Got this from GamePolitics: in the ongoing battle between those who favor DRM and copy protection and those who don’t, we’ve received another truly excellent comment from Starforce executive Dmitry Guseff:
…basically AAA titles hold around a month, less important titles much longer. I have to add that if we hadn’t implemented some consumer friendly features those titles would have been held much longer.
By “holding,” señor Guseff means how long a game protected by Starforce stays that way until cracked. And admittedly Starforce is one of the strongest copy protection tools available. The truly excellent part comes from his remark about “consumer friendly” features they’ve added… meaning Starforce no longer contains a rootkit, no longer breaks your Windows installation or DVD-ROM drive, and no longer pummels you with spyware. At least, as far as we know. Starforce isn’t exactly famous for honesty.
I oppose software piracy and oppose DRM.
I oppose software piracy because it’s stealing.
I oppose DRM because it victimizes only the legitimate consumer, and as DRM options grow ever more draconian (Guseff’s comment was made in the context of Ubisoft’s recent announcement that all upcoming PC games will require an internet connection at all times, so the game can phone home to validate itself whenever it feels like it), consumers grow ever more victimized.
I’m totally wasting my time here because I have nothing to add to this debate that hasn’t already been said, but I feel somehow compelled to stress that DRM doesn’t work. There is no copy protection, none, ever, that will be impervious to the efforts of crackers. And the harder you try to make it impervious, the harder they’ll try to crack it.
Does Ubi have a right to require an always-on connection for its games? I guess. And they are couching some nice value-adds, like storing your saves in the cloud rather than on your local drive. It’s like Steam Cloud in this respect. But even though there’s no particular reason to believe that Ubi will use this phone-home feature for anything except legitimacy validation, it feels like an unwelcome invasion.
Look, there is no such thing as privacy these days. Your credit card numbers are saved at God knows how many online retailers, your medical files are freely shared among doctors, your Facebook embarrassments are but a Google away. There is no privacy. Someone famous said that, but I can’t remember who. What we crave is the illusion of privacy, because illusions allow us to remain comfortable in our small worlds. And with something like a hidden rootkit or a phone-home, that illusion is shattered, leaving a sense of violation – however small – in its wake.
The sad thing is that we do it to ourselves. I’d love to say that I’ll never buy another Ubi game on PC again, but I know it’s a lie. And that’s why they get away with it.
Apparently, that small violation is worth higher resolutions and keyboard/mouse controls. It’s ironic, though (I mean, not from Starforce, those dudes is crazy, but still), that including “consumer friendly” features is now not only undesirable, but actually an accused catalyst for theft.
Next they’ll only ship broken games, because games that work are more likely to be pirated.
Is there any data available that compares cost of DRM in relation to potential piracy avoidances? For example, if Company A spends $500K on DRM technology for a game, and they believe that it stops 500,000 cases of piracy, then Company A is effectively spending $1 per potential pirate to deter them.
If that same $500K was instead pumped into improving game production and quality, or more importantly marketing, how many extra sales could be generated?
DRM is used to stop illegal game proliferation, and doesn’t make any returns on investment. Marketing, obviously, helps ROI greatly.
As a game developer/publisher, would it be a better financial decision to place all but ignore copyright protection in favour of generating sales? Or is it not as simple as that?
Hmmm… the thing is most of the western publishers have abandoned Starforce in the last couple of years due to the consumer revolt. Some say it was the pirates who successfully orchestrated the campaign… In any case, the claim he makes is pretty much unverifiable by me because it’s mostly games published by Russian publishers that contain SF these days. The last high profile release that I know of that cotained it was ArmA II and it certainly took less than a month for that one to be cracked and warez-ed. But what IS true is that Starforce IS the most effective on-disc copy protection to date. It’s just that it is really intrusive and annoying and I hate it (and therefore am happy that most of the games I buy don’t have it). It’s a pity however that western publishers have since moved on to SecuROM that is only marginally better but, since it’s easier to crack, it often comes coupled with limited activations and other silly stuff… It’s a sad world where we have to cope with this, especially since it usually doesn’t work that well… I mean, goddamned Playstation 3 has had no piracy in the last three years and yet, it hasn’t enjoyed any significant increase in game sales compared to Xbox 360 for instance…
Quite a few of my oldest online acquaintances are devils for procuring illegal software. Specifically STEAM accounts, Call of Duty Modern Warfare, generally anything goes if they don’t want to pay for it; or more to the point if they don’t think its worth paying for.
My main gripe with piracy and ways employed by companies to protect themselves from it, is they are always so drastic (as you point out with needing a permanent internet connection). What would I have done, if I chose not to be reconnected to the internet after moving home, if I just thought to myself I don’t need it any more.
Would I have been able to contact Ubisoft, to verify my game (say, via telephone) for them to acknowledge I had spent £30 of my hard earned money and for them to then allow me to play it?
I suspect not.
Still, I am of the mindset that people pirate software because it is originally over priced, and that a game or programme pirated is not necessarily a lost sale (as the industries would have you believe).
By no means am I condoning piracy, but surely by now boxed games should be a thing of the past. Downloadable content that cuts out production cost is surely the answer to ensuring sales. Look at Grand Theft Auto China Town Wars on the iPhone. £30-45 for the game on the DS and PSP, yet its £4.99 on the iPhone and plays like an absolute dream (better I might add). The majority of people at that price, wouldn’t even hesitate to purchase it, where as I would have been hard pressed to spend £40, and might have resorted to dodgy DS cartridges to acquire it if I wanted to play it enough.
I agree with you in certain instances, Lewis (Adobe software, for example, is outrageously overpriced; they are actually pricing themselves into piracy), but not games. With most games having a budget in the tens of millions, $50-$60 doesn’t seem all bad to me. I tend to agree with Stardock’s Brad Wardell in the assumption that most pirates – probably 80-90% – were never going to buy the game, so you’re actually not LOSING anything to piracy.
Personally I agree that retail is a thing of the past. If you don’t want your game pirated, you’ll have much more luck with Steam and Impulse.
@Jarrod – welcome to the site! I don’t know of any dollars-to-doughnuts pricing data, partly because I think it’d be almost impossible to verify. Both sides are committed to their views and no amount of evidence will change them. In my experience in the games industry, developers worry more about used-game sales while publishers worry more about piracy; the truth is neither can do anything about either one, sadly.
“The sad thing is that we do it to ourselves. I’d love to say that I’ll never buy another Ubi game on PC again, but I know it’s a lie. And that’s why they get away with it.”
Tsk, tsk, ‘Pike. Sterner stuff is needed in the face of this ongoing humiliation. I bought one StarForce protected game (Xpand Rally), had it snarl up my system, and vowed Never Again. And never, to date, has meant never. Of course, now that Xpand Rally is available on Steam (sans SF), I found no reason not to take it for a spin. (Much lower price, too.)
This joke here is that all the DRM tends to get scrapped in the end. Just a technologically imposed monopoly to momentarily jack up the first buyers’ retail price.
I can’t help it! I’m weak!
Now go pirate some games Steerpike, before you explode.