Should game companies stop producing drm protection to stop pirates?

[W-L]

-Moved to PC Gaming- 

[ivan134]

All these comments and no one has said anything about this thread being in the wrong section

[intelCore]

1 minute ago, Nicholatian said:

You can’t always get what you want, sadly. Instead of making that the objective, it is wiser to instead prioritise what really matters most in your life. Your job, career, family, etc.

That is exactly what I don't really understand but most people tell me. Why would you want to adopt yourself to the system when the system can adopt to you?

[Misanthrope]

21 minutes ago, Clanscorpia said:

Im talkling about it not having DRM protection. I know it did very well. But thats because most people didnt hear about it not having drms until recently afaik

CD Projekt red LITERALLY OWNS GOG the store famous for being 100% DRM. Witcher 2 was also already DRM free on Gog for years. This is just frankly not possible. 

 

People always knew they didn't have to pay for Witcher 3 and did so anyways because DRM doesn't works. Making good fucking games is the best copy protection period. 

[Small2134]

3 minutes ago, ivan134 said:

All these comments and no one has said anything about this thread being in the wrong section

This is news every time a game hits. So I thought it would be good for me to post this in this section 

[Zodiark1593]

3 minutes ago, intelCore said:

That is exactly what I don't really understand but most people tell me. Why would you want to adopt yourself to the system when the system can adopt to you?

Trouble with that ideal is the system would have to adapt to an innumerable amount of people individually. 

[Clanscorpia]

Just now, Misanthrope said:

CD Projekt red LITERALLY OWNS GOG the store famous for being 100% DRM. Witcher 2 was also already DRM free on Gog for years. This is just frankly not possible. 

 

People always knew they didn't have to pay for Witcher 3 and did so anyways because DRM doesn't works. Making good fucking games is the best copy protection period. 

Sorry I never knew about GOG. I only heard about it recently when people really started to talk about it. Sorry

[intelCore]

2 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Trouble with that ideal is the system would have to adapt to an innumerable amount of people individually. 

Maybe a sign that you cannot put such a system uppon so many people.

3 minutes ago, Nicholatian said:

Well, it’s not just those things, I mean. Career/family/etc are just big ones for a lot of people, that I thought would be relatable.

 

For me, I strongly value productivity in my user experience on the PC, and I also highly value my personal privacy. But I also need to do my job, and while my schedule is flexible and I have the freedom/authority to do this how I please, I know it is unwise to do it in a way that lets me “have it all”, because at that point my privacy and viewing experience is getting in the way of a big moneymaking obligation.

 

The short of it is, people should be basing their decisions off of core priorities that are relatively constant, or at least infrequently changing. Personally, gaming is not a big priority for me at all, but I understand that it’s important to others.

Family is a natural priority. Career already is an artificial piece of the construct.

 

However there nothing would ever change if priorities would constantly stay within the construct while the construct literally does whatever benefits the top 1% the most.

[intelCore]

1 hour ago, Nicholatian said:

I really don’t know what you’re talking about with this “construct” and the top 1%. It seems to be a bit off-topic.

 

I’m interested in protecting myself and ensuring success and well-being for myself and those I care about. As an extension to that, I also have an obligation to ensure the well-being and compensation of my teammates in the company I lead. I don’t particularly care what a lot of plutocrats are up to; I’m not too apathetic to just hand them a bone, though, if that makes you feel better.

Hopefully about the same thing that you were talking about when you mentioned this "construct". Might seem off topic but since everything is capitalistic here it applies to the whole thing just as much as every smaller subsystem in it which in this case happens to be the gaming industry.

This whole discussion really gets complex when you ask the question whether or not the top 1% that own so much more than the others already should still have the right to protect the goods that get them even more through DRM protection software in this case.

 

If you imagined the protection not being in place everyone would be able to copy it for free and everytime one says this the argument comes up "they have to live off of something too and deserve to get something for the great work they do". Since this is luxury and not essential for living the "living off of something" argument would be solved by getting the essentials out of the same cycle that the luxury products are traded in. The "they deserve something for their great products" point I agree with however as long as there is people who have to worry about not being able to afford their essentials there should not be a possibility for anyone to get that much more than the others but that's just my opinion.

