For the user, DRM is pretty much at best an annoyance, and at worst utterly disastrous for the game's playability. However, I do understand why game manufacturers put it on the game.
DRM is very useful (when done properly) in combating Day one, or worse, day zero piracy. If a game is available for download on the day of release or within the following week, the developers can expect to do far worse than if pirates aren't able to get a hacked version up for a couple of weeks. DRM is a major barrier for hackers, and that's the fundamental reason why it's on games.
However, as anyone who has ever visited or stumbled upon a file sharing site knows, all games get hacked through eventually, normally within a week, nearly always within a month. Regardless of the strength of the DRM, the games are going to get pirated eventually. At this stage, the DRM has served its purpose.
So why is it still shipped on copies of the game bought a few months or years after the initial release? A solution that would appease the anti-DRM crowd, and still keep game designers/publishers in business would be to remove DRM from the game (i.e. ship a DRM free game) after say three months of initial release.
Thoughts?
DRM is not to discourage the hardcore pirate. Any programmer worth his salt knows that DRM does little to discourage a dedicated pirate.
DRM is meant to discourage the casual pirate -- the ones that would make a copy of a game to give to their friends. It is also meant to hamper the resale market. The game publishers can put a number on the resale market, but they really cant (even as much as they claim they can) put a number on piracy.
No it's not. Ever hear of Spore? It has some of the toughest DRM around, and it was cracked within hours.
Spore's DRM is not tough at all. AC2, Silent Hunter 5 and those had tough DRM. That one took months to break. Spore's was more or less an online check which can be spoofed fairly easily.
What makes you think pirates are going to go "guess I'll have to wait to get it for free, guess I'll go legal"? The majority of pirates are in two groups:
-Those that pirate to try something and buy it if they like it
-Those that are too cheap to pay
Do you really think either group is going to suddenly pay up just because they might have to wait a couple days?
You're getting at the real reason for DRM: control. The main purpose of game DRM is to eliminate the used games market and also to make "buying" a game simply a rental that allows you to play the game. In fact, I'll bet everyone here a million dollars that once the Internet gets fast enough to stream games, people will never be allowed to install games on their own machines again.
Good point. DRM is exactly, that -- control. It is the publisher/developer attempting to control how and where their product is used in a medium that does not lend itself well to such control.
Well, that's not a terribly unbiased start to your post.
I personally wasnt under any conception that his post was unbiased.
At best, DRM is unnoticable to the user, and results in extra game content and support due to increase developer revenue.
No, DRM which is restrictive to users, and DRM which is difficult to bypass are not necessarily the same thing.
Uhh, unrestrictive DRM is easy to bypass, though the converse is not necessarily true -- plenty of restrictive DRM that is easy to bypass.
Nope, I pirate a ton of games simply because I can. If I was not able to do so, I would purchase them instead. There's really no motivation to purchase something if I like it, given that I already have it.
People like you are one of the reasons that we get harsher DRM. Here's a motivation: you purchase the product you pirated, you support the developer. You support the developer -- they release new products or improve on older ones.
What? A whole lot of DRM measures have nothing to do with preventing the reselling of games. The used PC games market is tiny compared to the piracy market, in any case.
A lot of DRM is meant exactly for that. While it may be true that the resale market is smaller than the piracy market, you can quantify the resale market much more than you can the piracy market.
I think eliminating resell is a part of Steam. Though from a publisher's perspective, every penny counts.
Not only Steam. Any type of online activation that ties a product to an account or similar effectively eliminates the resale of that product.
I have a lot of friends who also pirate games with no intention of paying, regardless of game quality, who would purchase many of the games if they were unable to pirate them.
Why would you buy the game once you have the game already?
Because like I said above, I believe I supporting the developer.
The box?
To support the devs?
The box these days is kinda of a..crap deal. All you get is a cardboard sleeve over a double-wide DVD case. And even then, the manual might be digital and tiny too. I mostly buy games I have pirated to support the developer.
