Civilization 5 and Steam(works)

[ori]

Current developments in DRM on the PC are mostly aimed at preventing resale in addition to discouraging piracy. Since there is no real hard data out there, one could argue that companies aren't actually implementing these schemes to prevent piracy (which has an unknown impact on sales - just the fact that someone pirates a game doesn't mean he was a potential paying customer, and nobody knows how many pirates are potential paying customers), but mostly to remove competition in the form of used game sales from the market.

Edit: this was meant to reply to edpovi...

 

[jacortina]

Just because hard data is not shared by companies that want to protect their business plans does not mean this data does not exist; it's just not publicly available.

I do not feel in the slightest way obligated to entertain such unevidenced claims. Trying to polish it over with 'ooh, it's a secret' is absurd.

One smaller game company has reported "Sales up 70%" after implementing a DRM measure to one of their games, but has also noted that preventing 1000 illegal copies only lead to a few legal sales. They have also noted a "90% piracy rate", which means 90% of active gamers were from pirated copies of that game. This article is from a couple of years ago.

Link? Or at least a citation to a source for this which shows that adding DRM was the only thing done. They didn't use that in addition to increased marketing, price adjustments, etc., all of which could well have increased sales without the DRM.

 

[edpovi]

I do not feel in the slightest way obligated to entertain such unevidenced claims. Trying to polish it over with 'ooh, it's a secret' is absurd.
...
Link? Or at least a citation to a source for this which shows that adding DRM was the only thing done. They didn't use that in addition to increased marketing, price adjustments, etc., all of which could well have increased sales without the DRM.

The link:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17350

I would hardly consider it a scientific study, but it is from the experience of a director of a game company.

you would be simiarly hard pressed to present hard data that proves a DRM free game would generate more sales than game with DRM.

 

[Acronym2]

Current developments in DRM on the PC are mostly aimed at preventing resale in addition to discouraging piracy. Since there is no real hard data out there, one could argue that companies aren't actually implementing these schemes to prevent piracy (which has an unknown impact on sales - just the fact that someone pirates a game doesn't mean he was a potential paying customer, and nobody knows how many pirates are potential paying customers), but mostly to remove competition in the form of used game sales from the market.

Edit: this was meant to reply to edpovi...

Definitely, I would agree with your premise that piracy concerns are perhaps overstated with regard to the threat they actually pose to the game producers. One does indeed find the question quite interesting as to whether a gamer who buys a hacked Steam-Powered game because they can't or won't use Steam would actually become a Steam Subscriber in the absence of the pirated game. However, I would speculate that the losses any major game producer has to piracy are trivial and Steam is more representative of a new marketing strategy than a new DRM strategy.

Now, don't missunderstand my point. If games had no type of DRM at all, the game producers would likely lose a significant amout of sales to piracy. I just wanted to suggest a distinction between DRM and a marketing strategy. (Something like the elimination of used/pre-owned pc game sales is part of a marketing strategy and not just an unfortunate by-product of Steam's DRM.)

 

[edpovi]

Current developments in DRM on the PC are mostly aimed at preventing resale in addition to discouraging piracy. Since there is no real hard data out there, one could argue that companies aren't actually implementing these schemes to prevent piracy (which has an unknown impact on sales - just the fact that someone pirates a game doesn't mean he was a potential paying customer, and nobody knows how many pirates are potential paying customers), but mostly to remove competition in the form of used game sales from the market.

Edit: this was meant to reply to edpovi...

Piracy does impact sales, but it is not a one for one basis. Just because the pirate wasn't planning on buying the game doesn't make that any more right or moral. For hard data you can just check a pirate site and see how oven a link has been downloaded, overall it's likely to be many millions. Piracy is too easy for it not to effect sales, there are many who think "why pay money if I can get it for free".

I agree they are also combating the used games market with the newer forms of DRM like Steam and Battle.net. This is a separate aspect they are considering, and certainly part of their business model. This data is also easier to obtain and track.

If Steam can limit the re-sale market and some anti-piracy measure, while also offering some features to consumers, it's not hard to see why publishers are increasing their interest.

 

[ori]

Piracy does impact sales, but it is not a one for one basis. Just because the pirate wasn't planning on buying the game doesn't make that any more right or moral. For hard data you can just check a pirate site and see how oven a link has been downloaded, overall it's likely to be many millions. Piracy is too easy for it not to effect sales, there are many who think "why pay money if I can get it for free".

