3 ms·

The typical story of DRM is that roughly the first month of launch, where the DRM still isn't cracked, is responsible for a lot of sales. It's where people who

by rocqua 5y ago

The typical story of DRM is that roughly the first month of launch, where the DRM still isn't cracked, is responsible for a lot of sales. It's where people who _would_ pirate but also want the game _now_ because of the hype. Those people become sales because of DRM. Where not having DRM would have lost the sale to piracy. The nice part of this story for DRM vendors is that it works even if DRM is eventually cracked. It means you can win without being water-tight. Because most people admit that DRM will eventually be cracked.

ChuckMcM 5y ago
You read the EU report right? People who buy cracked copies of software do not, in general, ever pay for that software (certainly not retail anyway). There was also a great study on the impact to piracy by Netflix which showed a huge decrease in piracy of DVDs when the cost to view them was reduced to something people were willing to pay. The economics have been demonstrated many many times that the market segments into what people are willing to pay for a product, and if your retail price is higher than the bulk of the market's willingness to pay, then you get either piracy (copies which generate no revenue) of if you could have perfect DRM, no revenue. The only difference between the two scenarios is how many copies are in circulation, not the amount of revenue that was made on selling the product. The non-intuitive result is the for creative works (books, movies, video games) having more copies in circulation enhances revenue because subjective reviews heavily influence buying decisions in the market. This was starkly demonstrated in the London publisher's conference where publishers have all experienced that highly pirated books are more likely to be best sellers than non-pirated books. That works because more people who actually buy the book will have a better chance of having heard something positive about it before they buy it. The markets have been dealing with DRM and non-DRM digital products for over 30 years now, there is a LOT of data that shows two things; DRM causes more problems for legitimate users than prevent piracy, and piracy has zero impact on the total revenue received from the digital products.

by rocqua 5y ago

ChuckMcM 5y ago

You read the EU report right? People who buy cracked copies of software do not, in general, ever pay for that software (certainly not retail anyway). There was also a great study on the impact to piracy by Netflix which showed a huge decrease in piracy of DVDs when the cost to view them was reduced to something people were willing to pay. The economics have been demonstrated many many times that the market segments into what people are willing to pay for a product, and if your retail price is higher than the bulk of the market's willingness to pay, then you get either piracy (copies which generate no revenue) of if you could have perfect DRM, no revenue. The only difference between the two scenarios is how many copies are in circulation, not the amount of revenue that was made on selling the product. The non-intuitive result is the for creative works (books, movies, video games) having more copies in circulation enhances revenue because subjective reviews heavily influence buying decisions in the market. This was starkly demonstrated in the London publisher's conference where publishers have all experienced that highly pirated books are more likely to be best sellers than non-pirated books. That works because more people who actually buy the book will have a better chance of having heard something positive about it before they buy it. The markets have been dealing with DRM and non-DRM digital products for over 30 years now, there is a LOT of data that shows two things; DRM causes more problems for legitimate users than prevent piracy, and piracy has zero impact on the total revenue received from the digital products.