DRM and Piracy: The Vicious Circle - Page 2

I do not aggre entirely with author.
I have nothing against DRM as long as it:
1) not annoy me
2) not making damage to me (SF for example and i am not buying anything with it ever as it cost me over 100 hours to fix all damages it did and not talking with other problems)
3) will not limit future use (ie DRM server server stopped)

Another issue is that majority of ppl whitch buy game still download pirated version or cracks to get better gameplay.

And finaly they should change the prices acordingly to what game offer, its ridiculous to pay 60+$ for game whitch can be finished in few hours as it dont have "good fun/price ratio".

Also i prefer to download game to test it if it run on my PC before buying as in my country you cannot return game if it not run on your configuration at all and i already got few of them in past 16 months whitch generaly make me waste money for nothing.

To all those of you who say "Steam is fine, but I hate piracy", I've have several headaches with Steam and I've only been using it since early this year. In fact when I got home last night I went to turn Civ 4 BTS which I had purchased through Steam, but since I couldn't connect to Steam I couldn't play even a single player game. At one point a few months back I couldn't play any multiplayer games because my key wouldn't validate. That went on for almost a week because I was too lazy to actually do anything about it. Eventually it just started working again so I'm positive it was a flaw in their system. And when I go on vacation next week and bring my laptop I would have to find an internet connection in order to play these games. Now with that all said I'm perfectly happy to enjoy my games this way because Steam has so many other benefits.
There's still plenty of people who hate Steam because it uses DRM but they will just have to learn to deal with this new model of PC games or move on. Sorry folks but games are not coming on floppy disk anymore, things change.

I would have to disagree, I know NUMEROUS people who checkout books/magazines and audio books on a regular basis. Plus, the printed market is much smaller so it really wouldn't take much to damage sales revenue. I have known many college students that check out books or magazines that photo copy several pages to later reference for a term paper. Also, pirates may represent a significant portion of the gaming market, but again we would have to assume that most pirates would go out and buy the game if they couldn't download it. I had read somewhere recently, that 1 out of every ten pirated games would be a sale, and I personally would say that's a realistic number. Which is significant however still nowhere near what developers are crying about. One developer, and I apologize that I don't remember who, said they noticed off of one site that there game was download 700 thousand times. Which sounds astronomical, but if you go by the 1 out of 10 theory that's 70k lost sales not 700k. Don't get me wrong, it's still a significant number but nowhere near as devastating as is portrayed.

Not only that, but what about the ridiculous amount of sales lost from consumers who can't run the games on there pc's? I still think this number is MUCH overlooked by developers. Well except for Tim Sweeney of Epic as he has touched on this already. But being a network admin and a pc gamer, I have a lot of friends & family come to me and wonder why game "x" won't work on there computer. Nine times out of ten it's because of the CRAP video, chipset or some other hardware deficiency they have with there system. There are a TON of computers in homes these day's but the only games there suited for are simple web based games. The amount of people that specifically buy or build a gaming pc are very small compared to the actual number of computers in homes. I don't think that the rage over piracy is misplaced, however it's not any worse than the above mentioned. Developers need to start leaning hard on computer companies like Dell, Gateway and such. Let them know that THEY are hurting pc gaming as much as piracy.

Unless DRM is completely invisible to the end user, there will always be some kind of inconvenience to it. Its just finding the least inconvenient to implement. I still say a one time check when you initially install a game is the best way to go. Nothing will stop piracy completely, however this will stop a lot of casual piracy.

The game did not kill your ROM drive. Is it possible that a game, any game, can corrupt an OS or drivers? Certainly, but it did not burn out your DVD drive.
BTW I'm hardly a "virgin" as you may think. Not that I really need to defend myself, but the fact that my PC never has any of these issues nor do I blame games for ruining my hardware would actually seem to point to me not being a "virgin".

Umm... Rat... Do you even remember what the objection to Starforce was?

It destroyed drives. Actually damaged hardware. That is why people were so angry about it. How can you not remember that?

As for Steam not working offline... what? Just this year I played Civ IV BTS in offline mode on Steam. We lost internet for a couple hours and it loaded up just fine. Just open steam, it asks if you want to play in offline mode, you say yes, it works. Not sure why this didn't work for you....

Steam is not perfect and it isn't impenetrable, but it is effective and reasonable. It is certainly better than Securom or EA's Direct2Drive.

