words. There's a difference between "customers" and "users". Customers will pay for your product because they believe it's worth the money. Those who don't pay for the product were most likely not going to buy it in the first place. They are not "lost sales".
I'll admit, I used to download games when I was flat broke (Uni student) but now that I have a job there's not really any excuse. IMO much of the problem is that people don't put as much value in games as they do in other possessions. I'd much rather spend AU$100 on something I need rather than on one game. Most single player games now are not worth even half of the RRP (based on dollars vs average play hours/replay value). There are some exceptions where games are huge and/or have good replay, and they're the kind of games that are worth the money.