I agree they are also combating the used games market with the newer forms of DRM like Steam and Battle.net. This is a separate aspect they are considering, and certainly part of their business model. This data is also easier to obtain and track.

If Steam can limit the re-sale market and some anti-piracy measure, while also offering some features to consumers, it's not hard to see why publishers are increasing their interest.

I am not disputing the fact that piracy does have *some* impact, but I do think its vastly overstated. I have no idea where the morality argument comes from since I certainly didn't state anything to the effect - software piracy is theft in my mind.
As for your "just look at a pirate site" argument: its flawed, any such counters are mostly inflated by all sorts of bots probing every link they can find and have little to no resemblance to actual downloads.
I agree that there is good reason for publishers to go that route - I just don't see customers benefiting from it to any great extent. With the removal of the used game market prices are bound to be higher than they would be if it still existed, for one thing. Whether the offered features are worthwhile additions (and would not have been implemented without such DRM schemes) is obviously up to the individual consumer to decide.

 

[jacortina]

The link:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17350

I would hardly consider it a scientific study, but it is from the experience of a director of a game company.

I see that the author added some more in the comments sections, along with a link to another article:
http://gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17408

That's where we find the tidbit that the 70% increase in Reflexive's online sales followed a change made to the DRM ... a couple of weeks before Christmas. What a surprise to find sales uptick at just that time of the year. It just must be the DRM.

I would also note that in all of this, the author is talking in terms of game copies / users online. Not a peep about dollars or increased revenues (seasonally adjusted and less the costs of DRM development and implementation) - the actual metric that counts (what allows those guy at Firaxis to pay the bills).

you would be simiarly hard pressed to present hard data that proves a DRM free game would generate more sales than game with DRM.

I never made such a claim, so I won't be trying to support it. Those who claim a connection between DRM with the continued success (or even basic livelihood) of game developers and publishers are the ones who should support that claim.

 

[Acronym2]

Piracy does impact sales, but it is not a one for one basis. Just because the pirate wasn't planning on buying the game doesn't make that any more right or moral. For hard data you can just check a pirate site and see how oven a link has been downloaded, overall it's likely to be many millions. Piracy is too easy for it not to effect sales, there are many who think "why pay money if I can get it for free".

I agree they are also combating the used games market with the newer forms of DRM like Steam and Battle.net. This is a separate aspect they are considering, and certainly part of their business model. This data is also easier to obtain and track.

If Steam can limit the re-sale market and some anti-piracy measure, while also offering some features to consumers, it's not hard to see why publishers are increasing their interest.

I don't really buy this "major game titles hacked and posted for free download" thing. I can't remember having ever seen a pirated major pc game title being offered as a free download or if I did, would ever trust not to be a virus trap waiting to be installed on some sucker's pc.

 

[edpovi]

I am not disputing the fact that piracy does have *some* impact, but I do think its vastly overstated. I have no idea where the morality argument comes from since I certainly didn't state anything to the effect - software piracy is theft in my mind.
As for your "just look at a pirate site" argument: its flawed, any such counters are mostly inflated by all sorts of bots probing every link they can find and have little to no resemblance to actual downloads.
I agree that there is good reason for publishers to go that route - I just don't see customers benefiting from it to any great extent. With the removal of the used game market prices are bound to be higher than they would be if it still existed, for one thing. Whether the offered features are worthwhile additions (and would not have been implemented without such DRM schemes) is obviously up to the individual consumer to decide.

We have mostly the same position, but perhaps a different sense of the scale of the issue. You seem to have the impression I have seem from others that see piracy as "mostly harmless" or a "victimless crime". But Piracy is actually done on a massive scale, in the 10’s of millions if not 100’s of millions. I agree that many of those who pirate would not actually pay full price for all those games if piracy was not possible, but this is a very misleading statement. The game they pirated does have some value to the pirate, if it was truly worthless, why take the time to download and play the pirated game.

I think we would both agree that if the number of pirated copies exceeds the number of legal copies, it would be a very serious issue. But that is the actual situation for PC games. Look at this link for a very LONG but excellent examination of PC piracy. It gives a very good sense of the true scale and damage of piracy.

http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_1.html

On very interesting topic in that article is that much of the anti-DRM hysteria is actually from those who support piracy. This is not to say that everyone who is anti-DRM or anti-Steam is a pirate, but that much of the negativity for them on the internet comes from the pirate community.

