DRM and Piracy: The Vicious Circle - Page 3

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Actually, I agree with you here... but only to a point. Retail customers can be a royal PITA, and may be quite wrong on occasion.

But ask yourself this: if you went to go shopping in Best Buy and were escorted around the store by a burly security guard named Bubba, with every move you make scrutinized; and then finally after paying for your products you were subjected to a strip search, would you go back?

And if Bubba showed up at your house and smashed your tv after a set number of viewings, because of some fine print in a contract that you were never shown until after you had paid your money, would you still go back?

That's pretty much what the new gen Mass Effect DRM does IMO.

I think what Fungo was trying to say is that retailers must give their paying customers a certain level of deference and respect. The onus should be on the retailer to make the customer happy so they will continue to come and spend their hard-earned money. If a customer is completely unreasonable then that's one thing. But there's nothing unreasonable about wanting to pay money for a product, and then being able to do whatever I want with the legally purchased copy. Like play it. Or re-sell it. In fact, the same copyyright act that gives the developer exclusive rights to their product, gives the consumer the legal right to do exactly that.

Let's be clear: game developers are NOT entitled to sales just because they make a product. The copyright act simply gives them the opportunity to make money off their IP. No more, no less. They need to make a product that their customers want enough to part with hard currency. If a retailer peeves off its paying customers, it will rapidly lose customers. Store security is a legitimate issue, but when a retailer decides to put the entire burden of dealing with crime on the honest customers, then it's going to drive those customers away.

DRM is a major PITA for customers. It has negligible impact on the pirates. Companies that employ overzealous DRM show disrespect for their customer's rights, and intelligence. We're not the bad guys. If you want to have security cameras and to bring in the cops to deal with shoplifters, then that's fine by me But you better not mistake me for one of them, expect me to jump through inconvenient hoops to prove I'm not, or keep on paying periodic money to keep my product if you want me to keep spending my money on your products.

In law enforcement, their is something called a presumption of innocence. Piracy is a matter for law enforcement, not just cause for customer harassment or violating their legal rights.

Purplerat, don't worry - I didn't take it personally. But I disagree with your absolute statements; the point of my post was to tell you that I did in fact buy that game because I liked it. Sure I get the addition of the multiplayer, but I already played the pirated copy with a friend on a Hamachi network, and will probably continue to do that anyway and not bother too much with the actual multiplayer.

My big thing is this, although I know a ton of people disagree: with piracy not being an option, I would pay for the same amount of games I pay for now, if not less. If I did not have access to torrent sites, I would look at new games and wish I could play them, but still not buy them until the prices went down. I would instead play games I already own. I saw Rob post earlier that without piracy, pirates would essentially "need their fix" of games so they would pay for them anyway, but that is not the case in my situation. Heck, God of War was my favorite PS2 game and I so desperately wanted God of War 2 when it came out, but I waited OVER A YEAR to purchase it for $20 because I didn't want to pay the $50 price tag. And no, I don't have a chipped PS2, so I couldn't pirate it for that.

My point is, there's a difference from pirate to pirate. I bought Titan Quest because I WOULD have otherwise bought it, with the knowledge that it was as good as I think it is. And purplerat, as a business major I don't believe it's solely the company's responsibility to make users pay for games (or for any product), but rather the company's obligation to create good customers relationships that profit both supplier and consumer in the long run. That does include making good games that customers enjoy, i.e. Blizzard. One can buy one of their games knowing it will be well worth the money. The customer is certainly not always right, but the business that acts like they are trumps the business that does not in the long run, and makes a heck of a lot more profit.

