Explain DRM please.

In the majority of cases it causes more problems for the people that buy the game than those that pirate it. I don't know of even DRM that has not been successfully cracked by pirates so all the publishers are doing is causing the customer grief for no particular gain.
 
Oh so it's basically a game that needs to be connected to the internet to play play it. So if you go away with your laptop you cant play it without internet, Thanks!
 
Quite simply..

pirate-vs-pay.png


Though the implementation is somewhat different, the basic sentiment is the same..
 
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RavenXXX2 said:
for the vocal minority it causes more problems for the people that buy the game than those that pirate it.
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fixed.

if every legit purchase turned into a support ticket i'm sure the industry would act. I think peoples fears of drm are skewed by the vocal few.

blame the pirates not the developers.

edit: ubis implementation is ridiculous however
 
In the vast majority of cases it only affects legitimate customers. I purchase games and I pirate games so I know both domains. The legitimate customer parts with their cash and needs to deal with restrictive DRM (Internet connection as a requirement and a limited number of installs come to mind) whereas the pirate parts with no cash, waits for a couple of days (at most) and doesn't need to deal with DRM. That situation makes no sense.

I personally think the piracy issue is blown way out of proportion. For me personally, as well as many others, it's simply cash I wouldn't have parted with in the first place (that is to say, every download isn't a lost sale). I'm not paying 30 quid for a game if I can only go by reviews or a selective demo. After playing good games I will part with my cash. Without the ability to properly gauge what a game is like before parting with my money my games library would be a lot smaller than it is now.
 
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One of the customer reviews for GTA IV on PC kept saying how he tried many time sto get the game working and he couldn't. So instead he downloaded the game and it worked fine.
 
The problem with DRM is that for the most part it has no effect on stopping piracy but does have a negative effect on legit users.

Some of the biggest DRM issues are limited number of installs/activations which can be an issue if installing on multiple of your own computers or after a HDD failure or years down the line. Some DRM that uses install limits have uninstallers that give you back the activation, but if you have a HDD failure or just delete the game by mistake then you've lost that activation for good.

One of the DRM systems that has a realy bad reputation is Starforce, and the reason for that is they make sure the original disk is in the drive while playing. Sound perfectly reasonable? well they tried to make it harder for crackers by forcing their own starforce DVD drivers onto your PC to replace the proper drivers (all without mentioning any of this to the users). These Starforce drivers are now used with whatever you put in the drive, even with non-starforce games, as the drive obviously has to use whatever drivers are installed. These drivers had issues with some drives (and in very rare cases even causing damage, but few of these reports have been backed up with proof), and are also very hard to remove to put legit drivers back in place.

So, crackers got around starforce and could play starforce games without issue. Legit users got some companies DRM solution forced onto their PC without their knowledge which repalced their DVD drivers.
 
Take Crysis Warhead for example. IIRC, you get five installs and then the DRM decides you're a pirate and must phone EA to get it reactivated. Pointless restriction easily bypassed by pirates, but inconveniences legitimate users.
 
DRM is dumb, If the product is decent *MOST* people will buy it.

The whole point to DRM is to stop piracy and shizzle, yet when it's pirated (which no doubt eventually will happen) the only person effected by it is the paying customer.

The pirated version has all the DRM bypassed or cut out. So all in all it's just a waste implementing it in the first place. Total waste of time, money and resources.

The only effective piece of DRM I've come across is steam, yet some game developers still think it's a bright idea to have Steam + SecureROM + activation limits + windows live on their games, which are all types of DRM in their own right.
 
Its a pain in the ass basically. it makes us genuine buyers go through hurdles just to activate the games, internet connection, activation codes, email addresses etc.

Far Cry 2 was a nightmare for me, it only lets you activate your serial 3 times before it cannot be installed again, I remember formatting my pc a few times to fix some other problem and forgot to revoke the license, when I finally got my pc sorted it wouldnt let me install the game because it though I used it 3 times already - its still unusable now.

I can see why some people might want to pirate games, less hassle, no cd cracks, no limited installs or anything. Thats a sad thing to say but its true, we need people to keep buying the games to support the developers, but when they make it difficult for us genuine buyers its a ******* pain!
 
JimAroo said:
The only effective piece of DRM I've come across is steam
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I'm confused as to why so many people think Steam is effective DRM. :confused:

I've seen plenty of Steamworks only games pirated on day one. My very definition of an effective piece of DRM is one that prevents piracy, whilst being un-intrusive and as un-restricting as possible. While the latter parts are mostly true of Steam, the first part certainly isn't.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure that most people on the forums might have noticed I like steam just a bit. I'm usually the first to defend against anybody that might attempt to it's obvious glory. I'm not here to big up other methods as being better, because I don't think there is such a thing as entirely effective DRM.

I just can't see for the life of me how people can see Steam as an effective form of DRM?
 
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