Aside from console, MMOs, Impulse, and Steam, what DRM is it that actually deterrs a large amount of piracy? As far as I am aware, those are the only DRM methods that seem to have any effect at all and as I stated before, those are the methods that are widely accepted and I approve of.

Crap like Securom, Starforce, and other more intrusive and restrictive DRM doesn't seem to do a thing to deter pirates and in fact encourages them more. I see absolutely no reason for anyone to support these dysfuntional and frustrating methods.

The point though is that Steam provides a useful service. The resources it claims are not so bad as to be debilitating and it allows me to just download Steam on a new computer, queue up all of my games, and go to bed when I build a new system. In the morning, all my games are now installed on my PC without me hunting for CDs, looking for patches, or even stitting in front of my computer.

Anyone who is ever likely to buy a game will probably at some point get one through Steam and they will probably find it to be a very easy to use and handy system to have. Plus whenever I get bored, I can just browse for a new game, buy it, download it, and be playing it within an hour.

On top of that, if you play pirated games on a hacked version of Steam, you can't make use of all the benefits inherent in Steam. I'm not saying that it will nullify piracy as a whole, but the pirates most likely to be your customers are less likely to pirate what they can get through Steam.

Well I guess it comes down to where you draw the line.

I draw mine at single time activation at installation and no limited installs, or Steam. I find those acceptable.

Steam provides some nice benefits for putting up with it's bull. Ideally all game publishers would use Impulse (Stardock) but to be honest, that is quite frankly wishful thinking and won't happen.

If you find all DRM unacceptable then you will eventually find yourself with the choice of either pirating, or not playing at all.

I will give them certain leniencies and especially for methods that appear to actually make a difference.

I won't dismiss the piracy factor. It certaintly is relevant, but it is blown way out of proportion. I'll try to make a case that i've never seen someone mention on a gaming site, so maybe this is just overlooked most of the time.

First of all, i'll post August 3rd to 9th US NPD Sales Charts (PC GAMES):
1. WoW: Battle Chest
2. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe
3. World Of Warcraft
4. Nancy Drew: The Phantom Of Venice
5. Spore Creature Creator
6. Diablo Battle Chest
7. Warcraft III Battle Chest
8. WoW: Burning Crusade
9. The Sims 2 Ikea Home Stuff
10. Call of Duty 4

So you got 5 Blizzard tittles and 2 The Sims ones. Interesting. Out of the big releases since last fall, you can only find Call of Duty 4. No Mass Effect, Bioshock, Crysis, Assassin's Creed... What is wrong?

It is amazing that those games are beying outsold by 10 year old games. If this was the music industry, it would be like a big name rapper being outsold on their newest cd by "Michael Jackson, the greatest hits". It sure is convenient to blame it on pirates, but why are these old games still selling? Why isn't piracy a concern for them?

I - DEVELOPING FOR PIRATES
Who, in general pirates games? It does not that a lot of effort to realize that most of them are male teens and young adults. Why? First of all, they combine three relevant factors: knowledge on how to pirate, high demand for games (a lot of free time) and lack of money.

When you check other demographics, you'll see that older males (mature adult) also play games and might even know how to pirate, but they lack time to play (full time job + wife + kids + housework is pretty demanding). Why is that important? Because the lack of time means they need fewer games to get their "gaming fix" and that is a cost they can easily afford. Females are also a demographic that does not pirate often, either because they lack the knowledge (not as interested in tech as males) or because they don't play often.

Workaround piracy #1: Devoloping for non pirate consumer niches
This is what the Stardock guys do. Their games have no copy protection whatsoever and they sell more than some AAA hyped to hell and back tittles. They focus their development for mature male gamers, that will buy their products. The same applies to the The Sims games, which are focused towards womem, who are also not that common pirates.

II - DEVELOPMENT MINDSET
What about the companies that make games for the larger, yet pirate filled audience?

More often than not, you will find the same companies complaining about piracy over and over. Exactly the ones that do very well on the console market. Maybe their development mindset is what is wrong (for pc gaming). When you develop for consoles, all you need is make a marketable game. No extra work or investments after it is released. Afterall, why invest if the customer has already bought the product, AM I RITE?

Now that works fine for consoles, but not so much on pc gaming. When you think pc gaming success, which names come to mind? Probably Blizzard and Valve. When was the last time you saw a Blizzard representative saying they were considering moving to the console business, because the piracy is killing the pc gaming? You probably never saw that (i know i haven't).

