3 ms·

DRM drives gamers to piracy

30 points by pwg 16y ago

davesmylie 16y ago
This is fairly obvious to any one that has had to put up with invasive and/or painful DRM. I would rather buy my software legitimately (if only for the support and feel good factor), but at times it seems like they're going out of their way to make it as painful as possible for the users that have paid for the product whilst the pirates who dont pay end up with a much nicer user experience! This is nothing new though . . . even going back to the 90's where you had to keep game manuals handy so that you could flip thru to page 27 and find the 38th word in the 4th paragraph. (Very frustrating when the manual eventually got lost!!) I don't think there's a good answer to this though - clearly the producers need to put some effort into stopping people from stealing their content, but eventually the copy protection will be broken (usually sooner rather than later), and any effort they require on the part of the user is there after only going to be impacting on those users that have actually given them their money. (This is similar to the anti-piracy warnings that you see at the start of DVD's that only people that have paid for the movie ever get forced to sit through)
Groxx 16y ago
Has certainly been true for me. No-CD cracks have been wonderful, they let you play the game without inserting a CD which does nothing but eat up your CD slot and make noise (once you do the "complete" install option). Similarly, a few binary patches have made old games work again, new games start faster, and buggy network behaviors smooth as silk (by removing them entirely). I'll put this plainly: pirated software is often more user-friendly. Even when it involves a zip within a rar within a tar with a batch file that runs for an hour to extract a dozen .cab files. Because once it's in, it works - DRM frequently means it doesn't. The flip-side of this is what Steam has become, with essentially proper DRM: easier than pirating. And I've spent more money through Steam than all other game purchases combined. Not to imply Steam hasn't had / doesn't have its issues, of course - it used to be an absolute nightmare, and there are still people getting things locked out for no good reason.
- _delirium 16y ago
  > I'll put this plainly: pirated software is often more user-friendly. I'm not sure to what extent it's still done, but I was fairly impressed by some of the improvements warez groups would make to stuff in the 90s. The Radium audiowarez group used to actually add features to their versions of audio software, e.g. the ability to import/export more formats than the official version. Many groups also found ways to make games much smaller in size than the official version, e.g. reencoding all the wav audio as mp3 and embedding an mp3 decoder, which was a nice win in the days when I would sometimes have to uninstall a game in order to fit a new install on my hard drive.
- wlievens 16y ago
  I agree on the Steam thing, it's up to the point where I probably won't buy a game if it's not through Steam. Though Steam has its issues too. For some reason Civ5 stopped working on my Mac a week ago, and the only way to run it is to execute it directly from the shell.
- nitrogen 16y ago
  The only thing I miss with Steam is the ability to give or sell my games to somebody else. Obviously they want to keep people from buying a single-player game, beating it, then giving it to all their friends one at a time, but I've no doubt people have been doing that since the first game cartridges hit the shelves. What Valve could do is limit how frequently a game can be gifted and charge a very small percentage fee for selling a game.
- derleth 16y ago
  > pirated software is often more user-friendly. If you go back to the 1970s and certainly by the 1980s, this was true of pirated/cracked software for systems like the Apple ][ and Commodore 64. Specifically, by removing copy protection stuff (which often relied on specific aspects of floppy drive hardware) the cracking groups could fit multiple games on a single floppy, a great boon in an era when downloading software meant dialling up a BBS and transferring it over a 1200 baud line. So I suppose there's two lessons here: DRM hasn't worked for over 30 years of trying, and DRM crackers still know how to release a good product.
TillE 16y ago
It certainly drives me to not buy certain games. Assassin's Creed 2 sounds quite nice, but I don't own a console, and I'll never buy the PC version as long as there's any form of the Ubisoft DRM attached. It's also a not-so-covert vehicle to prevent or otherwise cripple resale, which I'm sure every industry would love to do, but only video games are able to realistically implement with online activation.
kemayo 16y ago
Anecdotally, I've only actually been driven to piracy by DRM once. I bought "The Great Adventure Bundle 2010" from Telltale games, and one of the included games had a weird conflict between its DRM and something about many people's systems that rendered it unplayable. So I downloaded a cracked .exe and was able to play the game I had paid for. Definitely feels wrong when the pirates get to have the better user experience.
bluedanieru 16y ago
On a related note, embedded advertisements with audio drive me to close a window and its article before finishing it.
- nitrogen 16y ago
  There are few things that will drive me away from a site faster than an auto-playing Flash or video ad with audio, or really any sort of auto-playing audio. It really sucks to open up a bunch of tabs for later reading and not know which one has just started intruding on my speakers.
__david__ 16y ago
It's interesting, the same thing drives people to piracy of other media too. Just yesterday I was discussing with a family member who just bought a Blu-Ray movie and then got the 1080p torrent rather than messing around with watching the actual disk. This way he can put it up on his Mac's 30" display which would never happen with the actual DRMed disc he bought. I nearly came to that myself when I went to watch a Blu-Ray at my parents house and their playstation refused (or was unabled) to play it until we'd updated the system software which took 1/2 an hour. Grrrr... Media companies need to learn that the more they push consumer unfriendly DRM, the more consumers stop feeling guilty about pirating stuff. Just from my small anecdotal sample size of people that I know, approximately 100% have no moral/ethical qualms about pirating something they already own on some other media.
- aerique 16y ago
  Another thing I hoped they would have dropped from Blu-Ray is the minutes of unskippable content. I've already paid for the disc and now I have to sit through minutes of advertisements? It infuriates me even writing about it.

