DRM Thread

[cronicler]

Excuse me guys but do you really know what I.P., Copy"right" and lastly (and most modernly) Drm come from? I know you are going to say that This is irrevelant as it deals with an other medium but to put things into perspective I would recommend reading it.

 

 

Andalso a quick tidbit, A developer studio, depending on his size and game's price, earns something like 1.5 to 7.5 $ from each sold retail game if he has a clause in his contract for earning from sales. Nearly half the price goes to retailer (and cargo and etc) the other half goes to the publisher

Edited August 18, 2009 by cronicler

[RPGmasterBoo]

As for your most recent post, I always find it hard to sympathize with those that pirate, and most specifically, those that make lots and lots of money off someone else's work, because of a non-essential product like a video game.

 

I used to make all those excuses too, but the other side of the coin is that while growing up, games I couldn't get through software piracy were games that I would ask for gifts for Christmas and birthdays. So while I might not have been able to afford a lot of games when I was younger, I still found myself with a rather large collection of legitimate console video games, and those developers were fairly remunerated for their hard work.

 

Like your Brazilian friend, when I got into software development it was a major malfunction for me to even consider continuing to pirate software, so I stopped. If it's a game that I'm not confident I'll get my money's worth out of, I simply don't play it, or wait for the price to go down. Pirating a game because it has a DRM on it, or because it's made by Electronic Arts, is simply a selfish behaviour. In fact, I find it ironic that people pirate games from companies that they hate.

 

They're not excuses. There are many good points in pirate's arguments and they are best summarized in this article, where a developer conversed with pirates directly:

 

http://www.positech.co.uk/talkingtopirates.html

 

I'd add that most cracker teams are lifelong gamers, and love good games. Games that were released without DRM or of outstanding quality, or made by small teams were spared from being cracked in the first several weeks.

There is the obligatory "If you like the game then support the developers and buy it!" in every txt file that comes with a pirated game.

 

As for EA - its not selfish behavior. I've watched them ruin many, many good developers and game series in the last decade. Many of those devs were very creative teams, of outstanding quality. My assumption is that everyone in the cracker community knows this, and is willing to go to great lengths to damage EA, and I can't say I blame them. If I ever had any sympathies for them on account of the occasional great game eg: CB's Undying it went straight out of the window with the new forms of DRM.

Electronic Arts delenda est.

Edited August 18, 2009 by RPGmasterBoo

[alanschu]

They're not excuses.

 

How are they not excuses? Even if they are 100% valid and legitimate, they're still excuses. They're using them to serve as justification for their actions. You have people using reasons from price, DRM, game quality, etc.

 

Games that were released without DRM or of outstanding quality, or made by small teams were spared from being cracked in the first several weeks.

 

Which games were these? And were they spared from being cracked out of some benevolence, or because the game had flown under the radar because it was a small time game?

 

There is the obligatory "If you like the game then support the developers and buy it!" in every txt file that comes with a pirated game.

 

I know for a fact that this does not come with every pirated game. Certainly not every piece of pirated software.

 

 

As for EA - its not selfish behavior. I've watched them ruin many, many good developers and game series in the last decade. Many of those devs were very creative teams, of outstanding quality. My assumption is that everyone in the cracker community knows this, and is willing to go to great lengths to damage EA, and I can't say I blame them.

 

If it's not selfish, and you just want to "stick it" to Electronic Arts, then why bother even downloading the game? If you're downloading the game you must have some sort of desire to actually play the game, which I find humorous because it seems people have an interest in downloading and playing EA games despite how evil they are. Funny how that happens. Unless downloading and pirating video games is not as harmless as people are quick to point out, downloading an EA game is hardly going to any lengths to damage EA.

 

 

Here's a fact. People ARE selfish. They download the games because they WANT to play them, to satisfy their selfish desire to play the games. If they didn't, they wouldn't bother getting pirated games they didn't feel were worth the money. They'd just move on and do something else. The thing I find funny is that the guy in your post seems content that only 5% of the people straight up said "I do it because I can get it for free." I'd be more inclined to think that I can only definitively state that 5% of the people were straight up honest with him. Human beings make up rationalizations and justifications for their actions all the time, in so much more than just software piracy. Heck, look at yourself. You were quick to point out that they weren't excuses because "excuses" has a negative connotation associated with it. Check it out: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/excuse

 

 

People that defend software piracy are quick to point out that piracy has a pretty insignificant effect on software sales. If the goal is to "stick it" to Electronic Arts, wouldn't they be better served to NOT pirate EA games, so that anybody that hasn't already bought the game can't be swayed by a pirated game and ultimately buy it?