So what do these companies have in common? First of all they release quality products, that is huge. Second, they support their products after release (i still get some patches for CSS from time to time). And last but not least, they give something extra for legit customers: significant multiplayer.

The multiplayer thing is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT. Pc gaming is the most multiplayer capable platform (MMO are a sign of that, IMO). Not only because of the tech, but also because most pc gamers enjoy playing online. Now if the best part about a game is the fact that i can play with other people on the internet and that is only available to buyers, of course people are going to purchase their products.

Now what most companies (EA for instance) do? They do the exact opposite of what they should: releasing games with no MP (no extras for buyers), they instead punish them by placing invasive DRM. If it is draconian or not, it does not matter. The relevant part is the legit buyers get a worse product that the pirates do and that is just plain wrong.

Overall, most of the companies that suffer from piracy are have moved to console gaming and that is what is saving them. If consoles were not so mainstream today they would have already gone backrupt. Consoles make a lot more money, in my oppinion, not because they are piracy free (most people i know that have consoles pirate their games), but because the market is larger than the pc gaming one, since it is more user friendly.

So once againg, while piracy is certaintly something that should not be dismissed, it should not be DOOM for pc gaming either. Developers have to adapt to the market instead of trying to bruteforce the console model in the pc gaming scene. It is the same thing that the music industry is facing right now. Their traditional model cannot fight piracy. So they are starting to (wisely, IMO) sell songs online on itunes. It may not be the best model ever, but they sure are making some extra cash.

Acid

PS: sorry for my lackluster english, it is not my native language.

Well, here's what I suggested to Bioware on their forum:

Others have suggested hardware dongles, return to cd-key only drm, purchase/loyalty incentives, even bootup cd's like the live linux discs so that the game dev controls everything from the OS-game without turning over control of the computer itself to the game dev.

And no, none of this will stop pirates for long. But that's the point isn't it? NO DRM system will stop the pirates anyway. But if the game devs are silly enough to fall for the kneejerk response, then at least don't choose something that is anathema to your paying customers.

the console market does better because there is a larger market for their games

everyone with a 360 can run every 360 game

cant say the same for pc.

the makers of crysis were crying piracy instead of thinking "how many copies do you expect to sell when only around 1 million pcs are able to run your game and only a small portion of those people will even be instersted in your game

WOW does so well because it is a fun game and the market is extremely large. most computers can run WOW

if you compare some good selling console games to pc games, the console games are generally bland and boring but there selling more because there millions of consoles out there that can run the game. so instead of a market of 500 thousand+ you are selling in a market of hundreds of millions and a portion of those hundreds of millions are bound to be interested in your game

game developers tend to want to only focus on graphics and wind up with a crysis that looks great but is short and bland and has no replay value and is impossible to run unless you have a top of the line system, which most people don't have

if a new xbox came out every 2-3 months and there were xbox games requiring the latest xbox to run the game, then the console market will also be bad because no one wants to constantly buy a new xbox in order to run the latest xbox game

a console will generally have 5-6 years and through out that time frame, every game will run at max settings on that system

while with a PC, in order to play every game at full settings, you would have upgraded at least 10-12 times

this makes PC games more expensive because you not just buying a $50+ game, your buying a $50 game + a $300 videocard to run the game

with pc and developers who try to make up for their lack of ideas by pushing graphics, it doesn't matter if theres probably a billion pcs, their market will only be around 500 thousand due to requirements that cause them to loose customers

they cry over 2-3 thousand people pirating their games but think nothing of loosing almost a billion customers by making a impossible to run game.

pc games can still have good graphics and have lots of sales, just stop trying to out do others with graphics crysis looks great but I will pick warhammer 40k over crysis anyday

crysis looks good but I will pick FEAR over crysis

Crysis looks good but I will pick spiderman over crysis any day

while good graphics are important, gameplay is more important , if graphics were the most important, then those nvidia demos will crush every single video game on the planet because they push graphics that are far better than anything crysis has

piracy is not even about all the money. if your broke then you wont even have a pc that will run crysis so why pirate it?

people pirate games that are not worth the money.

back in the day, you could spend less money and get a game thats 10 times longer than a game from today and had better gameplay

if a new movie came out in the theaters and tickets to watch it were $10 but the movie was only 6 minutes long, would you pay to go watch it?