I don't really buy this "major game titles hacked and posted for free download" thing. I can't remember having ever seen a pirated major pc game title being offered as a free download or if I did, would ever trust not to be a virus trap waiting to be installed on some sucker's pc.

Trust me, it can be done VERY easily. The like above gives a rough idea just how easy it it. The best know pirate site in 2008 was also in the top 100 sites WORLDWIDE for internet traffic, that is BIG money.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Just because hard data is not shared by companies that want to protect their business plans does not mean this data does not exist; it's just not publicly available. One smaller game company has reported "Sales up 70%" after implementing a DRM measure to one of their games, but has also noted that preventing 1000 illegal copies only lead to a few legal sales. They have also noted a "90% piracy rate", which means 90% of active gamers were from pirated copies of that game. This article is from a couple of years ago.

There have been some DRM free games that have sold well, but that does not mean they were also free of piracy. Piracy is the main reason PC game development has been changing. More development dollars for PC are spent towards online only or online focused games. Some "top" titles still come out for the PC, but the retail shelf space for PC games has dropped dramatically over the past decade.

Developers of "standard" PC games are competing against the profitability in the MMO market and console game market. A game like Civilization is very rare in the gaming world; it will be released on the PC only, with Mac to follow "shortly" after. If it wasn't for the large community supporting this game, it wouldn't be possible to employ 52 people for over 2 years to develop this game.

If you're talking about the piracy rate of Word of Goo, I think a bit of care needs to be applied in interpreting their results. They argued a 90% piracy rate but later admitted that figure was a lot more fuzzy because of other technicalities they hadn't taken into account like single users having multiple IPs. To put it simply, there were many assumptions that went into that figure making the uncertainty in the 90% estimate fairly large. Large enough that the figure could well be below 50% in actuality.

But as someone else said, it's sort of besides the point. If a game sells equally well with vs. without DRM, one could take the position that the one with increased piracy (no DRM) is a greater success because it reached more people despite having no DRM. This sort of data (on sales) was not included as part of the article.

It's great to see people arguing a position with some evidence but in this particular case I think the evidence is very weak and cannot alone support the argument that piracy is as high as claimed (around 90%). Many parties who post to the internet about this issue will have vested interests so it's especially important to be skeptical about the information presented. I haven't yet read the TweakGuides article yet but I invite you to post which parts of the article are relevant here, because the whole thing is pretty long. At a glance, it looks like an opinion piece that uses the World of Goo example as a piece of evidence, but with no real research of its own?

 

[Shakes]

I don't really buy this "major game titles hacked and posted for free download" thing. I can't remember having ever seen a pirated major pc game title being offered as a free download or if I did, would ever trust not to be a virus trap waiting to be installed on some sucker's pc.

If you go to a torrent site you will not only find A major PC title offered for free, you'll find pretty much every single one of them released in the last few years.

You can argue how much piracy does or doesn't affect the industry, but I don't see how you can argue it's not happening.

 

[Myth5]

The problem with all this is I don't see a way for there to be DRM or other authentication program and not have the legal purchaser suffer for it. Therefore I think DRM free or a choice of using a box code and have a drive check for copies of the game purchased in stores is the only way to go where the consumer is truly satisfied, without the silliness of 3rd party software like Steam.

 

[edpovi]

If you're talking about the piracy rate of Word of Goo, I think a bit of care needs to be applied in interpreting their results. They argued a 90% piracy rate but later admitted that figure was a lot more fuzzy because of other technicalities they hadn't taken into account like single users having multiple IPs. To put it simply, there were many assumptions that went into that figure making the uncertainty in the 90% estimate fairly large. Large enough that the figure could well be below 50% in actuality. ...

The World of GOO example was just a couple of sentences in the 10 page article, and just a minor example in the whole article. And even if the rate was 50%, does that somehow justify the piracy rate? It's still criminal!

It's available as a digital download, selling for less than $20 on Steam, it has no intrusive DRM, and it's received nothing but praise, reflected in a Metacritic Score of 90%/95%. This should be precisely the recipe for preventing piracy according to some, but unfortunately the truth is less convenient: the developer of the game has stated that World of Goo has an approximate piracy rate of 90%. Regardless of the precise level of piracy, the key point to consider is that World of Goo addresses every single item on the checklist of excuses which people usually present for pirating games - yet it is still being pirated quite heavily.

This is a key damning point in my view, many folks offer up all sorts of LAME excuses to justify why their "friend" pirates games, but in reality they just like getting stuff for free. Piracy is very easy with almost no risk in getting caught, why pay $50, $20, or even $10 when you can get it for the low price of free.

