DRM vs. Unfinished Games 462
Rod Cousens is the CEO of Codemasters, and he recently spoke with CVG about how he thinks DRM is the wrong way to fight piracy. Instead, he suggests that the games industry increase its reliance on downloadable content and microtransactions. Quoting:
"The video games industry has to learn to operate in a different way. My answer is for us as publishers to actually sell unfinished games — and to offer the consumer multiple micro-payments to buy elements of the full experience. That would create an offering that is affordable at retail — but over a period of time may also generate more revenue for the publishers to reinvest in our games. If these games are pirated, those who get their hands on them won't be able to complete the experience. There will be technology, coding aspects, that will come to bear that will unlock some aspects. Some people will want them and some won't. When it comes to piracy, I think you have to make the experience the answer to the issue — rather than respond the other way round and risk damaging that experience for the user."
hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't this just DRM in little pieces? (Score:5, Insightful)
No. (Score:4, Insightful)
No no no no no no no. Microtransactions are NOT the way to go.
There really isn't any solid, fool-proof way to fight piracy. Most DRM schemes make things bad for paying customers, while pirates just play cracked copies that have less problems than the legit versions.
That being said, a $10 drop across the board for new console games would go a long way. $60 is WAY too much for a console game. Sadly, the Humble Indie Bundle proved that on the PC, there isn't much you can do to fight it...offering non-DRM games for a single cent don't even necessarily work.
Standard "only my opinion, no guarantees to work, etc." apply.
FU - Things are already worse (for consumers)! (Score:3, Insightful)
Companies are considering officially releasing *worse* and *less finished* products?? They call them MMOGs, bub.
I've always hated that, whether through DLC or episodes or... well I put up with DOW and Civ4 releasing expansions but...
Please, god, will someone release a finished game? When's the last time that happened?
8-PP
Yep, that totally works in practice (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, totally worked for Dragon Age, for example. You can't get the DLC if you have a pirated copy of the game, so you definitely can't download giant bundles of all the DLC that can be decrypted and plugged into the game. Said DLC isn't up on torrent sites 2 days after the release.
If you're going to release DLC with micro-payments, don't "punish" pirates by forcing them to also not pay for your DLC.
Only way to really combat piracy is to have an online element that only works with a valid CD key. That won't stop piracy, though; it'll just make it less useful.
Heading the wrong direction? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it that none of these solutions involve making a product that people are happy/willing to pay for to begin with?
It's always about crippling something then fixing it later.
Dear game industry (Score:5, Insightful)
Folks have been telling you this for years, but many of you still don't seem to get it, so I'm going to repeat it yet again. People who don't want to pay to play your games are never going to pay to play your games. Either they'll find a way to play it for free, or they'll go find something else to spend their time on.
The average age of the gamer has been continuously increasing, and a bunch of us who grew up playing games are adults now and still playing. We're out of school, we work for a living, we have some disposable income, and we're willing to spend a portion of it on games. There are more people able, willing, and interested in spending money on video games than ever before. Worry about us more than you worry about the people who aren't interested in paying for your product. You'll never make any money off of them.
Now if the industry has grown itself too fast, or you've let development costs get too high, or whatever you've done to make your businesses unprofitable...well that's your problem, not mine. Blaming it on people who don't want to pay for your product will not get you any sympathy or extra profits. Sorry.
When I buy a game, I /buy the game/ (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure there is: make software so crappy that nobody wants to pirate it.
Crystal ball time... (Score:4, Insightful)
Game maker: Just give us five more bucks, and it won't be so crappy.
Gamer: That's a little better, but it's still pretty crappy.
Game maker: Oh! We fixed that. Five more dollars, please?
Gamer: WTF?!?!? There's DRM on this download.
Game maker: Oh yeah. Pirates figured out how to pirate our DLC. Sorry about that. Five more buck and all the female NPCs will be topless.
Gamer: Sweet! Keep the change!
