DRM is killing the gaming industry - Games

[b]Edit: Sorry, this was a bad idea. Read on at your own risk[/b] Right, let's all close our eyes collectively - no, not yet, you need to read what I have to say next - and imagine a bank. This bank has a lot of money in it, literally milions of pounds, dollars, euros or whatever currency you use. They have a lot of security at this bank, but no security guards to enforce it, and no police stations or patrolling officers for fifty square miles. Now, this bank, allows people to get money, not [i]their[/i] money, but just money. There's a catch though - to get your mass quantities of dosh, wonga or cash (delete as appropriate), you have to fill out several ungodly forms. These forms include such bollocks details that the bank doesn't really need such as your email address, your telephone number and your place of residence, despite the fact that they're never likely to need to contact you again, because the money is free and to keep forever. So imagine a little old lady. Let's call her Elizabeth. [img]http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080322020451/uncyclopedia/images/1/10/Old-woman-madeira.jpg[/img] This is Elizabeth, look at her! She's old, she's fragile, and her pension has just run out, she [i]really[/i] needs this money, so she comes into the bank with every intention of receiving the money, only to be greeted with seventeen seperate forms and the requirement that she wears a tag that allows the banking institution to pinpoint her exact geological location at any time for the next one hundred and seventy five years, you know, in case she dies so they can get their money back from the rotten, naked and yet somehow perfume coated corpse. Now as this lady is around half way through filling out the forms for her free money (approximately four hours has elapsed), a burglar bursts in, wearing a mask so noone can describe him, and shouts in his most threatening, loud and terrifying voice. [b]"THE MONEY. THE BAG. NOW"[/b] As he holds out a leather bag while signifying where the money should go, just in case some of the bank staff had never been robbed before. The robber gets all the millions of currency into his bag and runs out of the door, and because of the polices distance from the bank, it takes them far too long to arrive, and the robber probably gets off scott-free, unless there is an extraordinary turn of luck. Five minutes. Bish-bash-bosh and he enjoys the money for the rest of his life as none of the bank staff can describe his face because of the mask. That's all the old ladies money, and four hours of her life. They don't have any more money to give her. Disappointment. As the robber runs away, he notices that the money is actually from the popular board-game Monopoly, and is no good to him. He realises that he stole it for nothing, and feels even worse for those that actually filled in the form to get it. --- Right, so let's apply that to the gaming industry, yes? The bank is your local games store, giving you games in exchange for your hard earned money, and you, the paying customer are the old lady. You're hand over your hard earned for your game, and you leave the store, giddy from excitement, disregarding the 'Games for Windows Dead' branding on the top of the case. Then you get home, and spring open your DVD drive so quickly that your walking stick breaks and put the disk in. Sign up to 'Games for Windows Dead', it says. You do it. Sign up to 'Popstar Dinner Club', it says. You do so. Install SecurityROM software, despite it being a massive pain in the ass and clogging up your PC. ___ Now, let's spring over to the criminal [img]http://paidcontent.org/images/editorial/_original/computer-criminal-o.png[/img] He's installed his game, bypassing all the loops that you have to jump through to get the game to play by simply applying a 'Razor1911' crack that he found on the internet. He didn't even have to hand over his hard-earned for it, just a few hours on uTorrent while he perhaps watched a movie or sipped a cup of tea in a sinister fashion while staring at the progress bar of the download slowly creeping up. No 'Games for Windows Dead', no 'Popstar Dinner Club', no SecurityROM software. Sorted. ___ Here's where the two paths join up - they both boot their games. It's littered with bugs, it's not much fun to play, the graphics are bad and the sound is abysmal. That's right, it's a [i]shit game[/i]. Yay. It's monopoly money, no use to you whatsoever. The pirate has spent much less effort finding this out than you have. Good job, Generic Games Company. And that, my friends, is why DRM is killing the gaming industry, with one over-exaggeration and attrociously long analogy. The story does play out differently however if its an 'always online' system like UbiDRM. Because in that example, the criminal gets to run away with the money, and the police arrive an hour later and shoot the innocent old lady right between the eyes. Discuss.

Bad analogy, try again. [editline]5th September 2011[/editline] Also, it's funny how you neglect to mention Steam in your post.

[QUOTE=Dr Bob;32131087]Bad analogy, try again.[/QUOTE] I disagree.

shut down computer stop posting

I probably should've known this'd result in boxes.

Steam is the only viable form of DRM out there and I stick to it. Although you have to be online to start up the game, you can always go online, toggle offline mode and along with that, you get Steam cloud, Steam achievements and all that. Steamworks actually benefits the consumer rather than fucking them up the ass.

I never realised I was an old woman trying to get free money, my life has been changed by this post.

Bad analogy. A better one would be something like: You buy a chocolate cake, it's very awesome and delicious but you suddenly notice someone took a big chunk of it. You go back to the store and ask what gives, they tell you you need to pay extra for that missing chunk. [B]EDIT:[/B] oops DRM i read wrong. my bad!

[QUOTE=Jojje;32131715]Bad analogy. A better one would be something like: You buy a chocolate cake, it's very awesome and delicious but you suddenly notice someone took a big chunk of it. You go back to the store and ask what gives, they tell you you need to pay extra for that missing chunk.[/QUOTE] That'd be a good analogy for day one DLC, not DRM.

i like the photo of the criminal

[QUOTE=Janus Vesta;32131796]That'd be a good analogy for day one DLC, not DRM.[/QUOTE] ah damn it was drm i read wrong. my bad!

