PC Game Piracy Examined

[FiXT]

Originally Posted by SKYMTL

Amazing article IMO.

Two points from the conclusion which it the nail straight on the head in the message to consumers:

Drop the DRM hysteria.

Don't Blindly Support Steam


'Nuf said.

Do you still agree with this given your recent escapade with Warhead

Sorry but DRM has GOT to go, and consumers have a right to be up in arms about it. I ran into the same thing with FarCry2 and without divulging to much I got so frustrated at Ubisoft's PATHETIC support, not to mention SecureRom's and the epic fail that is DRM (locking me out after I used up all the installs on my test bench and the useless "de-activation tool) - That my legitimately purchased game, became best friends with the trash bin and I developed a new appreciation for Razor1911

In regards to point number two - Steam is great - who cares if Valve has a monopoly on it - they developed an EXCELLENT platform and business model for the distribution of games. It should be heralded as the best method of digital game distribution because it is. Prices are not only in line with retailers, but for the most part - STEAM IS CHEAPER!
Heck for us Canadian's, it means a savings of 5-13% (though with the dollar that isn't so much)

Steam encourages anti piracy by offering extra features that you cannot acheive with pirated games. Things such as a communication and social network, worldwide portability, permanent retention of your games and multi-player play.
What does buying a CD from a retail store offer over a pirated game? A pretty box, and a legit CD key to play online with... if the pirated crack isn't good enough to do that already or if the multi-player blows chunks anyways - you still get a pretty box though

Valve and steam deserve all the praise they get for encouraging consumers to move away from piracy in order to receive extra benefits that come with being a legitimate purchaser.

My primary beef with Steam is that they still incorporate the frustration of DRM for third party games - Steam in itself is a form of DRM, there is no reason to double it up.

[Cranky]

I like Steam for the fact that they keep a copy of your game so you can never lose it, and that you can now have your saved progress/settings on their server.

[Mark]

I use to pirate games years ago but not since they've allowed trial versions of certain games via online or in combination with MaximumPC. I certainly believe there is too much hysteria over piracy to be sure but the only product I still will not pay for is M****SOFT**FICE or most anything from M*******T.

It's very costly to develop games and the success stories cloud the many failures. I personally believe that it's a modern day art form and should not necessarily be considered games, therefore I support the PC industry to the fullest and buy all my games either used or new but what I do not like is the DRM intervention. Seems to me that I'm not buying the game but renting it. There is no resale/trade-in value whatsoever and blu-ray PC games should of been implemented, at least a year ago, but it still is to cost prohibitive.

[SKYMTL]

Originally Posted by FiXT

Do you still agree with this given your recent escapade with Warhead

Absolutely. IMO, many users get far too excited about DRM.

Does DRM have to go? Absolutely.

Should authorities, governments and ISPs take a more proactive approach to shutting down file sharing sites instead of hunting down the little guys? Absolutely.

Hate me now but I believe throttling for high bandwidth users is necessary and completely justified.

[Chilly]

I actually read the whole thing.

It was an extremely good read, I may not necessarily agree with all his points, and feel he omitted a few legitimate concerns, but overall I agree with the general stance that DRM isn't the evil beast everyone makes it out to be. He is correct in saying that while DRM isn't the best solution from a consumers standpoint, it is the best solution overall in maximizing their sales and still providing good value to the consumers.

[Soultribunal]

Excellent Article that takes a non-partisan approach to the situation at hand.

DRMs are annoying, and there are two games I own I'd love to play but have NO idea in 3 moves where the Key's for the games are :/

In the end, if I like it, I buy it.

Simple as that,

ST

[GregH]

Pretty good read on the whole.

A couple of points I disagreed with:

1) Equating GPU purchases to the number of PC's able to play high-end games. Anyone who's browsed the buy/sell area of this forum is aware than hardware enthusiasts are constantly upgrading to the latest & greatest parts when it comes to their PC - especially the video card. Someone upgrading their video card 3-4 times a year (3-4 vid card purchases in their stats) does not necessarily equate to 3-4 different PC's able to play these games.

2) Crytek stating that Piracy was the #1 reason for Crysis not doing too well in sales. Sure, it's more than likely a big reason, but the reason I never bought it (and I'm many others didn't either) was that the hardware requirements to get it to look good and run smoothly were stupid.

