Is the Steam DRM just a one-time verification check? Or is it much more?

[Shurdus]

What I said about losing sales to piracy is sheer economics. Everything I say can be backed up by economic theory, which has been applied by the companies I've been mentioning positively.
Valve understands this theory also, as you can see by some of their quotes.

A lot of pirates are in places where the games aren't sold (SE Asia, China), a lot are poor college students who don't have the money. Those people, if you eliminated piracy, aren't going to become customers. They'll just do something else.

The pirates that DO hurt you, are the ones that are WILLING to pay the money for the game, yet pirate- either because they can, or because they're angered due to DRM. The first group are the people who deserve the letters from lawyers, if you can identify them. The second group is your own fault. Civ V is going to make some of that second group. (That's not necessarily saying that 2K made an unprofitable decision in the short term.)

Companies shouldn't waste too much effort going after pirates other then distributors and that first group I mentioned- there's no profit in it, and you gain ill will from doing so.

This is my other concern about Steam. I have monopoly concerns. This is not because Valve is evil, but because Valve is smart. Smart in the same way Microsoft is.

Whenever any digital medium does something stupid, and it's boom ends (See CD's in the first half of last decade and anime in the last half )- they always start to blame piracy, when it's often due to an unwillingness to adapt to market conditions, combined with goods people are less willing to buy. See the Titan quest folks

Also,on the Stardock forums, around the Starforce vs Stardock fiasco (where Starforce linked to torrents of GalCiv II threatening Stardock to use Starforce or we will bury you)- some people came on their forums and said that they bought the game due to that/Stardock's stance. Several pirates also claimed that they were more willing to buy due to that. (those are the damaging pirates). The endgame of that feud was that Starforce has been in decline ever since, as the reaction was so negative that Ubi and some others dropped Starforce. Maybe this isn't symbolic of the genre at large, but it's also possible that the people on those boards are the ones ahead of their time, as Valve was when they made Steam (I may not like Steam's model, but I will say that it was the 2nd best PC business decision of last decade- right behind WoW)

Gal Civ II- sold around 1 mil+ copies. 8 digit profits
Titan Quest- sold about the same. Company goes bankrupt.

I'd say, to me, that proves that Stardock had more business sense then the Titan Quest folks.
A lot of developers in the gaming, and some publishers, aren't very good on the business side of things.

How do you know how much profit Stardock made on GalCivII?

I agree that the things you say about economics sounds logical and such, but what I do nto understand is this:

Blaming the pirates is marketing spin. Pirates aren't customers. You only lose a sale due to piracy when someone willing to buy your game normally decides to pirate it instead. The #1 cause of this is ironically anti-piracy measures.

First you say pirates are not customers. Then you say some pirates are customers, because some people may either pirate or buy a game. If they decide to pirate, then the company loses out on a sale. I can follow your reasoning there. It then completely slips past me why blaming pirates for the need of DRM is marketing spin. Blaming pirates may not be the reason of all reasons, and the discussion of course does not end there, but it is part of the reason.

Also you say that the number one cause of people pirating a game is anti-piracy measures... How so? If you can back it up with facts and figures then sure, but if you put it like this it makes no sense. It sounds to me like you make it up. It sounds farfetched that people are willing to go through the trouble to see if a game has piracy protection before deciding to buy or not.

"What? This game comes with some form of anti-piracy? Well, I guess I will not buy it then!"
...
This sounds to me like something a teenager with pimples would do to 'fight the system', but it sounds far from rational.

 

[Chalks]

Also you say that the number one cause of people pirating a game is anti-piracy measures... How so? If you can back it up with facts and figures then sure, but if you put it like this it makes no sense. It sounds to me like you make it up. It sounds farfetched that people are willing to go through the trouble to see if a game has piracy protection before deciding to buy or not.

"What? This game comes with some form of anti-piracy? Well, I guess I will not buy it then!"
...
This sounds to me like something a teenager with pimples would do to 'fight the system', but it sounds far from rational.