people buy games that are worth the money.

people pirate games if

there either

too short, have crappy gameplay, bland, have DRM

everyone will always want the best, if you watch tv, every ad says their crap is the best, it is human nature to want the best

so if the pirate copy is better than the legit one, guess which human nature will push a user to

and hardware dongles don't work

some professional apps have tried it and junked it as it didn't work and it caused many problems, mainly the dongles failing and the drm being in such a way that the user had to buy the entire program again,

and there easy to crack

and if a company is in trouble and have to junk their drm servers, the last thing on their mind is spending hundreds of thousands to get a drm removal tool made so you can still play the game, the companies care nothing for you, as long as they get your money a game company will not spend a penny on anything that will be of no benefit to their business, so a drm removal tool being released before shutting down is highly unlikely

Actually there are many types of pirates just as there are many types of gamers.

Here are some of them.

Poor college student. They got a decent computer as a HS graduation gift and have lots of free time, but very little disposable income. What do they do? They pirate the games they want to play. Usually this demographic will pay for games when they have the money, but they just usually don't have the money.

Obsessive cracker. They love the metagame of getting the game without paying for it. They actually enjoy the idea that the last game they paid for was Duke Nukem 3D.

Casual pirate. This is the sort of person who pirates games because it is easier than going to the store. If they find themselves at a store they will often buy games while there. These people are likely to also make use of Steam and Impulse.

Buy one get friends free pirate. This is the pirate who buys their copy, but then they pirate copies for their friends so that they can play multiplayer. Steam puts a crimp on that style so if they feel obligated to allow their friends on, they won't use steam, but otherwise steam would prevent this type of pirate.

Try before buy pirate. This is the guy who downloads his games and plays them for a while before either deleting them in disgust or buying them... ideally. In practice these people often never get around to buying some games until they hit the discount bins, but they intended to. Most of the time they do buy the game though.

Now the only question is what percentage of pirates each group makes up. I suspect that the majority of pirates are the casual variety, but that is purely speculation. Anyone who puts their head in the ground and refuses to believe that any pirate except for the obsessive variety exist are just being stupid. I have only ever known one person like that in all my 10 years of college and he is more of a casual pirate now.

Maybe so. But last I checked, no one is claiming that the purpose of Piracy is to stop DRM. To be succesful, a pirate must eliminate the DRM, but the purpose of piracy is to steal a product.

In all cases, that I'm aware of, the stated purpose of DRM is to stop piracy.

Piracy does not exist because of DRM, but DRM is publically said to exist solely to combat piracy. There is a big difference there. That DRM is demonstrably and spectacularly unsuccesful in stopping piracy, and has been as long as I can recall, raises some interesting questions.

It doesn't work to stop pirates.
It cost money (licensing fees, extra debugging/patches/legal fees)
It loses some sales (people like me)

So why do game devs continue to throw away good money after bad?

I think the reason is to try to force paying customers to continue to pony up money by forcing them into what is essentially a rental business model rather than the existing product model.

For example, John Riccitiello from EA:

Source:http://venturebeat.com/2008/07/21/e3-perspective-an-interview-with-john-riccitiello-ceo-of-electronic-arts/

Emphasis mine.

I think the tools referred to are DRM schemes like SecuROM, and the whole piracy excuse is simply a smokescreen.

Pirates are low down dirty thieves. That they're being viewed with more sympathy by angry customers who can only play their legally purchased games as a result of the work of the pirates is sadly ironic IMO.

Right now, I don't think much more highly of game executives than I do of the pirates. I will not pay $50 for rental rights.

they pirate games that are not worth the price

the game doesn't have to be utter crap, it can be a game thats ok to play but not worth what there charging

i'm not talking about being they have to be free because they suck so much, I am saying that the game sucks too much to cost $50-60 so they pirate it instead

when a game is lacking to a point where it feels like it should be $15 instead of $50 then it is more likely to be pirated and on top of that, they will be overpriced and filled with DRM which is even more of a push to make people pirate it

DRM came before piracy because developers had in mind that data could be copied and they took measures to prevent that before the piracy started

This has to be the most upsetting and frustrating argument for me to read/hear in piracy discussions. The old "make a good game and people will buy because only crappy/average games get pirated."

Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Grant Theft Auto 4 sucked. And my goodness, Call of Duty 4 was just terrible. Totally not worth the $60 price tag. I mean, they must be bad games that aren't worth the money, because those two titles all are over the torrents.

yep and some of the first pc games ever made contained forms of copy protection order to stop people from pirating their games

so with this, the pirating of purchased games took place after DRM

it is like making a law saying no one is allowed to steal, and to make sure this law never gets broken, everyone will be killed because dead people cant steal

and the goodness of a game is based on democracy, majority rule

if the public deems a game to be sub par, then it should be priced as such

I am not talking in favor of piracy, I am being realistic

pirates will always pirate games no matter what

just like criminals will always get guns, no matter how many gun control laws and regulations are made.

but what needs to be done is to stop that number from increasing. and in order to do that, stop giving people reasons to pirate games.
the main arguments about it are people will say they couldn't stand the drm and they downloaded a drm free version

the main factors for piracy is DRM and price, (gameplay and game length also add to this)

would you rather have 10 people buy your game at $50-60 or have 100 people buy your game at $10-15

would you shop at a store if the manager always followed you around and watch everything you did and constantly harassed you when ever you touched anything? drm basically does the same thing

i found that most pirates range from the age of 13-20. i know i used to be a huge pirate when i was around 13 i used to have to crack windows xp every week and i would only buy a game once or twice a year but i would play every new release. im 16 now and i got a job when i was 15 and once i got a job and pulling in around 200 a week i can go and buy any game i want. i still pirate some games that im unsure about buying but if there playable i will go buy them by my next pay check.

it is a big problem that destroying the pc community. i wish more games would go on steam i would shell out an extra $5-$10 for that. steams great i can just imagine in 10 years how cool it would be if i had every game i ever owned on steam ready to go. i don't have to worry about lost or scratched c.d.'s or keys. i would love it if i didn't need a c.d. for every time i wanted to play cnc3 and i do use c.d. cracks because it to much of a hassle finding a cd every time you want to play a game

steam should have trials like giving the user 1 hour of gameplay before buying each game it will git rid of the i'll try it then i'll by it pirates like me. i know theirs demos out there but i have played demos that are nothing like the real game

Just curious, but had the game actually been $60 and you still loved it but were unwilling to pay that much, would you have honestly stopped playing the pirated copy?

The point is you are still using piracy to avoid having to always pay. Sorry if you take any offense to this but I would classify that type of piracy as the "idiotic" type I mentioned earlier. If you're going to pirate something and then pick the price you are willing to pay, why even pay at all? Really you're just wasting your money. You've already gone through all the hassle and risk of pirating it, so why bother buying what is essentially another copy of the game for yourself when you already have a perfectly functioning copy already installed? It certainly isn't to "support the developers" since they are going under anyways. You may justify pirating games as a way to avoid buying games that aren't worth it, but aren't you really wasting just as much money buying games you've already pirated?

I don't mean to cruel, but I think this author has lost the plot.

I have a simple question: How do manufacturers know how many people have pirated their games?

I ask because Mr Meacham says the "right approach" is to not buy or pirate the game. Sir, do you think people who pirate advertise that fact to the manufacturer? I don't. I think manufacturers estimate, similarly to how the RIAA does, what they need their losses to be to justify DRM development. That's how big business works. The means justifies the end instead of visa versa. Thus, you're living in lala land if you think DRM will ever stop. Any loss to piracy at all, in fact any perception of loss even if it's not real will always be enough for those who make money for developing DRM. Welcome to the real world.

Another point: I don't pirate games, but I do use Game Jackal to help my CDs/DVDs last. So I also disagree with your opinion on the term draconian as applied to DRM. It may not be draconian to pirates, but it is definitely draconian to end users who do nothing illegal when DRM interferes with using the game legally. As mentioned by others, there is certainly a draconian penalty when you can't uninstall a game from 1 PC to install it on another, or worse yet your system dies and needs to be formatted and now you've lost the right to play the game you paid for on this system as well. Computer problems? Sorry, your game is now officially dead. Please pay us some more for another license and life will be grand until you have problems again or something in our software errors which we can't be held accountable for. Draconian!

I don't pirate games now. But if the current trends continue, I may well be pirating games at some point. I'm not in favor of big business penalising me for doing things legitimately (with high prices and restrictions) just to make up for their real or imagined losses to those who they can't stop/never will be able to stop from pirating.