Halo 3 was a good game, but would you spend $1000 for it?

good doesn't equate to priceless and that anything can be charged.

a Honda civic is a good car, but would you spend a million dollars for it?

while there are many good games, the public may not deem them worthy for a $60 price tag

everything has a price, but gaming seems to have taken a standard to the 50-60 dollar pricing no matter how bad the game is

also on any system popular games that are deemed good by the public sell more than crappy games deemed crappy by the public, it all has to do with the target market

there will always be a portion of the target market who will pirate the game no matter what, the companies goal should be to keep that number from increasing


look in other countries where the governments are corrupt and rich company owners cause the people to suffer. in those countries, there has always been a portion of people who stole what they wanted but if you watched the news, you will see that that rate has gone up hundreds of times over due to the price of rice and other main foods going up 10-20 times higher than normal

those people wouldn't normally steal but the market pushed them to steal

while i know theres a difference between food and games, it still fall in the category everything has a price, would you want 3 people to buy your game at $60 or would you want 300 people to buy your game at $20

the production cost of the games are less than a dollar and software has 0 mass production cost



same thing happens in second life, (in SL 297 lindens = 1 US dollar users are allowed to create their own items in the game and write their own code for those objects

some users make items like avatars, and weapons. in SL theres 0 production cost as it is all digital and user accounts are free

but here is a common thing that happens, SL has it's own piracy, but not like the real life ones, you have groups of skilled programmers join, they then buy 1 overpriced item, then build their own to look just like it, then write their own code to make it work the exact same way. but instead of charging l$4000-5000 linden for the items like some jerks usually do, the clone item the other programmer did will sell for l$100-200

and those sellers will generally make hundreds of dollars a month from selling them, eventually they will get reported and linden labs will ban their accounts for stealing IP but thats not before those people make a few thousand dollars (the original makers of the items barely make $200 from their items)

I do think Video games would make more money at a cheaper price point, but the argument that games are not worth the price is just absurd. The market responds quickly to set the price to where it is reasonable. Within 1 year of release a game will be anywhere from $5 to $55 depending on how popular it is. Hell I remember seeing Daikatana in discount bins 2 for $5 within 6 months of release.

If you think the game isn't worth the price, then wait. If the price does not drop quickly then maybe you were wrong about how much the game was worth and should give it a shot.

I don't think the breaks are worth how much toyota charges but does that mean I should drive a few month with out them and hope the price goes down?

the problem is that many people think games shouldn't cost that much in the first place

based on your pricing method that you posted, all items, food, water, electricity, etc should cost a trillion dollars per unit, then gradually lower the price over a few months because if people find the price too high, they can just wait a few months


the problem with many games is that people don't want to wait, or cant wait.

if theres a good multiplayer game out, not worth $60 but still good if you don't get into it early then you will never enjoy the game as it will just become frustrating, it will be like when you get into a MMO late

many of the people are level 75 while you and a group of people are level 20-30 and you cant seem to level any higher because the second you step out of a safe zone, a level 75 does a high powered AOE magic attack that instantly kills you

or you get level 75's with invisibility powers, then they will follow your group to a area where you can do level grinding and after spending 10 minutes running there, the level 75 jerk does a AOE and kills you what sucks more is you each time you die, you loose all your items and it takes 5 minutes before you are able to use any powers again

based on what I describes, i'm sure many people know which game I am talking about, it starts with a S.

at that point the game is more of a frustration than a enjoyment

so you can wait but the quality will go down, especially with many games especially for consoles pushing users more and more towards multiplayer gaming

this is a extreme example but it happens with all multiplayer games

this pushes users to pirate along with the drm and the overpricing

The difference is pretty clear. They are two very different business models. Game companies expect that in order to play their games people will pay for them. Web comics, I'm not really all that familar but I assume dispense their content for free in hopes that it will generate further revenue. It's a pretty big difference and each industry is built upon it's respective model so you can't just interchange various aspects and say if it works for one it works for the other. How well would Web comics sell if they had the same model as consoles? Where not only did you have to always pay but you also had to have a special piece of hardware to view them. If that machine boke you could not view your comics until you got another one. But it works for consoles, why not comics?
As far as it being foolish to pirate a game then buy it's not the paying for it that's silly, it's the fact that you've already gone through whatever to get the pirated copy then you go out and but it. I buy my game for several reasons. Piracy has too many drawbacks and is just not worth it to me. Paying on average $35 for a game is much more worthwhile than dealing with torrents and all that crap. But if for some reason I was to take what is for me the less desirable route to getting a game in the first place it's stupid to then go out and pay on top of that.