The argument has also been proved false by real world studies. Games that have been intentionally released with no DRM what so ever have seen a 90% piracy rate. It's a huge factor for companies trying to release games without DRM - they are crippled by piracy to a far greater degree than DRM'd games.

There is no way he can argue that modern games like MW2 have a 90% piracy rate - that would require an astronomical number of people to have pirated the game. Amusingly, even if he attempts to argue that some of that 90% who pirated it also bought the game at a later date he is explicitly undermining his other argument that pirates are not customers. Good luck getting out of that logical quagmire.

In short, there is no evidence that DRM increases piracy, it's pure conjecture and provably false.

 

[Me,myself,and,I]

1. there has never been a content ban on steam.

2. Steam only takes info about hardware and your steam games and DLC.

3. I trust valve to be trustworthy.

 

[arstal]

How do you know how much profit Stardock made on GalCivII?

I agree that the things you say about economics sounds logical and such, but what I do nto understand is this:

First you say pirates are not customers. Then you say some pirates are customers, because some people may either pirate or buy a game. If they decide to pirate, then the company loses out on a sale. I can follow your reasoning there. It then completely slips past me why blaming pirates for the need of DRM is marketing spin. Blaming pirates may not be the reason of all reasons, and the discussion of course does not end there, but it is part of the reason.

Also you say that the number one cause of people pirating a game is anti-piracy measures... How so? If you can back it up with facts and figures then sure, but if you put it like this it makes no sense. It sounds to me like you make it up. It sounds farfetched that people are willing to go through the trouble to see if a game has piracy protection before deciding to buy or not.

"What? This game comes with some form of anti-piracy? Well, I guess I will not buy it then!"
...
This sounds to me like something a teenager with pimples would do to 'fight the system', but it sounds far from rational.

Brad Wardell posted in a dev blog that GalCiv II made eight-digit profit. Given that he's the CEO of the company, I believe it.

http://draginol.joeuser.com/article/303512/Piracy_PC_Gaming

I'll stand slightly corrected. It was eight-digit revenue on a budget of under $1mil. So at worst, it was $9 mil profit. Most likely is over $10mil now, as the expansions have been released, and that was two years ago.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6197305.html

Sins also probably made eight-digit profit also.

Is this replicable on the AAAA, $100mil budget scale? Probably not. that said, this proves that there is a market for this, and you can make good money and get rich doing this- which is why this model won't go away, even if Steam gets a monopoly.
We are the market that feeds games like this.

I do know that I will take the words of the CEO of a company that has produced two games with 800%+ profit margins, over others. The only miss Stardock has was Demigod, and even there, the game at least broke even (source was one of Stardock's public business reports, which they publish to all Impulse users)

You're twisting my words, which I'm not going to let you get away with.

Most pirates have no effect on a company's profitability, as they simply would never buy the game legally. The pirates that do have an effect, are those who would, but don't. These fall into two types- the first type is your thief, who does it because he can, the second does it due to anger over DRM. Why else would they do it? Again, before you twist my words again, I'm referring to the pirates who do cost companies sales, because they would have bought the game otherwise.

Note, someone who buys the game, then pirates it to get around the DRM, is not a lost sale, though companies trying to gain sympathy claim it, since they actually bought the game.

If you don't think mature people will refuse to buy a title over DRM, you haven't paid much attention to this board the past couple of weeks- a lot of long-time players, who it is rational to assume are not pimply-faced teenagers, have said no sale. I'm saying not over $20 (and probably not even then). This is mostly due to DRM.

http://www.stardock.com/media/stardockcustomerreport-2008.pdf

Also, Impulse was created, according to that, due to fears of a Valve monopoly. Directly stated.

 

[Commander Bello]

2. Steam only takes info about hardware and your steam games and DLC.

Wrong.