Hmm maybe I didn't say exactly what I meant to say. If I had played the game and loved it, and the price tag was $60, I would not have purchased it until it went down. In the future, when I have a full-time job, this will be a different story, but I wasn't trying to give the impression that I wouldn't still play the pirated copy. Although with how good I perceive the game to be, it might be an exception, like the upcoming Red Alert 3, Starcraft 2, and Diablo 3, all of which I will buy on day 1...but I definitely have to save up for it, lol.

I've made this argument before that a LOT of people shoot down, specifically Rob and Travis on this site: companies don't lose money as a result of my piracy; in fact, if anything, they gain it. This deal I mentioned with Titan Quest is the perfect example. I wouldn't have ever known the game was good if I hadn't pirated it. (I know Rob and Travis are shaking in fury as I write, because they claim that not a single person could possibly truthfully do what I claim to do.) I bought the game to support THQ, and because I also like to have retail copies with manuals and stuff like that. It had the expansion pack in it (gold edition), as well as letting me also play online now with my own keycode, but aside from that I haven't gained anything from purchasing the retail copy.

It reminds me of the good old Napster days - my dad and I found out that you could download songs free from other people and it was just the COOLEST thing. Again, amidst the irony, I downloaded some Metallica songs and loved them, so I promptly went out and bought four of their CD's. Once again, the industry gains from my piracy. Fortunately I am older and have outgrown such music tastes.

I don't promote piracy at all, but if I'm out there doing what I do, I would bet I'm not the only one. Now, a lot of people (and I would bet most) DO pirate games they would not otherwise buy, and I think that does hurt the PC gaming industry (I'm a firm believer that it is much easier to pirate PC games than console games), but I would think there are other people out there like me who legitimately do it to try games out, despite the doubts raised by a lot of people here. Don't get me wrong, I don't advocate piracy at all - I'm a business major, so I think on both sides of the coin. And I know for a fact that if I was a business that made games that I pirate, I'd be either making money or breaking even, but never losing a dime.

Now, do you really think I'm not going to take offense to you calling what I do "idiotic?" It's like saying, "No offense, but you're a retard." Come on, I'm being civil in this forum, so why can't we all?

That has to be the dumbest statement I have come across all year.

I don't think it's drm, that's just the way the tech advances. If you had kept your old consoles then you would still be able to play those games.

I don't think it's reasonable to expect a console maker to build in backwards compatibility with every console, especially when the hardware and media changes (e.g. cartridges to cd to dvd to blue ray etc).

It's also not realistic for console makers to make their models compatible with each other, especially with such a wide range of tech used in them (e.g. Sony has blue ray and xbox hd dvd, differing cpu's, yada yada).

I think the real problem with drm is that it is fine in principle but some of the companies that use it are just as a-morale as the people who crack/steal software. Companies are happy to screw the consumer into buying things they already own (music springs to mind) and pirates are happy to screw companies for things they don't. Somewhere there is a balance.....

rtfm,

Obviously you do not understand what DRM is. Digital Rights Management. As in only Sony has the rights to make hardware that can run a Playstation game. Toshiba cannot make a gaming system that can play Playstation games. Nobody but Sony can. And since there's no way to expect that hardware to last for ever, once Sony decides to stop making a system they've effectively turned off support for all it's games. It's really not very different from Yahoo! turning off their DRM music servers and leaving customers with a bunch of useless music.

Yup. One of the first things I learned while working in retail was to never tell the customer they were right, even if they were. If somebody came in and haggled you about something being over priced you NEVER would agree with them, even though most times I damn well new it was. I worked at Best Buy where $1.50 USB cables are sold for $30. When somebody complained about the price you told them about the gold connectors, not the 2000% markup.

I don't think it's that difficult. Just go look at what are the most popular torrents, or what torrents are being searched for. While it may not be exact it gives a pretty good idea of how much a game is being download, and that doesn't even account for all piracy. Also most pirates are not confined solely to the underground gaming world. Many will patch a pirated game with an official patch or play it online on a legit server. I sure there are ways of tracking how many people do this. Just because companies are not coming at them full boar that doesn't mean they don't know. Also since there's really no repercussions against piracy so many people flat out say they pirated games. Hell you could probably just do a simple survey of a cross section of gamers and get pretty honest and accurate results as to how many pirate versus buy.

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.