As for DRM: I bought the creature editor for spore, installed it then switched the hard drive into a different machine. New machine said I had to reinstall the creator. Reinstalled it, played around for a bit then upgraded the vid card. For whatever reason the game would no longer run and I had to install it again. I was told it had been installed too many times and I had to buy another copy. I'd have no problem if the uninstalls negated one of the installs but they didn't. I don't even recall seeing any information on how to get the activation key working again, just the message saying to buy another copy.

For this reason I've never played Bioshock. Well, to be perfectly accurate I tried to play it, but could only manage around 15 FPS. 1 install wasted. Switched out hard drives and vid cards as mentioned above and figured I'd be able to play it now so uninstalled/reinstalled again. Nope, guess that old P4 isn't powerful enough.
So by my count I've got one install left and the game that I bought over a year ago is still largely unplayed. Will hopefully be upgrading my PC at Christmas so might finally get a chance to try it then.

I have no problem with that limited install thing but they need to:
1) Make it so uninstalling the game gives you the install you used back (not sure if this is standard now or not)
2) Make the purchaser of the game more aware of their options when they get the message saying they've used up their installs. I wasn't even aware that some of those re-activation tools even existed until I read that article.

[Chilly]

Originally Posted by GregH

Pretty good read on the whole.

A couple of points I disagreed with:

1) Equating GPU purchases to the number of PC's able to play high-end games. Anyone who's browsed the buy/sell area of this forum is aware than hardware enthusiasts are constantly upgrading to the latest & greatest parts when it comes to their PC - especially the video card. Someone upgrading their video card 3-4 times a year (3-4 vid card purchases in their stats) does not necessarily equate to 3-4 different PC's able to play these games.

I agree with most of your points, but as for this one, even in the article, he broke it down to believable levels. He allowed the ratio to fall so even if PC gaming is 1:1 to console gaming (40mil capable gaming computers in the world, vs 40million 360's and PS3's), that game purchases were still disproportional by about 4:1.

Oh and to comment on Bioshock, as of now, there is no more install limits on the game, they removed that a while ago.

[GregH]

Originally Posted by Chilly

I agree with most of your points, but as for this one, even in the article, he broke it down to believable levels. He allowed the ratio to fall so even if PC gaming is 1:1 to console gaming (40mil capable gaming computers in the world, vs 40million 360's and PS3's), that game purchases were still disproportional by about 4:1.

Oh and to comment on Bioshock, as of now, there is no more install limits on the game, they removed that a while ago.

Yeah, I noticed that they broke it down, and their points were very valid, I just thought they could have mentioned some of the common exceptions rather than just making the logic leap that 1 GPU sale = 1 gaming pc.

Wasn't aware that they'd lifted that limitation on Bioshock - good to know

[sswilson]

Very good read!! Thanks for pointing it out.

My issue isn't with the idea behind DRM. If I'm going to play a game I buy it and don't mind if the developer/distributer wants to use some form of on-line activation / keycode to verify a legit game. What I do have issues with are games which require me to have the CD in the drive to play (that's why we have hard drives.... I buy games that will give me hundreds of hours worth of playing and don't want to have to purchase a new CD every couple of months), those which won't let me make a backup of my media (if they want to make it easy for me to go on-line to get a replacement .iso then I could live with that), those which prevent me from running a single instance of it on any computer I desire, or those which label me a "pirate" because I chose to run particular apps on my system (the keyword / activation should make that moot).

The idea behind steam is great, although as others have stated, they need to work on pricing, & older games like Pirates shouldn't be up there if they don't include all of the files required to run (missing some C++ DLL files without a patch to install them), although given the choice, my prefered anti-piracy model is some form of on-line value added content (like Blizzard's battlenet for the Diablo series) which is strongly tied to the registration keycode.

What surprises me most is that there isn't a well stocked library of titles being offered through high speed providers. Imagine what kind of on-going profits distributers could get if they had a monthly fee which would allow you to "rent" the use of "X" # of games (say 5 for example) for a month. This wouldn't be much different than the Steam model, but the economics of scale would quickly cover any dip in retail sales, and not only would ease-of-use/affordability bring more gamers into the fold, but the ISPs would then have a vested interest in curbing pirating.

The DRM model is (IMO) simply wrongheaded... they're using a stick rather than a carrot. Rather than making stronger locks to keep the "honest" people out, they should be building open concept buildings that "honest" people wouldn't mind paying a fair price to get into.

(BTW.... If I don't like what I read about the DRM on a product, I don't pirate it, I just simply don't use it.... :) ).