Valve software automatically generates and submits to Valve bug reports upon a crash or other fault in the Valve software. This automatically generated bug report information may include information about other software or hardware on a user's system.

 

[Shurdus]

Brad Wardell posted in a dev blog that GalCiv II made eight-digit profit. Given that he's the CEO of the company, I believe it.

http://draginol.joeuser.com/article/303512/Piracy_PC_Gaming

Granted.

You're twisting my words, which I'm not going to let you get away with.

Most pirates have no effect on a company's profitability, as they simply would never buy the game legally. The pirates that do have an effect, are those who would, but don't. These fall into two types- the first type is your thief, who does it because he can, the second does it due to anger over DRM. Why else would they do it? Again, before you twist my words again, I'm referring to the pirates who do cost companies sales, because they would have bought the game otherwise.

I did get that, and again I fail to see how I twist your words. You said that the typical pirate is not a customer because he would never buy the game anyway. therefore, so you argued, claiming that DRM is there to prevent piracy is a marketing spin. But now you argue that there are pirates who buy the game. So it then suddenly does indeed make sense to get DRM, or at least you cannot argue that the DRM serves not as anti-piracy, because you yourself argued that some pirates ae customers.

Also you clearly have no clue what you are talking about, since you keep demonstrating that you think you know how the market works while you have no clue. I liked this part in particular:

These fall into two types- the first type is your thief, who does it because he can, the second does it due to anger over DRM. Why else would they do it?

You just assume to know these things, because you cannot imagine any other reasons. If you can provide facts and figures then by all means, please do. I think however that you know not what you are talking about. You seem to make these things up on the spot, and while your arguments have at least some face value, it means little to me because face value means feces. I really hope that your arguments would indeed be true, because if everyone was as naive as you then the world would indeed be a better place. Also I can sympathise with your point of view, I just have my doubts if your view is valid or not. Until you back it up with some figures I think your vision is made up and I do not buy it.

 

[RickInVA]

Not all game companies believe that piracy is a huge concern. See: http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Another-view-of-game-piracy

It will also be interesting to see what happens when the courts are done with Vernor vs. Autodesk. Bilski v. Kappos has some interesting, if not directly similar, implications. eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C. may have some implications as well, although the actual facts decided were that of the injuction, not the underlying issues.

Especially as DRM may impact the "rights" (whatever they may turn out to be) of people that buy software from the original owner I think the trend in these cases would be to support the future buyer over the software developer/distributer.

It could be that in the same way that in DC vs. Heller the court ruled that a law that forces a gun owner to make his weapon inoperative was unconstitutional under the 2nd Ammendment, that DRM that makes sequential "owners" of software unable to use their purchase may be similarily barred. I put "owners" in quotes as an indication that what that represents, especially given the implications of Vernor vs. Autodesk, may change over time.

Just MHO.

 

[PieceOfMind]

The argument has also been proved false by real world studies. Games that have been intentionally released with no DRM what so ever have seen a 90% piracy rate. It's a huge factor for companies trying to release games without DRM - they are crippled by piracy to a far greater degree than DRM'd games.

There is no way he can argue that modern games like MW2 have a 90% piracy rate - that would require an astronomical number of people to have pirated the game. Amusingly, even if he attempts to argue that some of that 90% who pirated it also bought the game at a later date he is explicitly undermining his other argument that pirates are not customers. Good luck getting out of that logical quagmire.

In short, there is no evidence that DRM increases piracy, it's pure conjecture and provably false.

Can you stop throwing around that 90% figure like it's fact? It's not.

Really it's better to say that's what that game developer estimated. As I said to you earlier, the assumptions that went into the figure make it very hard to believe it's realistic.

 

[arstal]

Games with a crippling DRM (Spore) have also had a 90% piracy rate.

So is that proof piracy rate and DRM are uncorrelated? I'm arguing a reverse correlation, which isn't 100% provable, but I think Spore proves the case.

I do think other factors influence piracy rate more then DRM, such as type of game.