Call a spade a spade (Score:4, Insightful)
This is simply "Demo that costs money, and still has other DRM". When you buy a game, you're buying a demo in which you have to buy the real game after. And in order to tie the download content to the demo you just bought, you need an authentication system. Likely online activation.
The only thing Rod is saying is that game companies should double-dip to ease the DRM impression.
NO (Score:0, Insightful)
with the insane costs of internet
with the caps
with the throttling
YOU want me to be online for a game to be played.....
NO
NO
NO
and i suggest you do it anyway so you can go right out of business and we can be done with twits like this.
I don't know. (Score:4, Insightful)
How about I buy a game. I install to my home computer, and to my laptop. I have an experience I can complete, and don't have to connect to some server to verify so if I bring my laptop somewhere, lets say to New York City for an extended business trip where the Hotel internet is intermittent at best and my air card won't work because I sandwiched between two high rise buildings, I can still play a game that I bought.
Ok, maybe my circumstances are a bit extraordinary, but I want what I pay for.
It was refreshing to actually buy a game recently (Dragon Age: Origins) and have a complete game to play without having to worry about authenticating to outside servers. I also appreciate that there are expansions that are optional, but there is no wall I will hit leaving me unsatisfied with the original game.
I do play EVE-Online also, and I don't mind the subscription, but I don't just play MMORPG's. There are just certain games that I want that I feel I can put back on the shelf someday with the satisfaction of completing it, and also the option to play the game no matter what my circumstances are. Am I asking too much for my $50?
I guess as an 80's generation gamer, I have different expectations. I still like going to the store (gasp!) to buy games. Hell, if there were still arcades around me, I might even go and drop a few dollars there.
Re:hmm (Score:2, Insightful)
To keep this whole discussion honest, yes it is. A registration code is a form of digital rights management. While more recent forms have been much more controversial, type in the wrong code and see if you get to play the game.
Re:Ok Rod.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, I'd say it's working out quit well for at least one [technewsworld.com] company [wikipedia.org].
Re:hmm (Score:3, Insightful)
The idea is the same; somehow make it so that you can't play the full version without paying for it...
Except it's not. DRM is about preventing you from copying or using content in ways or on devices that the copyright owner doesn't want you to. It has no relation to having to pay for something as you can stick DRM on content you give away for free and never charge for.
Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces? (Score:4, Insightful)
It will make the life harder for pirates. Every little push helps. Personally I enjoy the easiness that Steam offers.
Not really. The pirates get off on the challenge of cracking this stuff, and prestige in the community is directly linked to difficulty of the crack and time taken to crack it. This kind of stuff will just get them off even more.
What pirates are you talking about? Crackers, sure. But most people, the usual pirates, just want free stuff. When it's enough hard and complicated, they just buy the product. The casual users anyway, and that is what matters most to the game developers.
Re:You're going to charge me $30 upfront, right? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
To keep this whole discussion honest, yes it is. A registration code is a form of digital rights management. While more recent forms have been much more controversial, type in the wrong code and see if you get to play the game.
Not really.
You buy a code, and that code unlocks your game, forever and ever, the transaction is finished. It's true you couldn't use the full game before the code, but you hadn't paid for it yet.
The problem with DRM is publishers retaining control on stuff you already paid for, after the fact.
Re:You're going to charge me $30 upfront, right? (Score:2, Insightful)
double-dip (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not about getting rid or DRM, this is about the games industry figuring out how they can get more money by double-dipping. We all know that the price of games won't drop even though you now also need to pay residuals to get the full functionality.
Blizzard already trail-blazed that model with WOW and demonstrated that many people are stupid enough to pay full price up-front for a game that also requires monthly subscriptions.
Assuming the game is not fundamentally tied to playing on-line, such as an MMORPG, whats to stop pirates just extracting and distributing the extra downloadable content too (after they've got it once)?.
what about later? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, the Humble Indie Bundle proved that on the PC, there isn't much you can do to fight it...offering non-DRM games for a single cent don't even necessarily work.