Edited August 18, 2009 by alanschu

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

Piracy is just another word for stealing, really. I hate it when people make up excuses.

 

But removing SecuROM out of a game (let's suppose it's a legit copy)... now how can you blame anyone for that?

[alanschu]

Honestly, I'm not even really that concerned with removing the DRM, assuming the one doing so is a legit user.

 

 

The thing I realllllly hate is when people start profiting off of other people's hard work, all for zero remuneration to the original creator(s).

[Purkake]

Circumventing any kind of software usually involves modifying it which is illegal in most places.

 

So basically removing the DRM is illegal, just like copyright infringement.

[alanschu]

I understand that.

 

Essentially what I'm saying is, I as a fellow game player and aspiring software developer have less issues with the legitimate owner removing DRM, than I do with people openly proliferating pirated software.

[Purkake]

Sure, the problem is with the severely antiquated copyright laws. I think that a DVD ripping software company got sued and just recently lost the case because ripping DVDs involved cracking the encryption.

[Mamoulian War]

The thing I realllllly hate is when people start profiting off of other people's hard work, all for zero remuneration to the original creator(s).

 

You must realy heate the publishers then

[cronicler]

I am quite puzzled. How many of the Drm Defenders are USA Citizens? As DRM can be seen in direct violation of community's access to created material

When gangsters do this, it's called "extortion" and the police will come after them. When giant corporations do it, it's called "defending copyright"—and the police will do nothing. Even if they lose the case in court, on the rare occasions when a small fry challenges them, these giant corporations pay no significant penalties.

 

DRM is a tool that allows the middleman publishers to gain control of created material and hide it from that use / access of the population when it becomes "unprofitable". Just think of how many games are lost and forgotten as they are lost in legal limbo. Or worse yet, how they are resurrected to milk some more cash (without any additions to original content)

 

DRM (As it stands and used now) is not a tool to protect the creators' "Right" to earn living from his works. It is a leash and it is in the hands of 3rd parties.

Edited August 18, 2009 by cronicler

[Purkake]

I am quite puzzled. How many of the Drm Defenders are USA Citizens? As DRM can be seen in direct violation of community's access to created material

 

DRM (As it stands and used now) is not a tool to protect the creators' "Right" to earn living from his works. It is a leash and it is in the hands of 3rd parties.

 

What does nationality have to do with it?

 

It does both.

 

I'm against DRM, but you seem like the greenpeace of anti-drm.

Edited August 18, 2009 by Purkake

[Mamoulian War]

If it's not selfish, and you just want to "stick it" to Electronic Arts, then why bother even downloading the game? If you're downloading the game you must have some sort of desire to actually play the game, which I find humorous because it seems people have an interest in downloading and playing EA games despite how evil they are. Funny how that happens. Unless downloading and pirating video games is not as harmless as people are quick to point out, downloading an EA game is hardly going to any lengths to damage EA.

 

You know... the reason why they do it, is beacuse the company can see how many people downloaded their games by torrents, so pirates make them cry even more, and they come up with even more retarded DRM which pisses off many many more legitimate users, which starts boycotting them aswell, which can in the end lead to bankrupcy of the said company, which would make many many many gamers very very happy

Edited August 18, 2009 by Mamoulian War

[Purkake]

DRM-free games like World of Goo and Braid get pirated as well. What's your point?

 

So it's ok for people to pirate EA stuff, because they deserved it? Double standard much?

[cronicler]

Purkake if you have time, read the link I gave last page.

 

The first thing I need to establish are some facts. I need to do that because I've found that many people, including many authors, have very unrealistic notions about how long copyright actually protects anything. What happens is that they look only at the law—ignoring all social and economic realities—and say to themselves, "Oh, wow, anything that gets written—including anything I write myself—will be protected by copyright for seventy years after I die."

Uh, no. In the real world—except for intellectual property owned by giant corporations—here is what really happens:

The longer copyright lasts, the less likely it is that 99.99% of anything ever written will ever get reissued. What excessively long copyright terms actually do is destroy writing. They don't protect writing, they ravage it.

Why?

Well, it's simple—if you look at writing as a professional craft, subject to economic imperatives like any other form of work, instead of a legal or philosophical abstraction.

Here is the cold, hard reality. I call it the ninety-nine percent rule:

99% of all writing falls out of print within ten years after it is published. In most cases, within five years. That's because the standard rule of thumb in the publishing industry is that 80% of all sales of a book take place in the first three months after publication. And the remaining 20% usually drops off steeply. Within a few years of a book being published—faster than that, in the case of most shorter pieces of work—it is simply not economically viable for a publisher (or a book distributor or retailer) to keep the book in print any longer.