... But as someone else said, it's sort of besides the point. If a game sells equally well with vs. without DRM, one could take the position that the one with increased piracy (no DRM) is a greater success because it reached more people despite having no DRM. This sort of data (on sales) was not included as part of the article. ...

This is also a very weak position in my view. Why should anyone be entitled to play the game for free? They looked for torrent, downloaded it, installed it, and played the game. They certainly put some effort into it and the game clearly isn't worthless as they went though this effort, but yet everyone assumes that they ALL wouldn't buy the game at any price (even $10) if piracy didn't exist. That sounds like a lot of smelling salts and rationalization to me. Is the developer (and shareholders) supposed to feel better because "well, at least 500,000 played the game even if they didn't buy it!".
There were some numbers in the goo link. 150,000 actual sales at that time; ~ 1,500,000 different IPs posting results.

... I haven't yet read the TweakGuides article yet but I invite you to post which parts of the article are relevant here, because the whole thing is pretty long. At a glance, it looks like an opinion piece that uses the World of Goo example as a piece of evidence, but with no real research of its own?

If you are skeptical of the scale of Piracy, you should give that 10 page article a read. The author gives a reasonably balanced presentation with some noteworthy numbers to support the analysis.

Update: For 2009, the most pirated PC game as reported in this article was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The PC version had a staggering 4.1 million downloads via torrents alone compared with an estimated 200,000 - 300,000 actual sales via retail and Steam, demonstrating that the most popular game of 2009 was also the most pirated, and more importantly, that the actual number of downloads for the most popular game is now almost three times as high as in 2008, signaling the rampant growth of piracy. It is also interesting to note that while COD:MW2 sold around 300,000 copies on PC and had 4.1 million pirated downloads, the console version sold in excess of 6 million copies during the same period according to this article, and yet had a fraction of the number of pirated downloads at around 970,000.

This section was particularly damming in my view. The install base for Xbox 360 is 23 million and the PS3 is 17 million, this total is 40 million. The number of installed PC is over a Billion, the number of gaming PCs sold over the past few years was over 200 million. There is no way this title should sell so few PC copies vs. so many console copies. Piracy clearly has a *major* impact on PC sales.

This was a particularly funny evidence.

Some recent calculations revealed that, last week, gamers with pirated copies of Emergence requesting support outnumbered gamers with legitimate copies of Emergence requesting support by a ratio of nearly five to one. This, understandably, is a source of great frustration for Russell, who is essentially performing two jobs at Ritual and who only has a finite amount of time to spend on each. Responses he has received when attempting to troubleshoot problems have laid painfully bare which users are playing the game illegally.

Pirates have the audacity to call the publisher for tech support, and many still claim that Piracy dosn't impact the PC game industry? They need to wake up and smell the coffee.

 

[edpovi]

The problem with all this is I don't see a way for there to be DRM or other authentication program and not have the legal purchaser suffer for it. Therefore I think DRM free or a choice of using a box code and have a drive check for copies of the game purchased in stores is the only way to go where the consumer is truly satisfied, without the silliness of 3rd party software like Steam.

Because of piracy, it's silly for publishers to spend $20 million developing a game and not protect the game using Steam or some other DRM.

 

[PieceOfMind]

The World of GOO example was just a couple of sentences in the 10 page article, and just a minor example in the whole article. And even if the rate was 50%, does that somehow justify the piracy rate? It's still criminal!

A rhetorical question I suppose, because obviously I'm not trying to justify the piracy rate.

I made my point very clear that if you get the same level of sales whether you use DRM or not, then the version without DRM is a greater success.

Yes, some people have stolen your work, but the people who paid for your work enjoy the convenience of no DRM. More success for the customer, and unfortunately more success for the pirate too.

Remember, the first role of a games developer or any business is (apart from profit ) to serve their customer by provision of a good or service or whatever. Preventing theft of their work is important but is not the primary concern. If you make a bad product and no one buys it then it won't matter how well you prevented people pirating it. (Again, I'm not advocating piracy, but noting that making a good product and putting it at an appropriate price should be higher on the priorities list)

This is a key damning point in my view, many folks offer up all sorts of LAME excuses to justify why their "friend" pirates games, but in reality they just like getting stuff for free. Piracy is very easy with almost no risk in getting caught, why pay $50, $20, or even $10 when you can get it for the low price of free.