At the same time, the Humble Indie Bundle also showed that there are a lot of people who are willing to pay for something that they could easily pirate. You had DRM-free games being offered in such a way that people could simply pass a link around and everyone could get free downloads, yet they still made over $1 million in sales.
And those people would wouldn't even pay a cent for those games-- do you really think they'd all rush out and buy the game if it were DRMed?
already doing this... badly (Score:3, Insightful)
They're already doing this, in the wrong way that they can only be expected to implement it: selling half-finished buggy crap at full price then charging for patches + content that they took out from the original game and calling it "DLC". I'm not against DLC in principle, it has excellent potential IMHO, but rather how it is often being implemented in practice.
Also, I'm not going to buy half a singleplayer game unless I can get the second half as soon as I've completed the first. Just like I don't watch half a movie or read half a book. I get "into" a game and play it a lot, then drop it and maybe have a run around a year or two later. The games that I'll pick up for long sessions with long breaks are few and far between (only one I can think of is Civ).
Multiplayer games however, this could work. I find:
- MP games often come out with too much content for people to get properly into, resulting in a long lead time of people being inexperienced with the levels.
- related to above, many people tend to pick a few favourites and just ignore other maps, even if they're still quite good. These maps may offer more value if introduced when they are adding freshness as the old favourites are getting a bit tired.
- the high initial price puts people off because MP games are "high risk" - good balance is hard to achieve.
- related to above, enjoyment of a MP game isn't only related to the quality of the game itself, but the quantity (and quality) of other players.
Most of the MP games I've got really into have stagnated from lack of fresh content as the game gets "old". Often these games go on for years longer thanks to some good modding, though fan made maps rarely fare so well.
Re:When I buy a game, I /buy the game/ (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed. If the game that comes in the box isn't up to snuff, I'm not going to buy it. Put as many fancy bells and whistles on DLC as you want, I'm not going to see it. Particularly not at first.
You only have one chance to make a first impression.
Re:When I buy a game, I /buy the game/ (Score:3, Insightful)
While I really enjoyed playing WoW, it cost insane amounts of money in the long run. I assume other MMORPGs are the same way.
I guess there is some kind of line there -- with an online game, they have to host the servers, which they can't do indefinitely with a one-time payment. But not all games require this, and for those I would resist having to pay a monthly fee when there is nothing obtained in return. Don't hook into online DRM crap for a game that's not played online.
Most of my games are now on the Wii, and while they're not cheap there are no ongoing costs once purchased except for all the AA batteries.
Is it so hard? (Score:2, Insightful)
Prince of Persia: Epilogue (Score:3, Insightful)
They're already pulling this shit. The new Price of Persia game doesn't really end and it is painfully obvious it's that way to sell you the "DLC", which is essentially the ending of the game. I got the game for 14, I would have murdered someone if I paid 60 and had to pay another 10 to witness the climax. For the PC version you can't even buy "Epilogue".
Fucking whores.
Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces? (Score:3, Insightful)
Now I enjoy just buying the product with a click of a button, see theres extra value in the product when you actually own it, and I also understand that people making these games wouldn't be making them if everyone were stealing from them like you.
You don't own it legally, because you just get a license, if anyone, the public domain owns copyrighted works, and authors have a monopoly on distribution.
If you are referring to the practical aspects of "owning", you don't own stuff that has DRM, because it can be taken away from you at the whims of the publisher. It's more similar to a rental. If you got it as an unauthorised copy, chances are that you get to keep it as long as you like.
Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not really sure that's true...
I thought of some of the fairly recent games that have had downloadable content...a few spring to mind. Oblivion, Fall Out, Dragon Age, etc.
A quick search on any torrent site will show you distros all packaged together of the game plus downloadable content.
Meanwhile for those of us who did buy the games, you can't move downloadable content around in some cases. For instance in Dragon Age, my copy came with Blood Dragon Armor and Shale. If I resell / lend / etc the game out, nobody else gets access to those without buying them.
Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces? (Score:5, Insightful)
First, parent *never* said he downloads stuff illegally - he's pointing out the flaw in the DRM system.