This a really, REALLY bad analogy. There are so many better ways you could have put this. For example, you could have included the fact that the pirates don't have to deal with intrusive drm, like Ubisoft's drm that kicks out legitimate customers over losing a single connection packet. And the best part? Intrusive DRM doesn't do jack shit to stop pirates, the game still gets cracked soon after release, and pirates play the game without any hassle while real customers are fucked over.

Seriously do you have a better way to stop pirates?

[QUOTE=Crypptic;32134324]Seriously do you have a better way to stop pirates?[/QUOTE] Offer a good product. Focus more one the money you [I]did[/I] make rather than the potential money you didn't.

[QUOTE=Janus Vesta;32134853]Offer a good product. Focus more one the money you [I]did[/I] make rather than the potential money you didn't.[/QUOTE] How is that "stopping" them?

If DRM causes you a problem, just crack the game after you buy it and be done with it. Unless it's a multiplayer game you shouldn't have anything to worry about.

[QUOTE=pessimistic;32135066]How is that "stopping" them?[/QUOTE] It's not, but there's no practical way of stopping them without wasting money.

[QUOTE=Alex_DeLarge;32131365]Steam is the only viable form of DRM out there and I stick to it. Although you have to be online to start up the game, you can always go online, toggle offline mode and along with that, you get Steam cloud, Steam achievements and all that. Steamworks actually benefits the consumer rather than fucking them up the ass.[/QUOTE] You don't have to be online to start up a game. You just have to be online when you start up Steam.

[QUOTE=Alex_DeLarge;32131365]Steam is the only viable form of DRM out there and I stick to it. Although you have to be online to start up the game, you can always go online, toggle offline mode and along with that, you get Steam cloud, Steam achievements and all that. Steamworks actually benefits the consumer rather than fucking them up the ass.[/QUOTE] I still love how you have to be online to go offline

What i got from your analogy was that more demos are needed to encourage people to buy.

I remember reading somewhere that DRM isn't to stop pirates. EX Little timmy likes a game, he copies it onto a CD. He then sends that CD to Johnny down the street, who also wants to play the game. Johnny is stopped by the DRM though, so he asks his mom to buy the game for him. Profit for the company. [editline]5th September 2011[/editline] So it's mostly for money.

[QUOTE=Diet Kane;32135961]I still love how you have to be online to go offline[/QUOTE] No you don't

[QUOTE=Folstream;32137209]No you don't[/QUOTE] Steam never gives me the option to launch in offline mode because it's stuck in that forever loop of "updating steam" if I have no internet access

That's a bug then, offline mode works fine for me. Doesn't clientregistry.blob usually do that?

Every time I try to use offline mode, Steam crashes. Even if I'm already online. [editline]5th September 2011[/editline] It's done this since I bought Counter-Strike: Condition Zero back when it was new and included Steam. Ugh.

The war on pirates is the same as the war on drugs in so many ways it's scary. Both had so much money wasted, neither worked, and innocent people were screwed at some point by both.

[QUOTE=Juggernog;32131076]He didn't even have to hand over his hard-earned for it, just a few hours on uTorrent while he perhaps watched a movie or sipped a cup of tea in a sinister fashion while staring at the progress bar of the download slowly creeping up.[/QUOTE] I prefer [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOSnen64a7M[/media] but it's whatever you want I guess.

OK I have given this some thought and have come to possibly the most cost effective way to combat piracy. A day or two before the games release you flood the torrent sites with "leaks" of your game. These leaks will be of a similar size to your game so nobody could tell what they really are. Upon launching said game after torrenting the leaks players will be greeted with the menu screen as normal, the game will also load up as normal. From this point onwards the game plays normally at first. But as time goes on you find that this leak is different. Things are out of place, the game does kooky stuff seemingly out of the blue. (A like the FADE DRM found inside ARMA2) None of this really affects the game much though. You get to the end of one of the first levels and suddenly the screen cuts to black. A video them comes on screen and it's the developers of the game. They talk to you about how they are happy you took the time to get their game by any means and that it means something to them that people want to play it even if they didn't pay for it. It then goes on to say stuff about how "as developers our only money comes from the games we make" and it sort of changes into something somewhat like a charity advert with the end filled with clips of the game developers sleeping in the streets all cold with no food, looking into the camera with sad, sad eyes. At the end of the video there are links to several places you can buy the game with the tagline "Only you can help these poor innocent developers, please do what you can." Also the "strange mode" would be a little togglable option that comes with the full game, so you don't have to pirate the game to see the strange stuff.

or the developers could just submit to the fact that piracy is gonna happen no matter what they do. DRM can lose you respect with the consumers which actually makes it less likely they'll buy it. An idea I have is to reward people who purchase the game with, say, bonus material that they can activate with a serial key that's ingame. Not, like, a pre-order bonus or DLC, just stuff like extra footage, soundtracks, messages from the devs etc. Sure, that stuff will probably be put online too, but it's still better to reward people for buying the game rather than trying to punish those who don't.

If something can be accessed it can be hacked. That's why piracy can't be stopped by current DRMs. The only thing DRM really does is that it doesn't allow (if it's a good DRM) pirates to play on Day 1, until crack is released and it serves as an idiot cull, sort of, stopping people, too dumb to find and apply a crack, from playing it.