30 points by pwg 16y ago

This is fairly obvious to any one that has had to put up with invasive and/or painful DRM. I would rather buy my software legitimately (if only for the support and feel good factor), but at times it seems like they're going out of their way to make it as painful as possible for the users that have paid for the product whilst the pirates who dont pay end up with a much nicer user experience! This is nothing new though . . . even going back to the 90's where you had to keep game manuals handy so that you could flip thru to page 27 and find the 38th word in the 4th paragraph. (Very frustrating when the manual eventually got lost!!) I don't think there's a good answer to this though - clearly the producers need to put some effort into stopping people from stealing their content, but eventually the copy protection will be broken (usually sooner rather than later), and any effort they require on the part of the user is there after only going to be impacting on those users that have actually given them their money. (This is similar to the anti-piracy warnings that you see at the start of DVD's that only people that have paid for the movie ever get forced to sit through)

Groxx 16y ago

Has certainly been true for me. No-CD cracks have been wonderful, they let you play the game without inserting a CD which does nothing but eat up your CD slot and make noise (once you do the "complete" install option). Similarly, a few binary patches have made old games work again, new games start faster, and buggy network behaviors smooth as silk (by removing them entirely). I'll put this plainly: pirated software is often more user-friendly. Even when it involves a zip within a rar within a tar with a batch file that runs for an hour to extract a dozen .cab files. Because once it's in, it works - DRM frequently means it doesn't. The flip-side of this is what Steam has become, with essentially proper DRM: easier than pirating. And I've spent more money through Steam than all other game purchases combined. Not to imply Steam hasn't had / doesn't have its issues, of course - it used to be an absolute nightmare, and there are still people getting things locked out for no good reason.

_delirium 16y ago
> I'll put this plainly: pirated software is often more user-friendly. I'm not sure to what extent it's still done, but I was fairly impressed by some of the improvements warez groups would make to stuff in the 90s. The Radium audiowarez group used to actually add features to their versions of audio software, e.g. the ability to import/export more formats than the official version. Many groups also found ways to make games much smaller in size than the official version, e.g. reencoding all the wav audio as mp3 and embedding an mp3 decoder, which was a nice win in the days when I would sometimes have to uninstall a game in order to fit a new install on my hard drive.
wlievens 16y ago
I agree on the Steam thing, it's up to the point where I probably won't buy a game if it's not through Steam. Though Steam has its issues too. For some reason Civ5 stopped working on my Mac a week ago, and the only way to run it is to execute it directly from the shell.
nitrogen 16y ago
The only thing I miss with Steam is the ability to give or sell my games to somebody else. Obviously they want to keep people from buying a single-player game, beating it, then giving it to all their friends one at a time, but I've no doubt people have been doing that since the first game cartridges hit the shelves. What Valve could do is limit how frequently a game can be gifted and charge a very small percentage fee for selling a game.
derleth 16y ago
> pirated software is often more user-friendly. If you go back to the 1970s and certainly by the 1980s, this was true of pirated/cracked software for systems like the Apple ][ and Commodore 64. Specifically, by removing copy protection stuff (which often relied on specific aspects of floppy drive hardware) the cracking groups could fit multiple games on a single floppy, a great boon in an era when downloading software meant dialling up a BBS and transferring it over a 1200 baud line. So I suppose there's two lessons here: DRM hasn't worked for over 30 years of trying, and DRM crackers still know how to release a good product.

TillE 16y ago

It certainly drives me to not buy certain games. Assassin's Creed 2 sounds quite nice, but I don't own a console, and I'll never buy the PC version as long as there's any form of the Ubisoft DRM attached. It's also a not-so-covert vehicle to prevent or otherwise cripple resale, which I'm sure every industry would love to do, but only video games are able to realistically implement with online activation.

kemayo 16y ago

Anecdotally, I've only actually been driven to piracy by DRM once. I bought "The Great Adventure Bundle 2010" from Telltale games, and one of the included games had a weird conflict between its DRM and something about many people's systems that rendered it unplayable. So I downloaded a cracked .exe and was able to play the game I had paid for. Definitely feels wrong when the pirates get to have the better user experience.

bluedanieru 16y ago

On a related note, embedded advertisements with audio drive me to close a window and its article before finishing it.

nitrogen 16y ago
There are few things that will drive me away from a site faster than an auto-playing Flash or video ad with audio, or really any sort of auto-playing audio. It really sucks to open up a bunch of tabs for later reading and not know which one has just started intruding on my speakers.

__david__ 16y ago

It's interesting, the same thing drives people to piracy of other media too. Just yesterday I was discussing with a family member who just bought a Blu-Ray movie and then got the 1080p torrent rather than messing around with watching the actual disk. This way he can put it up on his Mac's 30" display which would never happen with the actual DRMed disc he bought. I nearly came to that myself when I went to watch a Blu-Ray at my parents house and their playstation refused (or was unabled) to play it until we'd updated the system software which took 1/2 an hour. Grrrr... Media companies need to learn that the more they push consumer unfriendly DRM, the more consumers stop feeling guilty about pirating stuff. Just from my small anecdotal sample size of people that I know, approximately 100% have no moral/ethical qualms about pirating something they already own on some other media.

aerique 16y ago
Another thing I hoped they would have dropped from Blu-Ray is the minutes of unskippable content. I've already paid for the disc and now I have to sit through minutes of advertisements? It infuriates me even writing about it.