90% of all writing that falls out of print will never be reissued, under any circumstances—even with good copyright laws. That goes up to 99% with bad laws like the ones we have today.

The reason, again, is economic. For all the paeans of praise showered on "immortal literature," the cold, cruel, hard fact is that the overwhelming majority of writing is pretty ephemeral as far as the public is concerned. This should come as no surprise to anyone, because the fact is that whatever else it may be, fiction writing is first and foremost entertainment—and entertainment, with a few exceptions, has always been subject to the dictate that the public wants novelty. They don't want to hear the same story over and over again; instead—with a few exceptions—they want to keep getting new ones.

For every piece of writing that stays before the public for centuries—such as Cervantes' Don Quixote—there are literally hundreds of thousands of pieces of writing that vanish with the wind. That's even true with books, much less short pieces of writing. Most books—"most," as in 99.999% of them—are not and will never fall into the same tiny category Don Quixote does. They are ephemeral. They will arrive, enjoy their day in the sun—such as it may be, which varies a lot—and then they will pass away. Most of them forever.

That's the reality—and that is the reality which determines the lives of professional authors, as professional authors.

And that's also the reality that should—and did, until fairly recently—determine the length of copyright terms.

 

Jim Baen put it to me this way, some years ago, when I commented to him that I thought it was a bit grotesque that he paid me the same money for my first novel that he paid for the rights to the entire estate of James Schmitz. (Mind you, I wasn't offering to give him any money back! I was just making a philosophical observation.)

I don't recall his exact words, but Jim's response was essentially this:

"Eric, almost no first novel is worth a thin dime, in cold-blooded money terms. Most first novels lose money for a publisher. But publishers—smart ones, anyway—aren't really buying 'first novels.' What they're really doing, when they pay an advance for a first novel, is taking a gamble that the author will someday be writing books that bring in a lot of money. It's an investment in an author's future earning prospects, not the purchase of a book—and you simply can't invest in the future writings of an author who's dead or isn't writing any more. There are a few exceptions, like RAH, but not many."

The real problem with reissuing old stories is not the money involved. It's that copyright terms that are too long—and the modern laws are grotesque, in this respect—make the labor and cost of determining who owns the rights so laborious and time-consuming that it simply isn't worth it for most publishers, most of the time. A long out-of-print story won't be worth more than perhaps a couple of hundred dollars in advances, and usually less than that. So how many publishers and editors are going to be willing to spend hours of their labor—which means money, indirectly—in order to track down who owns the rights after many decades have passed? Keeping in mind that in many cases nothing remains of the author's whereabouts or who his heirs might be.

"Last known address, somewhere in Iowa. That was thirty years ago. And his last name is . . . oh, swell. Johnson. Tell you what. Let's call Eleanor Wood on the phone and see if we can get the rights to reissue another Robert Heinlein story. That'll take five minutes."

That's how it works, in the real world. That's why I said, at the beginning of this essay, that excessively long copyright terms do not protect the work of authors—they destroy it.

 

 

Now this essay is mainly focused on the "Writing" Profession but I think thesimilarities between literature and gaming "sales" is easy to see. You only need to switch "destroy it" to "loose control of it to the publisher" (Will link article about Al Lowe's views and Leasure Suit Larry's rape here) to imagine it

 

 

 

 

I'm sorry Purkake, but are you honestly expecting revenue from "people" who only pirate games? The games are precious becouse they are hard to reach and uneconomically expensive for the most of the world but this is not the point. You aren't going to be able to sell that damn game to those people anyway. Your main market is Western (USA, EU inc Russia), Oriental and (Relatively) Rich people from the rest of the world.

 

I am not against reasionable precautions that allow the creator to earn from his creations and at the same time makes the game avialable after it is "unprofitable" for retail. Anything heavier than download and play schemes (D2Drive, Steam etc) is actually on the border of being unconstututional. (Which is funny as I am not a US Citizen but this whole damn mess' solution is based on US and EU markets )

Edited August 18, 2009 by cronicler

[Purkake]

60 years after being published, books in the US and become public domain, then anyone is free to scan them and put them online. Google is doing just that.

 

Digital distribution takes care of the problem associated with limited shelf space and make games potentially available for an indefinite amount of time. Why is it so surprising that copyright holders try to protect their content with any means available? Sure they don't really work, but they're not going to stop just because of that.

 

EDIT: What, why would I expect revenue from pirates? Have you totally lost it? I was pointing out Mamoulian War's hypocrisy.