I question the accuracy of the 90% figure. As I said before, it relies on several assumptions, a few of which are unrealistic/inaccurate IMO, making the figure have high uncertainty. I don't consider any figure that has high uncertainty on it to be "damning". Certainly suggestive though.

This is also a very weak position in my view. Why should anyone be entitled to play the game for free? They looked for torrent, downloaded it, installed it, and played the game. They certainly put some effort into it and the game clearly isn't worthless as they went though this effort, but yet everyone assumes that they ALL wouldn't buy the game at any price (even $10) if piracy didn't exist. That sounds like a lot of smelling salts and rationalization to me. Is the developer (and shareholders) supposed to feel better because "well, at least 500,000 played the game even if they didn't buy it!".
There were some numbers in the goo link. 150,000 actual sales at that time; ~ 1,500,000 different IPs posting results.

Yes, and what if someone pirates it and the server measures 15 unique IPs from them, and then later purchases it because they felt it deserved their money given how much they played it, and then continued to send another 15 unique IP addresses? Would you count this guy as a pirate or a customer? Should you say that for the 30 unique IPs 29 of them were pirates and 1 was a legitimate customer? The complications make it begin to look very messy.

I am interested in seeing real piracy figures and I would expect the rate to be a bit worrying, but I disagree with the methodology used in that example. Honestly, there would be cleverer (or more cunning) and clearer ways to measure the rate than what was done with World of Goo.

The main point the World of Goo example was to illustrate is that the DRM is not the main reason that people pirate games. I thought this would have already been obvious since in most games the DRM is only a minor issue to most people, and games that have incredibly annoying DRM probably don't get played much by pirates anyway.

Perhaps you can tell me the piracy rate for Assassin's Creed 2 (or whichever recent game had Ubisoft's silly online DRM)?

Actually if you think more about the World of Goo case, doesn't it kinda suggest going the opposite direction of annoying DRM? It had no DRM yet still got pirated similar to what is alleged of other games that do use DRM. In other words, you can't have it both ways - claim that piracy is rampant on DRM-laden games and also rampant on DRM-free games, because it suggests DRM has little effect and hurts your argument. Instead, it's quite a reasonable position for an "anti-DRM" person to take.

See, a no-DRM advocate would rightly point out that World of Good sold very well and if they hadn't bothered attempting to measure the piracy it probably would have widely been regarded as a success. 150,000 sales of a casual game like that indeed is something the developer should be proud about.

If you are skeptical of the scale of Piracy, you should give that 10 page article a read. The author gives a reasonably balanced presentation with some noteworthy numbers to support the analysis.

I think I will, but you'll need to give me time, lol.

This section was particularly damming in my view. The install base for Xbox 360 is 23 million and the PS3 is 17 million, this total is 40 million. The number of installed PC is over a Billion, the number of gaming PCs sold over the past few years was over 200 million. There is no way this title should sell so few PC copies vs. so many console copies. Piracy clearly has a *major* impact on PC sales.

MW2 is the most expensive game to hit the market for a long time. While I don't pretend the piracy is ok, I think it's easy to see why the PC version was pirated so much compared to the console version. Anyone who did want to pirate the game would obviously get it on PC, under the assumption it's easier to use a pirated version there than it is to pirate a console version.

It's quite possible that many of the people who don't want the DRM on their PC simply buy the console version, but this is not a point I wish to emphasise - it's just a possibility.

Anyway, anyone can throw big figures around. The nubmer of installed PCs is stated but for the most part irrelevant. Why state the number of gaming PCs if you don't also state the number of each console as well?

This was a particularly funny evidence.

Pirates have the audacity to call the publisher for tech support, and many still claim that Piracy dosn't impact the PC game industry? They need to wake up and smell the coffee.

I'll need to check the article, but I would agree that pirates contacting technical support is a funny/worrying (depending on your perspective ) problem.

Because of piracy, it's silly for publishers to spend $20 million developing a game and not protect the game using Steam or some other DRM.

It appears that you assume there is some level of anti-piracy DRM where suddenly most pirates become paying customers. That is a big assumption to make, IMO. It's probably largely inaccurate too.

And one could make the cheeky point, do we really want to be playing a multiplayer game against ex-pirates? If the pirates had to buy the game, then they'd be playing on legal servers.

 

[Myth5]

It appears that you assume there is some level of anti-piracy DRM where suddenly most pirates become paying customers. That is a big assumption to make, IMO. It's probably largely inaccurate too.