 

[Chalks]

Can you stop throwing around that 90% figure like it's fact? It's not.

Really it's better to say that's what that game developer estimated. As I said to you earlier, the assumptions that went into the figure make it very hard to believe it's realistic.

Sorry, I'm unable to post a link directly from developers of a game who used a installation phone home system to track installs because it's not "fact".

But the people on the other side of the argument are able to say "games get pirated more if they have DRM" with absolutely no sources or evidence and you say nothing?

I don't think I can be bothered to debate it, to be honest. You apparently don't really care about facts since you're ignoring the fact-free opposition. Not sure what your point is when a 2 second google search can pull up information on exactly how many installations on legitimate IPs and how many pirated copies were installed, and further statistics on how many legitimate copies were installed on multiple IPs (1.15 installs per legit copy by the way).

Games with a crippling DRM (Spore) have also had a 90% piracy rate.

So is that proof piracy rate and DRM are uncorrelated? I'm arguing a reverse correlation, which isn't 100% provable, but I think Spore proves the case.

I do think other factors influence piracy rate more then DRM, such as type of game.

Spore is one of the most pirated games, and it had 1.7 million downloads.

During the same period, it had 2 million sales.

I think you need to learn more about mathematics.

A game with 2 million sales would need to have 18 million pirated copies in order to have a 90% piracy rate.

Spore's piracy rate is not high because of DRM, it is high because of the fact that it is marketed to little kids who's parent's wont buy it for them. Do you know what number 2 is? The Sims, with CD in drive DRM.

Your statistics are complete crap. With or without DRM, spore would be pirated up to the eyeballs.

 

[wilebill]

Hitherto I have posted against the use of Steam. However, the Steam paranoia is now going overboard.

What we perhaps need to satisfy all sides is a music video based on The Dream Police by Cheap Trick ala The Green Police variant, also by Cheap Trick. One scene shows Sid Meier with an evil smile complete with prominent horns and tail!

The steam police, they live inside of my head
The steam police, they come to me in my bed
The steam police, they delete my favorite mods
Oh no! ... etc.

 

[Akka]

Blaming the pirates is marketing spin. Pirates aren't customers. You only lose a sale due to piracy when someone willing to buy your game normally decides to pirate it instead. The #1 cause of this is ironically anti-piracy measures.

'nuff said.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Sorry, I'm unable to post a link directly from developers of a game who used a installation phone home system to track installs because it's not "fact".

But the people on the other side of the argument are able to say "games get pirated more if they have DRM" with absolutely no sources or evidence and you say nothing?

I don't think I can be bothered to debate it, to be honest. You apparently don't really care about facts since you're ignoring the fact-free opposition. Not sure what your point is when a 2 second google search can pull up information on exactly how many installations on legitimate IPs and how many pirated copies were installed, and further statistics on how many legitimate copies were installed on multiple IPs (1.15 installs per legit copy by the way).

The difference is they don't try very hard to make it look like fact and it's clear to everyone it's just their opinion. Once you start putting actual numbers on things and referencing articles that your arguers probably won't even read, I'll be more critical of the method used to get those numbers. You'll notice I don't usually object to your generalisations.

Both sides of this argument don't have much figures to back up their claims. Actually the example you're referring to is a good one for your argument but you should be more clear about what the 90% means. You and I both know it's not just a 90% piracy magic number.

 

[tom2050]

The argument has also been proved false by real world studies. Games that have been intentionally released with no DRM what so ever have seen a 90% piracy rate.

This is proof...? Let us all read what is wrote in that link.

Carmel recounted seeing torrents with upwards of "500 seeders and 300 leechers" and receiving emails from some who bought the title after pirating it, but flat-out said that "the piracy rate was about 90" percent

First off, no one knows where they are coming up with that 90% figure from. It could be true, it could not. They are making it sound as if out of every 10 users, only 1 copy was a legitimate sale (simplified).