This is really tough debate and I can understand both sides frustration.

But the fact of the matter is piracy will never stop and most anti piracy measures do not work. So gaming publishers need to find another solution. Expecting the public to change out of the fear of worse DRM is ridiculous.

Anyone who says the DRM used in games like Bioshock and Mass Effect isn't a big deal is obviously not a power user. Let me guess you have never formatted your computer.

I'm totally ok with DRM that does not get in the way of me enjoying a product I purchased or with a service that offers enough benefits to outway the downsides (like Steam).

I have 3 computers with XP and one also has Vista and I like to have my game available in all 4 instances. I have my main machine in the office with Vista and Xp which I use to play most of the time, but sometimes I also want to play on my media system in the living room. With basic copy protection like a cd check, this works great. Steam works wonderfully in this setup as well.

With the limited activations like Bioshock it just doesn't work for me. I ended up cracking the game to get to work for my setup and that's just ridiculous. So I will not buy Mass Effect and I will not buy Spore because of the use of DRM. I'm not condoning piracy, but I fully understand why someone would turn to piracy.

Anyone taking the hard line against piracy is most likely a hypocrite. Ever shared that new cd you got with someone, copied something off of television without written consent, made a copy of something you rented, shared your cable with your neighbor , shared your internet connection with another household. Someone out their views all of this as stealing.

I have bought a tonne of games and pirated many as well. When I was in college I pirated much more often and mainly due to not having much money. Today if I do pirate its mainly to check out a game I'm not convinced to buy or does not offer a good value. And yes I have bought a game after pirating it. I know I'm probably in the minority in this, but it is true. If I really like the game I will buy it.

Today I am more likely to buy games if:

1. They are available on Steam
2. DRM is not obtrusive
3. The game is of high quality
4. The game is well supported with updates and free content
5. The game is not expensive
6. The company releases tools so the community can create their own content for the game

There is a lot of money to be made in PC gaming. Blizzard and Valve of proof of that. It's just a really tough market to succeed and far to often piracy is blamed for any publishers failure to do well. But it's understandably hard to do business on the PC. PC gamers don't buy crappy games by the millions like they do on the console (Kane & Lynch). We are also still playing 10 year old games (Counter Strike). Let's not forget about all the free games and mods available to us as well.

Game publishers need to find a new business model. I'm looking forward to Battlefield Heroes and Quake Live. This is based off of a very popular Asian business model. Piracy is even worse over there and instead of crying like little babies they just found a way to make it work. Who is going to pirate a game when the game is free. Micro transactions and add revenue pays the bills.

I also think they need to work on making multilayer games the norm. There is no reason you cant have a very single player game (scripted events and epic story) done in a massively multiplayer world. Give the single player game away for free but offer enough incentives to get people to buy it to get the full experience of the game online.

I also think breaking the game up into chunks could help as well, obviously this will only work with digital distribution. I will use Call of Duty 4 as an example. It's a great game and well worth the $50, but some people don't play multiplayer, some don't play single player, some just never finish the game. Release the game for free with the prologue of single player levels and a few multiplayer levels. Charge $10 per chapter in the single player campaign and charge $20 - $30 for the multiplayer content.

Also why don't developers take advantage of the pc hardware more, so many people have multiple displays, why not take advantage of it in games. You can also do a lot of cool wii like stuff just using a web cam. Take advantage of the unique capabilities of the pc and offer something you cant get on the console.

They also need to bring back split screen gaming, I play console like games on my media system connected to my television and would love to be able to play the latest racing game with my wife without having to buy two copies and use two computers to do so.

