GOG: How an Indie Game Store Took On the Pirates and Won 397
An anonymous reader writes "As if we needed further proof that DRM really is more trouble for publishers and consumers than it's worth, Good Old Games, the DRM-free download store that specializes in retro games, has yet more damning evidence. In an interview this week, the store's managing director says that its first venture into day one releases earlier this year with Witcher 2 was a storming success — and the version that hit the torrent sites was a cracked DRM version bought from a shop. The very definition of irony."
Addressing only half the battle. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Addressing only half the battle. (Score:5, Interesting)
> Her friend comes over and wants a copy and she gives it to them thinking nothing of it.
In our company, we call that "lead gen" and seek to encourage it. In the attention economy, trading marginal costs (literally zero, in your example) in exchange for a referral is good business. Many of those referrals won't become customers. But for the ones who do, the cost-to-acquire-customer is again literally zero. It helps to have good branding and more than one product. But this isn't rocket science.
Re:Addressing only half the battle. (Score:5, Interesting)
DRM doesn't only fail to stop piracy, it can encourage it...
Last weekend my girlfriend rented a blu-ray from Redbox. The largest TV in my house happens to be my monitor, and the only blu-ray player I own is a drive on my PC. I attempted to start it, but instead got a message from my player software that I needed to update my software to play the movie. I checked for an update to my player software, and it said it was up to date.
Then, I looked on the drive manufacturer site looking for a firmware update for the drive, thinking that might help. My drive model was not listed on the manufacturer site. I found another support site, but they also did not list my drive. I searched for a while and eventually found out that it was only available on a support site for a European division. I updated the firmware and tried again... no luck.
By this point, I had spent 30 or 45 minutes trying to get this to work. I got fed up, and said, "Screw it, I'll just pirate it."
It took me less than a minute to find a pirated source. It took maybe 15 minutes to download it. I spent much more time than that trying to get it working legitimately, without even counting the time to drive and get the movie.
I don't pirate stuff because I'm not willing to pay it, it's because they make it a pain in the ass to be legit.
If I know ahead of time I'll have problems with DRM for either games or movie, I usually skip them entirely.
Re:Dropping DRM is a step in the right direction (Score:5, Interesting)
Sharing code and designs predates computers by many years, hell, in many ways, it goes back to the begining of recorded history.
However the term "Open Source" was, by all sources I can find, coined in the late 90s... and was rather inetionally setup as a way to break away from the more radical elements of free software philosophy.
Free Software, and Open Source both come from much older and less well defined traditions, but, they each brought their own perspectives to the table in much more explicit ways than before them.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Addressing only half the battle. (Score:3, Interesting)
Probably detected a break in the HDCP chain. The Anydvd driver is essential for HTPCs even when you own the bluray disc.
Ah yes, the end to end authentication and encryption of all devices involved in the video signal.
Funny how I can't get end to end authentication and encryption for my god damned credit card to prevent skimming and such.
Re:Addressing only half the battle. (Score:5, Interesting)
Found the link. [cnet.com]
Reasons to take a game off the market (Score:5, Interesting)
There's no reason to ever take a game off the market.
I can think of three.
First, the upstream licensor of the game may offer only a time-limited license. The DVD releases of Daria and WKRP in Cincinnati were delayed for a long time because they had to figure out how to replace all the music that was licensed only for the original broadcast, not for home videos to be produced later. There's a reason Nintendo couldn't just start selling GoldenEye 007 on Virtual Console on day 1 of the Wii Shop Channel: it'd need a new contract with EON. And by the time that was negotiated, they ended up doing an enhanced remake instead. Likewise, Tetris DS was discontinued two years after release because The Tetris Company didn't want to flood the market with Tetris products.
That ties into the second reason: cannibalization [wikipedia.org]. If you have too many of your own older products on the market, they compete with your newer products. If you just released Mario Party 7, would you want Mario Party 4, Mario Party 5, and Mario Party 6 to be on shelves? Worse, studies such as one done with clock widgets in GNOME [pair.com] show that where there are too many choices, a lot of people choose "none of the above" and walk out with nothing [wikipedia.org].
Third, I'd be interested to see how video games are substantially different from movies and TV series in this respect. The film Song of the South (1946) was briefly available on LaserDisc in some markets. It has not since been rereleased on DVD or Blu-ray anywhere, allegedly because of a change in prevailing moral values among viewers [tvtropes.org].
Re:Dropping DRM is a step in the right direction (Score:5, Interesting)
> Sharing code and designs predates computers by many years, hell, in many ways, it goes back to the begining of recorded history.
That is correct. The basis of civilization is built upon sharing. We shared (copied) ideas and technology: wheel, mathematics, education, language, philosophy, science, etc. By doing so EVERYONE benefits. The philosophy is WIN-WIN.
Conversely closed source is an archaic greed based philosophy - WIN-LOSE.
Money is a great motivator and provides nice incentive BUT at some point it is no longer enough. At the end of the day the "Right Thing" to do is to share, not maintain artificial illusions of power and control.