They need to protect their games, which is fine. My argument was against requiring internet to install a game for offline play for the people that may not want or have access to internet.

These fall into two types- the first type is your thief, who does it because he can, the second does it due to anger over DRM. Why else would they do it?

You just assume to know these things, because you cannot imagine any other reasons. If you can provide facts and figures then by all means, please do. I think however that you know not what you are talking about. You seem to make these things up on the spot, and while your arguments have at least some face value, it means little to me because face value means feces. I really hope that your arguments would indeed be true, because if everyone was as naive as you then the world would indeed be a better place. Also I can sympathise with your point of view, I just have my doubts if your view is valid or not. Until you back it up with some figures I think your vision is made up and I do not buy it.

It's not that hard of a concept, here... whether anyone agrees or not.
There are primary reasons people do things, and it is common sense (don't need polls for things like this).
Why do people steal games?
1. They do it because they do not want to pay money for it.
2. They do it because they know they will not get caught.
3. There is alot of frustration due to CERTAIN TYPES of DRM on the internet. Frustrated users that buy DRM infested products that cause large problems are likely to get a hack for it; re-sell the game if they can; or shelve it. Concurrent problems may turn these buyers into stealing games more often.
4. Other Reasons are always possible.

Steam doesn't really fit into the DRM that causes huge problems category; so if anything; my guess is that people that have had large problems with ANY type of DRM; will view all DRM in the same regards to an extent. There may be a small percentage that have had big probs with Steam (they always is with everything).

I have had infuriating problems with several games due directly to DRM in the past, therefore I look upon all DRM with skepticism. Those who worship and praise DRM likely have never encountered a real problem with DRM; therefore just do not know the hell DRM is capable of causing.

If I had to guess though, Reason 1 and 2 would be larger % of people than Reason 3. Who knows though for sure...

 

[arstal]

You can have problems with Steam DRM, and not have problems with other DRM.

I'm ok with GOO and the DRM Mount and Blade uses, and maybe even the variation on Securom Bad Company 2 uses. I think all of those are better then Steam. I bought Mount and Blade on Steam only because I knew the DRM system they used allowed me to get the game off of Steam.

Some people prefer disk checks to Steam.

I have a pretty nuanced position on what I find acceptable. Steam DRM does come awfully close to that line, just over it.

 

[Senethro]

This is proof...? Let us all read what is wrote in that link.



First off, no one knows where they are coming up with that 90% figure from. It could be true, it could not. They are making it sound as if out of every 10 users, only 1 copy was a legitimate sale (simplified).

They need to protect their games, which is fine. My argument was against requiring internet to install a game for offline play for the people that may not want or have access to internet.



It's not that hard of a concept, here... whether anyone agrees or not.
There are primary reasons people do things, and it is common sense (don't need polls for things like this).
Why do people steal games?
1. They do it because they do not want to pay money for it.
2. They do it because they know they will not get caught.
3. There is alot of frustration due to CERTAIN TYPES of DRM on the internet. Frustrated users that buy DRM infested products that cause large problems are likely to get a hack for it; re-sell the game if they can; or shelve it. Concurrent problems may turn these buyers into stealing games more often.
4. Other Reasons are always possible.

Steam doesn't really fit into the DRM that causes huge problems category; so if anything; my guess is that people that have had large problems with ANY type of DRM; will view all DRM in the same regards to an extent. There may be a small percentage that have had big probs with Steam (they always is with everything).

I have had infuriating problems with several games due directly to DRM in the past, therefore I look upon all DRM with skepticism. Those who worship and praise DRM likely have never encountered a real problem with DRM; therefore just do not know the hell DRM is capable of causing.

If I had to guess though, Reason 1 and 2 would be larger % of people than Reason 3. Who knows though for sure...

They came up with the 90% piracy figure by the number of unique IPs that logged into their leaderboard as compared with number of sales and subtracting some in proportion to the expected numbers of users with ISPs that change IPs and those that don't.