 

Looking at what else could happen without DRM protections in place would possibly be that the whole gaming scene might become more of a sharing scene if one would consider that it is not already. I for myself do not see how it would be a bad thing to drop DRM protection since as far as I know only the really big companies are doing it (could be mistaken though). But then again my way of thinking is pretty unorthodox.

[Magnetorheological]

I don't really mind it, as long as it doesn't interfere with the game. That said, I'm not sure if it has to do with DRM, but my steam copy of Doom freezes the computer for minutes whenever I get disconnected from the internet (it's been a bit spotty the past few weeks), and I was even forced to restart the computer once or twice.

[Praesi]

6 hours ago, Joshe343 said:

Simple DRM is fine to keep out the noobies that are too afraid to torrent. If DRM was removed entirely the amount of people that pirate games would skyrocket.

That makes no sence.

[Praesi]

DRM is useless and only annoy real Customers. So yes, it should stop.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

7 hours ago, Small2134 said:

Should game companies stop producing drm protection to not stop pirates?

Fixed the title for you  

[Joshe343]

6 hours ago, Praesi said:

That makes no sense.

Yes, actually, it does. You would be very surprised at the amount of people that are either too scared or don't know how to torrent so they choose to buy the games instead.

[FunkyFeatures]

12 hours ago, Joshe343 said:

Simple DRM is fine to keep out the noobies that are too afraid to torrent. If DRM was removed entirely the amount of people that pirate games would skyrocket.

Exactly

If games would simply be copy paste then you "pirated" the game, then I would definitely pirate alot of games.

[FunkyFeatures]

6 hours ago, Praesi said:

DRM is useless and only annoy real Customers. So yes, it should stop.

How does it "annoy real customers"? Never had DRM fail on me. Of course MP is bollocksed by having no internet connection, the only way I see that it could annoy customers.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

32 minutes ago, FunkyFeatures said:

Exactly

If games would simply be copy paste then you "pirated" the game, then I would definitely pirate alot of games.

The counterfactual "the amount of people who would pirate would skyrocket" is baseless without a justification grounded on evidence.

In particular, since DRM crap started much earlier in piracy, it should have lead to a decline in piracy. Did it?

Then again, we lack the relevant counterfactual: what would the piracy level would have been without the increasing use of DRM?

The point, in any case, is that is not enough to make up counterfactuals about "what would happen if" and take them for fact without careful study.

 

34 minutes ago, FunkyFeatures said:

How does it "annoy real customers"? Never had DRM fail on me. Of course MP is bollocksed by having no internet connection, the only way I see that it could annoy customers.

In many ways. I can give you my example: I outright refuse to have a Steam account. I refuse to install software I didn't buy, and I bought the game, not these stupid clients. I refuse to need to be online to play games. Many, many times I've been about to buy a game, then I saw "Steam required", or other forms of online validations, etc, and stayed away from it. Or worse.

I'm happy to buy games from game developers, just as I buy CDs (yes, the physical thing even) from artists I like. And just like with CDs, I won't buy everything that is released anyway. But when I buy a CD, I never get less than I would get from copying it from someone else. The problem with many, many games is that the originals entail all sorts of BS like online validations and clients and whatnot that make them actually worse than the pirate version. It is simply irrational to expect anything positive from that kind of behavior.

Of course, someone who already took the bullet in the past, the marginal trouble created by one additional gain could be low, or even zero.

[BrightCandle]

If you go back 15 years to the early internet the grand majority of mp3's were copied using peer to peer software and FTP and a host of other mechanisms. The studios at the time were not producing MP3's at all. Initially all that got released was AAC files with encryption which locked people into the Apple store, it wasn't popular and people continued to copy them. But eventually the music industry changed and we got MP3 sales directly as well as rental services and the amount of copied MP3's across the internet dropped such that legitimate sales took over. It was the removal of the DRM and wide spread availability that ultimately led to significantly higher sales to the point where sold MP3's now sell far more than CDs do.

