Digital Rights Management (DRM) is creating a conundrum within the PC gaming world. On one hand, you have the honest people who would gladly pay for a game but will shy away from the horrors and problems that DRMs in games cause. On the other, you have the pirates who will eventually crack anything you make and distribute their “warez” by making them readily available on torrent sites the world over.
DRMs come in many flavors, shapes, forms and sizes. In the old days there was a simple disc check to see if the disc had been copied. Then came the newer generation that ran on your system and installed along with games, sometimes without permission, but many users complained of blue screens, problems and reduced functionality. A DRM may perform a disk authenticity check, check the date by “dialing” to an Internet server to ensure that the game hasn’t been released early, or institute a limit on the number of copies of a game you may install to three or five. Seems a little extreme, doesn’t it?
Concerns abound as to how much privacy you really have. Who knows for sure exactly what information this software secures and sends home? The worst part is, this software lingers indefinitely even after uninstalling the game, unless you get a special uninstaller program, and what does it do then? Nobody knows.
So how do you balance your DRM vs. the amount of piracy? The recent response by game developers has been to increase DRMs left and right and not tell the consumers about it. Those who purchase a game are afflicted with a variety of maladies and problems inherent with the DRM systems. From personal experience, there’s an immediate sense of betrayal, and the question arises, “What am I going to do with this coaster?” You don’t dare put it in your computer, but you paid for it. My personal solution was to create a second partition and play through the game without ever going online and then reformat it to destroy any traces of the DRM. Now I check all games coming out, and if they have DRM I simply don’t buy them and never play them. There are many instances I would absolutely adore paying a company for a good piece of software, but alas, the code will never be executed on my system due to the heinousness that is modern DRM. I know I’m not alone in this; forums are rife with people asking companies why, oh, why they just had to toss that in there.
The real issue is how many honest people you are going to lose to piracy. There are a lot of people out there who believe that software should be paid for. It’s a product and a service just like everything else; the only issue is they don’t want to deal with an insincere invasion of their computers. As a result, these companies drive a wedge between their loyal paying user base and themselves. Many people like me simply refrain from playing. There are those who turn to console games. Then there are those who go to the dark side.
The people who are going to pirate games are going to pirate them regardless. All you’re doing by pumping your games full of DRM, like cattle full of growth hormones, is turning more people to piracy and fewer people buying your product.
They are shouldering the honest with the burdens the company suffers from pirates. Thieves are part of your user base, so you stick it to those who pay. How is that corporate responsibility? It’s not; they’re just slogging the problem off on the easiest people to do it to. Why is it always the little guy that suffers?
Console manufacturers tend to tote the fact that they have very limited piracy on their consoles, which are essentially hard-coded DRM machines. Sadly, the pirates have found ways around this as well, and console piracy is on the rise. Still, it doesn’t stop them from luring in PC companies. In effect, the actions of the pirates are driving the actions of CEOs who probably (why else would they make these decisions?) don’t fully understand the market they’re dealing with and in concert putting a knife in PC gaming’s collective backside.
The ultimate solution is simply to cut the DRM out of your games. Your sales would increase, pirates would continue to do their thing, and we honest gamers out there would respect you more. After all, the gaming world is a lot like Grand Theft Auto: Respect is everything.
Many people hailed Steam, Valve Corporation’s digital distribution content network, as the savior of gaming. You have to have an authenticated account and purchase games with a credit card. You must be logged in and connected to the Internet to play the games you’ve purchased. No additional software, no sneaky background processes, and you can turn Steam off and uninstall it anytime you want. Steam became an effective and unobtrusive DRM, until recently. Steam has started selling a few games that come with additional “third-party DRM” software. Why would Steam accept these terms? What could this additional layer of DRM protect against that Steam could not? Is nothing sacred?
The only change we, as gamers, can enact is a boycott. There’s no reason those honest among us should have to put up with this level of corporate hooliganism. Why should we suffer because pirates fulfill their nature? There are plenty of games out there sans-DRM, some freeware or pay-as-you-go and others are from big companies who simply refuse to punish their market for the sins of the few. You can always play old DRM-free games. You have options.
Just don’t be a pirate ­— that only exacerbates the problem.
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