Edited August 18, 2009 by Purkake

[Hell Kitty]

You know... the reason why they do it, is beacuse the company can see how many people downloaded their games by torrents, so pirates make them cry even more, and they come up with even more retarded DRM which pisses off many many more legitimate users, which starts boycotting them aswell, which can in the end lead to bankrupcy of the said company, which would make many many many gamers very very happy

 

Except it's the developers that end up dying, which makes those many many gamers very very stupid.

[alanschu]

The thing I realllllly hate is when people start profiting off of other people's hard work, all for zero remuneration to the original creator(s).

 

You must realy heate the publishers then

 

 

At what point do publishers not provide remuneration to the original creators?

 

 

I'm not aware of any piracy groups sending cheques to software developers for games that they like.

[Purkake]

The militant anti-drm people can be as annoying as the DRM itself.

 

No matter how much you whine about DRM or even use logical well-though out arguments, DRM is not going away in a puff of smoke. There need to be cardinal changes to the copyright law and as long as the old mindset doesn't die, nothing will change.

 

Vote with your wallets, kids!

[RPGmasterBoo]

The first delusion is that piracy has in fact substantially harmed the gaming industry and it throws people into advocates/justifiers on one side and opponents on the other.

In the last decade I've only seen the gaming industry expand and grow at a steady rate.

Never has a developer gone bankrupt because of piracy, rather the usual reason was a string of economically unsuccessful games and lack of funding to support new projects.

Therefore the impact of piracy is in fact slight. This is because piracy does not equal sales lost, as corporate people seem to think it does. Simply put, those who pirate in 90% of the cases wouldnt buy the game in the first place.

 

Therefore its important to know that when we talk about piracy we talk about a 5-10% added profit to the publisher/developer. Its not a case of a terrible economic blow ,its just a cut in profits. While they are entitled to it of course, as the product of their labor, the lack of it will hardly ruin either the developers or the publishers. And that is why no dev has ever gone bankrupt over piracy, and none ever will.

 

How does this relate to DRM? My main argument is this:

Over 5-10% profit increase, you, the publisher/developer are screwing over legitimate customers with annoying and intrusive software.

Now, I can get any pirated game at any time, and we all know it wont have DRM and will likely work better than the original. I wont get caught, and it will be free. So what's my reason for buying a game? None. Throw all the moral crap out of the window, and the stone cold fact remains: I have no reason to buy your game, when I can get it better and free.

But if I do want to buy it? Why would you want to turn me away by adding DRM?

 

This is where DRM ceases to make sense. It will not stop pirates, it hasn't obviously. It will not make you any richer, and in fact it will make you poorer as more and more people turn to piracy. Whether their justification for doing so makes sense is a moot point, but its ultimately unimportant. Again the facts are: the more DRM > the less you will sell.

 

So DRM is just digging one's own grave through typical corporate greed "for just that 5% more".

 

And thats all there is to it.

[alanschu]

If it's not selfish, and you just want to "stick it" to Electronic Arts, then why bother even downloading the game? If you're downloading the game you must have some sort of desire to actually play the game, which I find humorous because it seems people have an interest in downloading and playing EA games despite how evil they are. Funny how that happens. Unless downloading and pirating video games is not as harmless as people are quick to point out, downloading an EA game is hardly going to any lengths to damage EA.

 

You know... the reason why they do it, is beacuse the company can see how many people downloaded their games by torrents, so pirates make them cry even more, and they come up with even more retarded DRM which pisses off many many more legitimate users, which starts boycotting them aswell, which can in the end lead to bankrupcy of the said company, which would make many many many gamers very very happy

 

Then the pirates are continuing to be an even bigger disservice to legitimate gamers. EA seeing how many people downloaded their game doesn't make them squirm in their seats. This is a total rationalization for actions, and is quite frankly an absurd reason for doing it. I call bull**** on anyone that downloads an EA game simply to pad the download stats, and without any intention of playing it.

 

Electronic Arts continues to post billion dollar revenues, even as their DRM gets more restrictive. It's delusions of grandeur to think that pirating games from EA is going to make them go bankrupt. It's far more likely that they will just stop financing PC games altogether, and go console exclusive.

 

Trust me, if you're a PC Gamer, you don't want to the biggest publisher in the world deciding outright that they don't want to make PC Games anymore. Then the PC Game development houses, like Looking Glass Studios, end up going out of business.

[Slowtrain]

The first delusion is that piracy has in fact substantially harmed the gaming industry and it throws people into advocates/justifiers on one side and opponents on the other.

In the last decade I've only seen the gaming industry expand and grow at a steady rate.

Never has a developer gone bankrupt because of piracy, rather the usual reason was a string of economically unsuccessful games and lack of funding to support new projects.