And one could make the cheeky point, do we really want to be playing a multiplayer game against ex-pirates? If the pirates had to buy the game, then they'd be playing on legal servers.

Exactly. Without DRM, people pirate your game in large numbers. With DRM, pirates can't get it and also a very high portion of the time they won't spend their money on it (obviously), so either way the company is not making more money. If people don't want to pay money for it when it's easy to get, what makes them think people will pay money in any other situation?

 

[Shakes]

I made my point very clear that if you get the same level of sales whether you use DRM or not, then the version without DRM is a greater success.

Well it's great to say "all things being equal" but it's pretty clear all things aren't equal. Given the bad PR that DRM brings with it, plus the cost to license it, what makes you think companies would put DRM on products if it didn't result in higher sales?

Yeah there are a lot of people who will pirate the game no matter what. And there are people who will pirate it but wouldn't buy it. But there's also the middle ground of people who would be willing to buy it, but if they happen to be able to easily and quickly obtain a pirated copy, hey it's hard to beat the price tag of $0. DRM aims to convert some of the later group into sales.

I think there's a pretty huge market of those middle ground people, probably the majority of the market. Heck even the author of that long winded, sanctimonious, anti-piracy screed that he's passing off as "fair and balanced" admits that he used to pirate games. But he's right about one thing for sure: copy protection is effective at driving sales, and it's the fact that consoles have better copy protection than anything on the PC that's a big factor in the exodus of developers from the PC platform.

 

[12agnar0k]

@ 12agnar0k
Convince the government? Really? Sometimes a judge is enough

Well this is what I meant, whomever you need to speak to change the law, your president, your monarch, your laywer, your local judge, your local village police cunstable.

Whomever that person may be. You would need to get them to have Steam change thier policies by changing the law they are based on.

I don't pretend to even know how you would go about it, but if you want to have a gaurentee from Steam that they will provide acess to your games no matter what the law would need to tell them too.

I agree with you, yes they currently have no legal obligation to do and this is what is causing some people worry and it is understandable. But if it helps I have quoted them saying unofficially they don't intend to leave you high and dry, as you said this may not be a consolation to you but its worth mentioning. Also a final point, Steam is never going to go bankrupt and stop authenticating so you can't play your games, soon enough they will rule the world, best get on the band wagon. Soon enough it will be a legal requirement to have a Steam account assigned to you when you are born through a surgical implant into your Mudulla Oblongata.

....

Personally I think more people would be willing to stop pirating and pay for atleast some of thier games, expecially the titles they love, which for us would be Civ. IF, Publishers would stop releasing games for sale that SIMPLY DONT WORK. I mean the best example I can come up with is spore. They released it with limited install DRM's and with so many bugs that people used up thier DRM limit just trying to get the game to work, where as Pirates got the game bug free, with no DRM. (Thier was a patch on release the pirates simply didnt install that caused all the bugs.)
If Publishers make sure thier game bloody well works before selling it instead of relying on the ability to patch it as and when they please to make the game work months after people buy it. If peopel could buy a game and know they brought a working game they would be more willing to do so instead of turning to piracy.

 

[The_Coyote]

Whomever that person may be. You would need to get them to have Steam change thier policies by changing the law they are based on.

Not the law, only the part of the EULA which doesn´t conform with the local law ...

Also a final point, Steam is never going to go bankrupt and stop authenticating so you can't play your games, soon enough they will rule the world, best get on the band wagon. Soon enough it will be a legal requirement to have a Steam account assigned to you when you are born through a surgical implant into your Mudulla Oblongata.

Gabe Newells conquer the entire world plan (now only question if here was a part you meant serious in this post)

 

[PieceOfMind]

Well it's great to say "all things being equal" but it's pretty clear all things aren't equal. Given the bad PR that DRM brings with it, plus the cost to license it, what makes you think companies would put DRM on products if it didn't result in higher sales?

Less piracy.
Also, control more of the actual sales by eliminating second-hand sales (hence more profit).

I think you give way too much weight to the estimate of the "middle ground" by the way. I would argue that few people pirate a game they would normally buy, and instead that most simply go without if they can't get it free.

Honestly I think it's ridiculous to suggest that people think about the price of a game in the process of deciding to pirate it. i.e.

Piracy is very easy with almost no risk in getting caught, why pay $50, $20, or even $10 when you can get it for the low price of free.

If people are even thinking about paying for it they're probably not going to pirate it. If the price is too high, they can wait til the price falls.