How Gamers and Publishers can end the DRM issue : The DamnLag

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How Gamers and Publishers can end the DRM issue

By Jaleel Boone

-August 13, 2010

Digital Rights Management and piracy are touchy subjects in the PC gaming community. On one side you have the consumers, who defend their right to do whatever they want to with a product after it’s purchased. On the other you have game developers and publishers, who feel pressure to add DRM restrictions to games to combat the loss of sales, sales which anti-DRM gamers say is nonexistent.

It’s been a gridlock with both sides making sound arguments, and aside from the occasional Bioshock scale scandal, it’s been largely swept under the rug due to the controversy. But it’s becoming critical for the issue to be addressed immediately. Independent developer Amanita Design has reported that only 5-10% of the people playing their DRM-free game Machinarium have payed for it. They’ve gone as far as to offer a “Pirate Amnesty sale” to entice more people to buy. If the PC gaming community wants to maintain relevance and flourish, there’s a few ways that everyone involved has to adjust.

The main problem with the PC piracy dilemma is the gaming industry’s reliance on CDs and DVDs. Without security in place, rampant piracy of any sort is relatively simple on PCs when disks are involved. Games are mostly sold on a platform that’s almost asking for piracy when you can easily pull the files off and transfer them to any PC over the internet. The reliance on this counterproductive software is due to old world thinking on the part of video game publishers. PC gamers have gotten more tech savvy as the tech itself has improved, so where disks made sense in the past, you’d be hard pressed to find a person who installs and plays PC games regularly who wouldn’t be able to figure out how to pirate it.

To combat the increasing “savviness” from the community, publishers have tried to pack games with DRM software that only ends up frustrating rightful owners by limiting installations and usage of a game. The question then if you’re a publisher is: how do you stop the piracy of CDs while keeping all of the platform’s other freedoms?

The answer seems to be Steam. With it, the games you buy digitally are all linked to an account so you can access them from any computer that has Steam. Yes, it’s still a form of DRM, but a significantly less limiting system that is widely accepted by PC gamers: those who use it buy games with it regularly, publishers and developers make more profit per copy then they would manufacturing disks, and piracy is an incredible hassle on the platform. So why doesn’t everyone use it? Well, Steam is only quick and convenient if you already have it, otherwise disks are the easiest and fastest way for consumers to get games. Most people haven’t made the switch yet, so publishers are afraid to do so and miss out on the mostly disk dependent public.

It’s a deadly cycle, and the only way to break it for publishers to get rid of discs altogether. If it makes the transition better, sell cases but package them with codes for purchase on Steam. The CDs themselves should only have the Steam software on it. The easy way to solve people not having Steam is to give them steam. As long as there is a way to pirate, there will always be piracy, so the ability to do so must be eliminated all together. Everyone who has Steam will use it unless they’re in the rare percentage of the population who plays PC games and never uses the internet. If Steam becomes the norm instead of just for select games it won’t end piracy altogether, but it would certainly cripple it. As a form of DRM the limitations to the consumer are minimal. It’s up to publishers to give it ago.

If you’re a PC gamer, don’t let the frustration with DRM give you an excuse to defend pirates. A common complaint amongst anti-DRM gamers when it comes to publishers fighting piracy is “its not a loss of sales. People who pirate games were never going to buy it anyway.” There’s no way to know how many of the 90% of Machinarium’s pirates would have paid for it if that was the only way they could have played it.

Let me make this clear: There is no defense of video game piracy.

Unlike music or movies, the main product is the only source of revenue when it comes to games. It’s completely possible to make an argument for certain types of piracy, but that’s not true in gaming. Anyone who cares about the welfare of PC gaming should be anti-piracy as well as anti-strict DRM.

Increasingly, video game makers are creating and optimizing games for consoles, with the PC versions being an afterthought for many major developers. Both the developers and the community are to blame. Publishers; it’s time to rethink how you’ve done things all this time. Support and push Steam and get rid of archaic disk distribution. Gamers: Be as vocal against gaming piracy as you are against DRM. Support the publishers that willing to evolve the way games are released, but don’t support those who are willing to cheat the system. If the money is there, everyone will be forced to pay attention. With more attention comes more games, and that’s never a bad thing.

About the Author

Jaleel is an editor on The DamnLag and author of "Combo Breaker". A video game journalist since 2004, he's had to churn out every cliche article imaginable. Combo Breaker is his initiative to inject real, investigative journalism into the industry. Just don't ever tell him he's wrong (he probably wouldn't believe you anyway).

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Comments

noveltyaccount

I agree with you that platforms like Steam are the future of less expensive, more accessible video games. It allows off-line play once your account has been authenticated too, which is less intrusive than DRM like Ubisoft’s notorious online check that requires you to have the net constantly while playing their single player game.

There is one part I disagree and is the complete removal of CD/DVD sales. Some people can’t afford additional bandwidth, and downloading 4-10gb games can hit someone’s bandwidth hard.

I believe the best way to deal with that is still ship the game, with the DVD, and a CD-key that you must enter in Steam to register it. The DVD would contain the data Steam downloads, which are easily accessed by anyone. Simply pasting them in a steam account that hasn’t bought those games will simply say “Game pre-loaded”.

Personally I do this, when I buy a steam game, I use the back up tool provided with steam and put them on DVD for later installation.
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