 

The TV industry is going through a similar thing, no availability initially and they are currently playing in the high DRM and restricted access model and TV (and movies ) widely copied on the internet today, so much so its actually a significant chunk of internet bandwidth.

 

Games are in a similar place to TV, they tried really awful DRM and it nearly killed a couple of giant games companies in the process it was so intrusive but over time its become less severe and availability has improved and sales have returned. We have quite a few examples of games that sold extremely well and shipped with no DRM that were AAA games and we also have games that shipped with DRM, sold poorly and were widely copied. Copying with games is partly availability (what EA is doing currently with its games as with Ubisoft and locking them to their stores is hurting sales) but its also about if a game is good and compelling, I think lack of demos is driving a decent chunk of the copying in games.

 

So whether you like it or not the evidence from media in general is that DRM hurts sales, annoys customers and fundamentally holds back progress to new mediums.It isn't a surprise that DRM free games that are good sell exceptionally well despite their DRM, it does infact aid their sales to be widely available from a lot of different stores without customer harming restrictions.

[Centurius]

14 hours ago, intelCore said:

Even though that could end the money problems of so many people but hey that we don't want.

It actually wouldn't, if everyone has a lot of money no one does. 

[Scruffy90]

Yes. Pirates will get the games they want to play regardless of the DRM scheme. When its easier for pirates to play the games than loyal customers (talking about the days of always online drm and secuROM) than theres a problem. Customers want to be treated with respect and CDproject red has proved that. They are so respected because of the DRM free scheme that even pirates are stating that people should buy their games.

[Kiyuubi]

16 hours ago, Clanscorpia said:

No they shouldnt because it does help. Witcher 3 worked only because it not having a DRM didnt get widespread until recently

[citation needed]

[Praesi]

 

 

6 hours ago, FunkyFeatures said:

How does it "annoy real customers"? Never had DRM fail on me. Of course MP is bollocksed by having no internet connection, the only way I see that it could annoy customers.

Not be able to play i a single Player Game because fucking Servers are offline or cant handle the traffic is one example.

When i pay for stuff and i always buy my Games, i dont want deal with such Nonsense.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

6 hours ago, BrightCandle said:

If you go back 15 years to the early internet the grand majority of mp3's were copied using peer to peer software and FTP and a host of other mechanisms. The studios at the time were not producing MP3's at all. Initially all that got released was AAC files with encryption which locked people into the Apple store, it wasn't popular and people continued to copy them. But eventually the music industry changed and we got MP3 sales directly as well as rental services and the amount of copied MP3's across the internet dropped such that legitimate sales took over. 

Is there good data on P2P Mp3 traffic?

In any case, we must also take into account that you only need to download the Beatles discography once. What I mean is that even a 100% piracy rate on new stuff will still imply lower transfer than a 50% piracy rate on new stuff plus sharing everything recorded up to the invention of Mp3.

 

On the other hand, contrary to what happened to record sales in the music industry, the videogame industry took no hit from the diffusion of internet, as revenues have grown nonstop. I guess the benefit of online gaming and the internet hype machine were larger than the losses from switching from floppy disk copying to torrent  

[SteveGrabowski0]

20 hours ago, Small2134 said:

It looks like drm gets cracked very easy. Why would companies waste thousands of dollars or millions on drm if it does. It work? It makes the experience less enjoyable in my opinion. So should game companies stop making drm protection software?

Very easy? Just Cause 3 hasn't been cracked and it has been out since last December. 

[SteveGrabowski0]

20 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

CD Projekt red LITERALLY OWNS GOG the store famous for being 100% DRM. Witcher 2 was also already DRM free on Gog for years. This is just frankly not possible. 

 

People always knew they didn't have to pay for Witcher 3 and did so anyways because DRM doesn't works. Making good fucking games is the best copy protection period. 

I imagine not using DRM cost them lots of sales. Even though the game is universally loved it didn't sell anywhere near as many copies as crap like Call of Duty Black Ops 3 (which you of course had to pay for since it's an online game).