I really think most publishers are just greedy, lazy and just plain out of touch. I hope they die off, leaving the good publishers to prosper on the PC. With the advent of digital distribution, the future of PC gaming is going to be in the indie developers hand. You don't have to spend millions to make a great game. Looking forward to the future of PC gaming, which will be around long after the Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360.

with out those then piracy is just plain stealing

the problem is that piracy no matter how you look it, it is a bad thing, but drm and the gaming company business practices are also bad and pirates are just choosing the lesser of 2 evils

i know you hate analogies but there the only way to explain things like digital piracy as it is such a unique problem



piracy is also dangerous, when was the last time you say a criminal rob a bank then share all that money with the people in their community? (it has only happened in fictional stories)

pirates are not giving free games out of the goodness of their heart, they have something to gain from it
piracy is a major risk and any person still sane will weigh their options


back in the early 1900's the country banned alcohol, a short while later, speakeasies popped up all over the place the governments solution to the problem (since speakeasies caused a huge increase in organized crime and gang violence in which innocent people were caught in between, they legalized alcohol again, and every speakeasy went out of business and crime went down)
it is human nature to hate restrictions so adding additional restrictions will always lead to some kind of backlash

the key to reducing piracy is to not punish innocent people for the problems of pirates, thats like a random person on the street pour soda on you, then you head to your friends house and beat him or her up for that random persons crime

and there is a such thing as a acceptable limit people like freedom and never want to loose it but there are acceptible limits,

all laws are a limitation of our freedom, and there are acceptable losses like you loose your right to run me over with a car, and i loose that same right, everyone is happy

there over 70 thousand laws in america, and most of them no one complains about because they are a acceptable loss of freedom that makes everyone happy, but then there laws like gun control

outlaw guns and only outlaws will have guns

outlaw apples and only outlaws will have them

a loss of freedom becomes unacceptable when only 1 side suffers the loss while the other side gains more power from it
all violent shootings in American history have happened in gun free zones look back at news archives ranging back to the 1800's


this is why it is under constant debate because because only 1 side lost power, the other side gained power, all school shootings could be prevented is all teachers were required to have a gun, if every home was required to have one, there will be no armed robberies as criminals hate a level playing field (you never saw someone rob a bank using their fists, why, because everyone has one, you punch me, i can punch you, or you run in to a bank threatening to punch everyone if they don't give all of their money, then good luck winning a fist fight against 50 other people



the only laws and limitations that have been debated have been ones where only 1 side suffers while the other is not effected

and with the current state of DRM, the legit people suffer from severely limited items while the pirates have limitless possibilities with their crap

Razor, I'm not sure why you are talking about laws at all. This issue really has nothing legallity or laws. It's pretty much agreed on both sides that piracy is a form of copyright infringement and that there is no real good way of going after the common software pirate.
The issue is that game companies are taking it upon themselves to protect their own products. The products they created and are selling. Why shouldn't they have the right to do that?

I take a hardline against piracy, and no, I have NEVER pirated a game or illegally downloaded a song or a movie. Not once. I believe in copyright protection and the artists/developers rights to create a product and make money.

Good grief, Daveloft. Are you really going to compare a 1:1 relationship -- me lending a DVD/CD to a friend -- to me cracking Call of Duty 4 and uploading it to a torrent site and allowing thousands upon thousands of people to download it?

BTW, I think it's sad that so many people are complaining about greedy, money-grubbing publishers yet at the same time are pirating content they're too cheap to buy. Unreal.

@SnareSpectre
Thanks. At least you'r honest, though you're deluding yourself a little by choosing to believe that piracy is helping game developers. And I'd urge you, if you really believe the consequences are damaging, to stop pirating PC games.

@Razor512
You're absolutely killing me. This is not a political debate.

Between that and somehow a reference to school shootings this is why it's so hard to discuss this issue. Rather than look at models like Steam and WoW and how they benifit both the gamer and the companies we have to hear aobut how somehow everybodies rights are being violated. You literally can't even put the three letters D R M too close together without getting a violent reaction. The truth is that it's a practical solution to a real issue. Not every implementation is going to be great and some are just plain bad, but I bet most people railing against it do not even realize how often it's used without it ever bothering them. The consoles are a perfect example of where people are so blind to whats going on that they will vehemently argue that it's not even there. This whole debate really needs to shift from "what's worse: DRM or piracy" to "what kind of DRM is acceptable/effective".