Second, good for you if you don't pirate, but that's irrelevant for the discussion, isn't it? We're discussing how this new system can stop "pirates", not if "pirating" is good or bad.
Illegal downloads exist, regardless of the morality of such actions. We're discussing a new system to stop them. If you're not interested in discussing that, why have you opened the story?
Re:hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but MMO's kind of inherently fit that model. Players enter into an MMO expecting the game will grown and change with the needs of the community. As the community grows larger, and develops specific interests in certain gameplay aspects, it is fitting that the developer continue to develop the game to meet that need.
Other games don't necessarily lend themselves to this. As a consumer, I can say that I am nervous that I will wind up paying more money for incremental delivery of content that should have shipped at release.
Re:Isn't this just DRM in little pieces? (Score:5, Insightful)
But only one (or a small team of) crackers needs to do the job once and assemble the all the files in one RAR, and then all the "usual pirates" will just pick it on their p2p networks.
Just like Securom: if each person needed to crack it individually, illegal downloads would be non-existent. The problem is that it only needs to be cracked once for all the other to use it easily, by copying a file or whatever.
Re:hmm (Score:3, Insightful)
Except for that little difference that shareware was free. Paying full price and getting half a game is something very different then paying nothing and getting the third of the game as in the case of Doom.
The one thing I don't really get is why there is so much focus on tons of tiny pieces of DLC. I don't want a game to be splintered into a dozen pieces that I then have to buy each on its own. For Mass Effect 2 for example I have no less then seven DLC things that I have to download and install manually on the PC and that is just the free bonus stuff, not even counting the pay DLC. How am I supposed to keep track of all that stuff? Not only have I to know that it is released, how to get it and how good it is, I also have to figure out how to access it in the games and then even figure out if it is game braking or not (bonus armors or items can screw up the games balance, so one might want to avoid them on first play through). What happened to those things we called add-ons? Where you would buy one big additional piece of content and then be done with it, instead of so many tiny little and often badly integrated pieces. I never had much problems with the quality of add-ons, but some of the DLC that BioWare has put out is of rather questionable quality, that you are wondering if anything of the core team was even involved in that or if it was created by an untrained intern.
Having a good gaming experience matters and that certainly doesn't improve by all management overhead that you get with DLC.
Re:Dear game industry (Score:5, Insightful)
You're misunderstanding what I said. Say someone wants to play a game but doesn't want to pay for it, for whatever reason. Maybe they're a kid with no money, maybe they're just a cheap bastard, or maybe they think that by pirating games they're somehow 'sticking it to the man'. Whatever, doesn't matter, they've got three options. They can:
1)Decide to pay for it.
2)Decide to pirate it.
3)Decide to not play it.
If you take away option 2, then that does not force them to choose option 1. I would argue that they're much more likely to take option 3 before they take option 1. Factor in the fact that it's really hard to actually take away option 2, and as a developer/publisher, you're pretty much just throwing money away by trying to take away option 2.
So yeah. Some people are going to play your game without paying for it. Get over it, go worry about something you can actually control, life goes on.
Re:When I buy a game, I /buy the game/ (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Without web2.0, the internet, the cloud, dongles, or the latest buzzword, doesn't mean it isn't DRM.
The problem with DRM is that it makes using the content a pain. Finding the booklet is a pain. Running steam is a pain. Registering software on each new peice of hardware is a pain. Submitting to a full body search is a pain.
It DRM was painless, for now and forever, then I really wouldn't have a problem with it. Well... I'd argue that the poor need to be able to steal it easily.
Downloadable content is the way to go. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Won't bode well with the gaming community... (Score:3, Insightful)
Huh. I don't think you're seeing a representative sample of the gaming community. I think the majority of gamers, even on the PC, are willing to fork over cash for DLC. (Slashdot is not a representative sample, and neither are the modding forums I frequent. Visit some Steam forums, or Fileshack, or pretty much any non-technical gaming forum, and you'll see that the overwhelming opinion is that people are willing to pay for DLC, as long as it's more elaborate than horse armor.