Therefore the impact of piracy is in fact slight. This is because piracy does not equal sales lost, as corporate people seem to think it does. Simply put, those who pirate in 90% of the cases wouldnt buy the game in the first place.

 

Therefore its important to know that when we talk about piracy we talk about a 5-10% added profit to the publisher/developer. Its not a case of a terrible economic blow ,its just a cut in profits. While they are entitled to it of course, as the product of their labor, the lack of it will hardly ruin either the developers or the publishers. And that is why no dev has ever gone bankrupt over piracy, and none ever will.

 

How does this relate to DRM? My main argument is this:

Over 5-10% profit increase, you, the publisher/developer are screwing over legitimate customers with annoying and intrusive software.

Now, I can get any pirated game at any time, and we all know it wont have DRM and will likely work better than the original. I wont get caught, and it will be free. So what's my reason for buying a game? None. Throw all the moral crap out of the window, and the stone cold fact remains: I have no reason to buy your game, when I can get it better and free.

But if I do want to buy it? Why would you want to turn me away by adding DRM?

 

This is where DRM ceases to make sense. It will not stop pirates, it hasn't obviously. It will not make you any richer, and in fact it will make you poorer as more and more people turn to piracy. Whether their justification for doing so makes sense is a moot point, but its ultimately unimportant. Again the facts are: the more DRM > the less you will sell.

 

So DRM is just digging one's own grave through typical corporate greed "for just that 5% more".

 

And thats all there is to it.

 

 

Eventually DRM schemes wil be developed that do work and doesn't cause problems for paying gamers. It's just a developmental process. Developmental processes rarely run completely smoothly.

[Purkake]

Fun fact: PS3 is still uncracked.

 

@CrashGirl: As long as the PC remains an open platform, it's unlikely.

 

@RPGmasterBoo: Why buy the game? To support the developer so that they make more games like it.

Edited August 18, 2009 by Purkake

[alanschu]

Therefore its important to know that when we talk about piracy we talk about a 5-10% added profit to the publisher/developer. Its not a case of a terrible economic blow ,its just a cut in profits. While they are entitled to it of course, as the product of their labor, the lack of it will hardly ruin either the developers or the publishers. And that is why no dev has ever gone bankrupt over piracy, and none ever will.

 

It's a completely unsubstantiated argument unfortunately. You can't definitively state that piracy is or is not responsible. As for 90% of pirates wouldn't buy the game anyways, well, 95% of all statistics are just made up.

 

 

 

Having said that, there most definitely are instances where piracy does lead to very bad results. Titan Quest developers had to deal with the backlash of people accusing them of releasing a broken game, when some of the big issues surrounding the game at release only happened to people that had pirated copies of the game. Unfortunately, the news of a buggy broken game had already proliferated throughout the internet, and you'd have to be naive to think that people don't check the internet for game reviews and impressions. Potential sales lost because people were reporting bad information. Too bad Iron Lore is out of business now, and all those that enjoy the types of games that Iron Lore would make are now **** out of luck. Who wins because of the piracy in this case?

 

Valve had to deal with, and spend money investigating, bugs in Half-Life: Opposing Forces that only existed as a result of circumventing the copy protection. I can only imagine how pissed off a developer would be spending man hours and lots of money investigating issues in good faith for "customers" that couldn't even have bothered paying $20 for the bloody expansion.

 

 

Pirates continue to get their free ride, leeching off those that actually support the developers and help finance the games the pirates like to play.

Edited August 18, 2009 by alanschu

[Purkake]

Having said that, there most definitely are instances where piracy does lead to very bad results. Titan Quest developers had to deal with the backlash of people accusing them of releasing a broken game, when some of the big issues surrounding the game at release only happened to people that had pirated copies of the game. Unfortunately, the news of a buggy broken game had already proliferated throughout the internet, and you'd have to be naive to think that people don't check the internet for game reviews and impressions. Potential sales lost because people were reporting bad information. Too bad Iron Lore is out of business now, and all those that enjoy the types of games that Iron Lore would make are now **** out of luck. Who wins because of the piracy in this case?

 

Actually it was some hidden drm that caused the game to crash after a while. The pirates didn't release a broken game. It was pretty Iron Lore's own lack of foresight.

[Slowtrain]

@CrashGirl: As long as the PC remains an open platform, it's unlikely.

 

 

I disagree. There are different ways to protect information from being used against the owners wishes. Eventually methods will be put in place that work. It's inevitable.

 

The whole DRM argument is silly anyway. Its the game owner's right to do what they want with the game. If they want to take the source code, roll it up in a sealed ferroconcrete container and sink it five miles deep in the ocean, that's their right. It's their game. Nobody else's opinions on the issue are even relevant.