Steam sucks for dialup. But then, dialup just sucks regardless.

Just because a method does not completely stop piracy does not mean it is impractical or ineffective. This sounds like the same arguments used to shoot down alternative energy ideas. Just because one thing cannot be used to completely replace all of our energy needs we shouldn't do anything. Alleviating the problem is a worthwhile endeavor and Steam does benefit the end user, if they have broadband.

Actually Steams DRM seems pretty effective to me and it has some great benifits. While I can't take my Steam games and just hand them out to friends like candy, I can install the same game on all of my PCs and play them all at once as long as no more than one is playing online. I can even have LAN games with only one copy. If I buy a game which only requires the disk to be in the drive I can not do this.
With WoW the DRM goes WAY beyond just online activations. Like I said before I really do not think most people really grasp the full reign of DRM. With WoW all you ever buy are some disks with install files. Everything else is completely owned by Blizzard. You simply rent time on their servers and they fully reserve the right to end that contract anytime they want - and Blizzard certainly has a history of doing exactly that. You could go out and spend $60 on the game and expansion, drop another $15 for a months subscription and they can turn you off for good the very next day, and there's nothing you could do about it. Is there really a more restrictive form of DRM than that?

No I wasnt comparing 1:1 sharing a cd with the actual process of cracking the game, just sharing the game. That would be the equivalent of making copies of the cd and selling on the street. But it is still stealing. I have never meet anyone that has not stolen something. Not a single friend, co-worker, school mate, no one. I don't believe anyone that says they never have stolen anything. Everyone has different levels and justification to what they steal.

Yes there are some people who just steal everything, but I don't know anyone like that either. Why is everything so black and white with you people. Everyone I know buys some and steals some. I just think with better prices, better use of DRM, better products and better benefits for purchasing a product more people will make that purchase.

Yes piracy is an issue, but it always has been and DRM has been proven time and time again, that it does not work. I'm just asking for the developers and publishers to find another solution. Stronger DRM hurts sales and pushes more to steal. Again I'm not saying it's right or justifiable, it's just how it is. What I'm saying is it's up to the publishers to find a better solution to fit their customers needs. How can you argue against that?

Trying to convince someone not to steal is as likely as expecting world peace. It would be wonderful, but it's just not a very likely to happen.

Yeah we've been over this before, where you thanked me for my honesty and all that, but I never said piracy in general helps game developers, I said MY piracy does. It's not like it helps them a ton, but there are the few rare instances where it has, and that's better than nothing. I think piracy on a large scale hurts developers, and I don't understand how anyone could possibly argue against that.

Do you love using incorrect terms, or are you really that unclear on what things actually mean. These debate has nothing to do with anything political. But you keep on dragging in gun laws and foriegn governments. It's simply just a matter of how people see DRM affecting paying consumers versus pirates. We can disagree on those issues, but it's nothing political.

over the top analogies are fun


but the reality is that both sides are wrong

piracy is wrong but drm is the wrong way to treat legit customers

I do like Richard Dawkins, but I must disagree with his own extreme stance. I have witnessed first hand the benefits of what he opposes and without going into specifics, I think a path of tolerance on both sides is by far the preferred solution.

The problem with an extreme stance is that it necessarily alienates an entire side of the debate and therefore will not significantly influence them. I have found I can garner far more influence over a person and sway them far more with a more nimble perspective. If you do not take the extreme position then each side will see in your points some of what they believe, so they pay more attention to the things you say with which they disagree. It works with religion, politics, and sometimes even piracy debates.

You'd think it would be "common" sense. But most commonly people consider themselves to be independents, moderates, centrist, etc. That would be fine if the majority of these people actually thought for themselves. Instead what most do is just assume that the middle is correct simply because it's the middle.
With the issue of Piracy I honestly think I hear more people screaming about how it's not bad, or doesn't hurt gaming than I actually people screaming the opposite. So the 'middle' ends up being tilted towards piracy and you hear a lot of things like "well the type of piracy I do isn't bad because..."