Oh, you'd probably like a source for this. Go here [steampowered.com], click on top sellers. That's right, the best-selling game at the moment is the one where Activision charges suckers $15 for 5 maps. Factor in the cost of bandwidth, and that works out to be, oh, a pretty freaking good deal for Activision.
P.S. I wish you were right.
Re:Yep, that totally works in practice (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, except that you actually CAN get the pirated DLC for Dragon Age, every bit of it. Check Pirate Bay. I did, and I'm running it. I have a legitimately purchased DVD version of the main game, and a legitimately purchased DVD version of Awakenings, but I flatly refuse to pay for something that is not issued to disk and that will only work if some server says I can run it. Now, if they issue all the DLC to a disk later, I will certainly be happy to purchase it (see Knights of the Nine for Oblivion), but...
Re:When I buy a game, I /buy the game/ (Score:3, Insightful)
Insane amounts of money? 200$ a year is insane amounts of money? (14$ a month*12 month + 34$ a year for each expansion pack(an expansion pack is usually around 50$ and gets released less than once every two years)) for a game that is continually updated with new content. That is less than the cost of 4 new A title games that you will probably spend maybe 20 hours each on. WoW is one of the cheapest forms of entertainment around.
Re:Oh goodie (Score:3, Insightful)
"A few minutes running from place to place" is the worst description of the game you could have ever devised
No, it's a very accurate description of the game.
You start the game, and have to sit through thirty-second animations just to get into the character creation. You create a character and have to sit through about ten minutes of poorly-acted, poorly rendered unskippable cut-scene in order to get to a point where you can actually control your character and make any kind of decision about what's going on. You go to a planet where you spend a minute or so running around before the game goes into another cutscene where you're forced to watch one of your Artificial Stupidiy squad-mates (who was obviously going to die from his laughable dialog on the ship) do something really stupid that you'd never have let them do. You get another couple of minutes of walking from that place to another place and shooting a couple of things with horribly consolised combat system (why do I have to press a special key to use cover when I could just, like hide behind the cover) while your AS squad-mates happily stand out in the open while the bad guys are shooting at you. Then you have to sit through another long, tedious, unskippable cut-scene before you shoot a few more guys. Then you have to watch another long, unskippable cut-scene where your character does something stupid that you would never do before you get sent back to the ship to sit through another long, unskippable cut-scene. Then you get to spend a couple of minutes walking around the ship before you're subjected to the next long, unskippable cut-scene.
A couple of minutes walking around between each tedious cut-scene is not a game in any sense that I understand; if I wanted to watch a bad SF B-movie I could buy one for $3 from the bargain bin and it would be over much faster without the tediously bad shooting sequences and, unless Tim Hines directed it, with far less walking.
Rod Cousens doesn't fully understand the issue. (Score:3, Insightful)
My answer is for us as publishers to actually sell unfinished games
I'm pretty sure that's what most of them are doing now. Things certainly are nothing like they were in the 8-, 16-, and even 32-bit days; back then, it was a little hard to find a truly shitty game and even the mediocre games were worth at least one play-through. Nowadays, they are so focused on fighting these different wars ("piracy", second-hand market, etc.), making games look good, and turning an easy profit that I actually think they forgot what goes into making a good game. There are still some truly great games here and there, but overall the bar has been lowered.
Personally, I don't think people really started pirating until after getting burned too many times by greedy publishers looking to milk their cash cows. So, instead of being smart and going back to making games that are actually worth paying money for, they waste all this money on stupid shit. As a result, people are a lot more careful with their money when considering purchasing a game and a lot of them don't see a problem with trying before buying, even if it is technically illegal, because they no longer have good reason to trust these publishers..
Long story short... MAKE BETTER GAMES!
Re:hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
While I agree that the game shouldn't be splintered, isn't Mass Effect 2 extremely long and in-depth on its own?
It is, but that doesn't stop the "What am I missing?" question from popping up and to find the answer you download all that stuff and install it. Of course, afterwards its easy to say that one could have just ignored it and it would have been fine anyway, but thats a question that isn't easily answered when you haven't yet played the game.
