What’s it going to take for PC game publishers to drop DRM altogether?
- Thread starter Th3D0n
- Start date
that and people have to stop copying them and to buy them instead.
Trouble is i just certain PC gamers just wont. One of my mates at work is a prime example, owns tons of PC games, hasnt paid for a single one. Downloaded them off the torrents. Makes up BS excuses about not having enough money etc..
I take the mick out of him all the time because of it, because if he cant get a pirated copy of the game, he just wont play it. He point blank refuses to buy anything.
Relaxing the restrictions on DRM and improving content wont stop this sort of gamer from pirating it.
And that means the publisher will keep the DRM to try to stop them.
Itunes negotiated DRM free music because the sales increased. They argued they didn't need to as they were already selling so well that removing DRM would improve sales.
I don't think anybody is going to argue that making PC games easier to pirate and have less restrictions is going to improve sales, anger at DRM isn't what's hindering PC game sales, its pirating.
Soldato
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why don't you grass said mate up thats one less scumbag pirate and it will also stop him copying the games if he fears prison sentence or hefty fine.
Yeah thats why they use it. Because DRM clearly hasn't been used primarily to prevent mod support so publishers can release more DLC
You also need to remember that with iTunes your account information is embedded into the songs you download.
OK, if you know what you're doing you can remove it.
But anyone casually downloading DRM free from iTunes and then distributing it - it won't take 5 minutes to associate that download with an account and then the record company will know exactly who to go after.
I don't think you will ever get rid of people pirating games, but i think developers + publishers can do more to stop them, ie lower the price for games, it's just ridiculous the amount they charge for them, and now you have these DLC's on top of the full price for games as well.
One sure way to reduce pirates is to make sure you have a really good multiplayer game, most games fail on that imo and most games r full of bugs and haven't been tested properly, EA is a prime example of that (going by past games).
And why is this all being put on PC game pirates ? what about console pirates ? they r as much to blame as anyone, and they don't have this DRM crap to worry about, download game, burn put in drive away they go, and can't they even play multiplayer as well ? isn't that an even bigger problem ?
One sure way to reduce pirates is to make sure you have a really good multiplayer game, most games fail on that imo and most games r full of bugs and haven't been tested properly, EA is a prime example of that (going by past games).
And why is this all being put on PC game pirates ? what about console pirates ? they r as much to blame as anyone, and they don't have this DRM crap to worry about, download game, burn put in drive away they go, and can't they even play multiplayer as well ? isn't that an even bigger problem ?
It's cost coupled with the fact that you need an £800 PC to play them.
Hollywood spends hundreds of milions making a film and they sell them for about £10 on DVD which is reasonable, whereas £30-40 for a game is a rip off but games publishers are in a catch 22 situation because if they sell games for £10 they won't make much profit but if they don't lower prices they won't increase sales, it's convenient to just blame the boogeyman (piracy) and keep people thinking that piracy is to blame and not the actual poor value of their product.
You said it yourself if your friend can't pirate it he's not interested in buying it, so what is the DRM achieving exactly?
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While Steam has it's positives, the negative side is that it is literally the most expensive place to buy a game at least in Europe. Sales aside, Steam is of no value to me even though I've been using since it went to beta years and years ago.
people say that
but these people object to paying full stop. They dont buy games when they come down in price a few months after launch, they just pirate them. And they already have £800 gaming PCs.
People who object to buying gaming PCs dont buy them in the first place, so they wont pirate the games. My colleague at work is a prime example of this. He owns 0 games, but has downloaded hundreads. Makes no attempt to buy any of them, and doesnt care. He wont even make a point of buying the games he likes. This sort of person will never be coerced into buying and will have to be stopped by restrictions from pirating.
Prime example is Angry birds on the iphone. Its 60 pence and has something silly like over 150 levels, with more content to come with regular updates.
You cant argue with £0.60 and 100 + levels
People still pirate it using jailbreaked iphones.
For some people ,no matter how cheap you make it, and how much content you give it, some will still pirate it.
Soldato
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I was going to buy Assassin's Creed 2 until I read about the horiffic DRM... So if your internet connection or their server goes down, you can't play a single player game? wtf?
While I doubt in the short term my internet connection would fail (BTW I'm not interested in AC2) it's more the "what if they shut down their servers in 3 years time 'cause they consider the game no longer popular".
But, unless my memory fails me - I'm sure they disabled protection like that (or were going to) on a few games when they became older?
It still kinda sucks though.
For multi player games, I guess it's less of an issue - since otherwise you're not going to actually be able to play online on the good servers!
I was going to buy Assassin's Creed 2 until I read about the horiffic DRM... So if your internet connection or their server goes down, you can't play a single player game? wtf?
Yeah I was thinking the same, but I done a bit of research and there is a work around for it. Although I have to say that I have not had to use this work around as I haven't had any problems with this DRM, but I still don't agree with it.
But yeah, DRM doesn't really do anything, a part from being an inconvenience to the paying customer.
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Yes and it won't take 5 minutes for the person to say "my ipod was lost/stolen"
The move towards console was not because of piracy but multiple factors some of which are the single format of the consoles, with less money being thrown at games (it's a high risk business) it is far easier to code with one specific set of hardware in mind than to try to second guess windows/mac intel/amd screen ratios, AMD/NVidea etc and their associated drivers.
Also to the person that quoted STEAM. Yes STEAM is great but with 2 year old games still selling for 50€ it is doing nothing to disuade pirates from finding cheaper alternatives.