Who's taking the hard line stance that all DRM is warranted or good? That's just another area were the blind left-right-middle approach distorts the truth. So many people are so offended by even the thought of DRM that not agreeing with them supposedly means you're all for every type of DRM. Here's my actually positions an these matters,

-I think the gaming industry, including PCs is healthy and by no means on a downward trend.
-Piracy, while not neccessarily "killing" PC gaming is by no means good for it at all. Lower piracy is in the interest of both gamers and gaming companies.
-DRM can be, and often is, implemented both effectively and with minimal impact and even benifits to the user. The free market will detemine which forms these are - ie The DRM on Bioshock was lessened whereas WoW thrives with it's DRM.

One sentiment I keep on hearing against DRM is that it hurts the honest customer but not the pirate. Well how fair is it to the honest paying customer to just allow others to have the same thing you paid $50 for, for free?

The point is though, that if we do not make an uproar on the unacceptable DRM measures, then it will keep getting worse for the consumer without have any appreciable effect on pirates, but a few people have come out saying that whatever the industry tries is warranted even if it doesn't work. Hell that was pretty much the gist of the article that spawned this thread.

Outside of MMOs, there is no such thing as DRM that will be acceptable to most consumers AND will nullify piracy. That is quite frankly fantasy and striving for it is absurd. Look for ways to actively discourage piracy by offering things that pirates will be locked out of and just accept that piracy is going to happen. You can't stop China from stealing your game.

Provide a service that locks anyone who has not registered their software out of patches and updates. Going fully Steam will do that as well as distributing on Impulse. Then publicize new patches that add content and make people want it.

Will the game still be pirated? Undoubtedly, but those pirates will not have as good an experience as those who paid and they may even buy the game to get that better experience.

Not in this thread anyway. We have had some debates where there are multiple people claiming that Piracy is good for the industry and keeps the publishers honest.... which is a load of unrelenting bull malarky.

Locks on doors are not bad ideas, Securom and Starforce are.

If you want to reduce piracy then you need to make sure that the paying customers have a better experience than pirates. Without that bare minimum philosophy, you will only feed piracy.

either way the legit customer will have the pay for the game, no company can make money giving away their game


but the drm is not doing anything to stop piracy and it is hurting the honest users, has there been any game where the drm has made it so people wont pirate it, it has never happened


any law thats made where the only people being burdened by it are the innocent people have always been under constant debate

and currently the most debated law is the gun control one, when ever there is a school shooting or a shooting in a gun free zone, there is a huge uproar about gun control because there sides arguing that the shooter would never been able to kill so many people if everyone had a gun, and there other sides saying that there is not enough being done to keep criminals from getting guns

but you never hear people complain about the laws that prevent people from having high powered explosives, because the government is able to keep them out of the hands of both the innocent people and the criminals



DRM punishes the innocent but the pirates feel none of that burden so the drm is completely one sided and if only giving the legit customers a problem thats why it is under constant debate


if they made a law that said that no one was allowed to own a car but the police only punished people who had no criminal record
either way the law will be hated but if it was the way i listed it, there would be a huge uproar from the public with people going crazy over only criminals being allowed to own cars


people like equality

in the 60's with the rampant racism that went on, there was a huge uproar with protests almost 24/7 because people were not being treated equally


with drm, people are not being treated equally, the honest are suffering from many limitations and hoops to jump through while the pirates are having a easy tine not worrying about any drm

Have you even been reading this thread or are you just that obsessed with drawing somebody into an argument on gun control? No form of protection is every 100% whether it be against piracy, home invasion or pregnancy (go ask your parent's I'm sure they can attest to that, jk). But there are lot's of cases where DRM works pretty well even if not 100%. I'm not going to reiterate all of the ones I all ready listed, but even simple "Insert CD to play" types work. The average Joe isn't going to go search for a no cd crack and that alone prevents him from just passing his game to all his friends. Sure more sophisticated gamers will figure it out, but how many sales does such a simple thing save from piracy? I'm sure it's a decent amount.