The whole DLC mess simply distracts from the overall experience, instead of having a single well balance experience, you have one with a whole bunch of optional bells and whistles. And finding out how good or bad each whistle is takes time and effort that I would prefer not to waste time on. Having games like Dragon Age: Origins constantly reminding you of the DLC you haven't yet bought of course makes things even worse.
Re:DLC gets pirated too (Score:3, Insightful)
As usual, he should look at what Valve is doing. They are doing it (mostly) right, and always have.
Ironically enough, when my internet went out last week, I was unable to play Half Life 2, because it couldn't connect via steam. But I bought the game on cd and installed it from that. I shouldn't have to have a steam check. So if that's "good" drm, I don't want to see bad drm.
Re:Fuck you and your shitty games (Score:3, Insightful)
Dear game companies, when you make a game worth paying for, people will stop pirating it.
=
That's just stupid. The playability of a game is dictated by its cost? A game is more or less fun depending on if it costs $60 or $30?
You'd play a pirated version of a $60 game that wasn't worth paying for? If it wasn't worth paying for, then why would you waste your time playing it in the first place???
Re:hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
You buy a code, and that code unlocks your game, forever and ever, the transaction is finished.
Well, unless you need to reinstall and can't find the code years later. For some reason I could hold on to the installers, but I could never manage to keep track of the documentation. Particularly when it's sold separately, it can be hard to keep track of that information. I remember getting locked out of Lemmings in college after needing to reinstall the OS. It's frustrating to own software but not be able to play it. Same with my old Forgotten Realms games, though in that case I could sometimes fudge it by just guessing E a lot, since it seemed to appear frequently on the code wheel.
Re:Dear game industry (Score:2, Insightful)
Either they'll find a way to play it for free, or they'll go find something else to spend their time on.
As a developer, the latter would sure help me sleep better at night, knowing my product isn't benefitting some punk-ass Generation Me self-righteous little shit who refuses to pay for anything they can get away with. Between that and preventing casual piracy, DRM is more than worth it.
I'm glad you posted because you're pointing out the real core issue with piracy that the people hell bent on fighting it have -- and it's not about economic loss at all. It's that some people just simply can't abide the notion that someone else is getting something for nothing -- even though that someone else isn't costing them money in the process. It's the gall felt at the thought of someone getting all the same benefit as someone else, but being able to side step the economic transaction -- this is why DRM makers make their money.
Re:Won't bode well with the gaming community... (Score:2, Insightful)
So, plain and simple, we haven't come close to any sane form of DLC so far and you'd first have to show that it has significant advantages for the players, before you can label people "alarmist". At the moment, it is just an undesirable thing from the perspective of a consumer.
Re:Dear game industry (Score:4, Insightful)
What he is saying is, as a gaming company, you should pay attention to paying gamers like me who will gladly drop a couple hundred dollars a year on entertainment. I have money to give you for great games.. just do that, and sell them to me, and you will have money.
There are more people than just me like this.. SELL TO US
Currently, the game companies do NOT do this. I, and those like me, get a teeny sliver of their attention time and effort, and it shows.
They spend all their time money and effort on people who clearly will never give them a dime.
The parents point is those people wont PAY for games. Your point is those people will PLAY those games.
If you as a game company only have one desire, to not have any pirates play your games, then just don't release software and you will have your wish.
Spending money on pirates to keep them from getting your stuff, just means less money left over to actually make games, which generally translates to crappy and broken games that just dont work.
Re:hmm (Score:2, Insightful)
Where did I hear about that... (Score:1, Insightful)
I think I heard a similar idea some years ago.
It would include a physical device that would detect insertion of actual coins,
and only offer restricted gameplay in exchange for those;
further extension of the game would require additional coins.
The game would also sometimes promote itself by displaying encouraging messages, like
*** INSERT COIN ***
Re:No. (Score:1, Insightful)
Sure there is, just make games for the PS3.