If you'd bothered to do some research you would know that.

 

[tom2050]

They came up with the 90% piracy figure by the number of unique IPs that logged into their leaderboard as compared with number of sales and subtracting some in proportion to the expected numbers of users with ISPs that change IPs and those that don't.

If you'd bothered to do some research you would know that.

Right, way to do some real research there... reading a sentence that someone else wrote somewhere. Doing real research is verifying the numbers yourself. Google research is believing or not believing what others say is true.

Do I think it is conspiracy... no, that is why I said it may be true or may not be true. "the Expected Numbers" could be way off for all you know. Or they could be right on.

I was accused of not providing evidence from a link I left from CEO Brad of Stardock... if that constitutes not being evidence, then those links constitute of no verifiable evidence other than the companies word.

I don't believe they would lie about such a thing, as there is nothing to gain for them by doing such a thing. But they embarked on that experiment, and it failed, although they said they were still making profit... so it wasn't a complete failure.

Requiring internet to install does not better protect the program than requiring internet to download patches online (which requires internet anyways). So still no good argument as to why internet should be required to install has been given.

 

[Senethro]

Right, way to do some real research there... reading a sentence that someone else wrote somewhere. Doing real research is verifying the numbers yourself. Google research is believing or not believing what others say is true.

I read the story as it broke a year ago and typed my post from memory. It got some quite wide discussion at the time and was thought to be accurate.

Requiring internet to install does not better protect the program than requiring internet to download patches online (which requires internet anyways). So still no good argument as to why internet should be required to install has been given.

Because thats how Steam works. They chose Steam for a variety of features and that internet installation doesn't seem to be a drawback.

 

[The_Coyote]

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, signalling 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.

~ 93 % [ 4100k/ (300k + 4100k) ) ] piracy rate (PC figueres only) and a "require steam" game ...

btw the article itself is a nice start for a discussion - even it´s imo a bit biased.

Eg one point completely ignored by the above linked article:

So here is the deal: When you develop for a market, you don't go by the user base. You go by the potential customer base. That's what most software companies do. They base what they want to create on the size of the market they're developing for. But not PC game developers.

(link (Piracy & PC Gaming - 2008) )

considering 1.2 million (yes, it´s place 2 of the most pirated games) pirated games for sims 2, it looks like a huge number, but considering around 14 million sold copies, the piracy rate is below 10 %.

But now following the simplified logic sometimes (i know this is bad style, but it´s my general feeling about the discussion.) used so far, we have a game without DRM and a 90 % piracy rate, a game which requires steam and a 93 % piracy rate and a game with CD in drive DRM and a piracy rate below 10 %. So a game without DRM is still superior to the game with steam, but both DRM methods (none and steam) are desperately worse compared to the (it´s important to be said: older) CD in drive DRM game.

Unfortunally the world and the market is not that easy.

 

[tom2050]

Because thats how Steam works. They chose Steam for a variety of features and that internet installation doesn't seem to be a drawback.

This is my whole point... FORCING people to do things doesn't go well with the average folk. They are hurting themselves by doing this. Saying:
"You must have internet, or you can't play the game you just bought to play offline"

is crazy. Now to say "You need internet to download patches and updates (in which you obviously have to have internet to do so in the first place)" completely changes the whole aspect into Firaxis being a more consumer friendly company.

Coyotes point above shows no one here really knows the whole story, including myself... but if I had to guess, Firaxis will lose more sales this way than by doing it the way which is internet for updates only. And steam would still be used by everyone who chooses, and may gain a few happy customers (instead of forced customers) when people choose to log in and see how nice it may be.

Steam stops nothing at all, therefore the only thing it may hamper is Re-Sale. Brad of Stardock seems he knows what he is talking about after all.

And the Steam stats likely consist of alot of forced customers that just have not 'logged offline' and Steam counts them for their own popularity show.