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But it should be noted that Steam's pre-release anti-piracy has no yet been broken. So it's not like they don't do DRM... Having said that, the conclusion is

But it should be noted that Steam's pre-release anti-piracy has no yet been broken. So it's not like they don't do DRM... Having said that, the conclusion is pretty much in line with what many gamers and pirates have been saying: Stop screwing the customer and creating pirates of them. I'm lucky enough to live in an English-speaking country, but I'm sure that if I lived in a country that typically sees long delays before localization, I'd find a way to get it early. Even if that meant learning English and engaging in piracy. These companies understand hype and the way it drives sales, and then completely fail to use that knowledge when it comes to other countries. They won't wait! The hype has pushed them into getting it NOW, by hook or crook.

parfe 15y ago
>But it should be noted that Steam's pre-release anti-piracy has no yet been broken. So it's not like they don't do DRM... In regards to pre-lease, A bit of a stretch calling what Valve does DRM. The pre-release stuff is straight up encrypted. It's a convenience for the end-user to pre-load the data. Once the game gets released you don't need to contact valve's servers for decryption keys every time you want to play. Steam itself will install any game I own on any machine I log into. Steam competes directly with The Pirate Bay, and wins.
- Cushman 15y ago
  That's Steam's secret right there, yeah? Use DRM to make the product more convenient, and pirates will pay you for the privilege.
  - aeturnum 15y ago
    I think this is one of the things that good DRM can provide the end-user that has been largely ignored by everyone. I mostly blame the industry for ignoring the possibilities, but they're exciting. You could "loan" games to people without physical contact, you can securely transfer ownership of the digital item, you can play your games from anywhere, etc. There's a lot of potential in having strong digital copy protection that protects the rights of all parties.
    - nene 15y ago
      Well... you can do all these things when there's no DRM at all. It's like counting up all the things you can do in a new modern prison, but it's still a prison.
      - aeturnum 15y ago
        You can do that sometimes...as long as your key isn't bound to a user account (Battle.net), and as long as you have the patience to get it working (mail the cds, give them your steam account password, find them a crack, etc). Some of those restrictions are reasonable and some aren't. My point is that good DRM can protect rights of both parties , but never does. Instead, if often restricts the consumer's rights in favor of the publisher. Steam comes closest to balancing interests, but falls short as well.
      - wmf 15y ago
        I'm skeptical that rental business models can work without DRM; the temptation is just too great.
        te_chris 15y ago
        It doesn't need to though, the key thing with the rental business model is it needs to be easy and convenient enough. It's clear that it's a rental in the name, but people will get pissed off if it's not easy to get the content and outlandishly priced, and just go back to BT.
        shuzchen 15y ago
        I can see where you're coming from, but in my view the general consumer won't put in the effort to exploit your model if you make it appealing enough. I've known people that rented from blockbuster|netflix and just made rips of the VHS|DVDs for their own collection, but it sure wasn't those pirates that destroyed (or is destroying) their business. GOG sells DRM free games and nothing stops me from giving it away to all my friends, but I still end up paying for a new "copy" when I gift one away.
  - ineedtosleep 15y ago
    Right, and even if the user does not play it the instant it gets decrypted, the user still benefits by having preloaded days in advance (especially with huge games > 10GB, i.e. BF3). So when the user finally finds time to play a preordered game, it's already sitting in the Steam library, ready to be played.
  - InclinedPlane 15y ago
    DRM by itself offers no benefit and significant down sides to end users. It's a bitter pill to swallow on its own. Most game makers slap DRM on a game and call it a day, then wonder why users complain. Valve adds enough sugar to their DRM to make it woorthwhile overall. To offset the downsides of DRM you get the benefit of super easy digital distribution, "cloud" storage of game saves and settings, easy installation on multiple computers, etc.
- Maxious 15y ago
  They also just leave key .exe/.dll files out of the downloadable content until release day. With Dead Island, Steam accidentally distributed debug builds on release, leading to some hilarious misuse of cheats.
  - lreeves 15y ago
    I'm pretty sure Steam didn't do that; the developer and publisher are responsible for uploading the bundles to Valve for distribution.
DanielStraight 15y ago
EDIT: It was rightly pointed out that I directed my comments to music whereas the topic was games. My thoughts drifted due to the more common association with piracy. Everything I said still applies though. To have a fair discussion, we need to be clear on who is screwing whom and how. And we need to be clear on how they can stop, and whether it is actually within their power to stop. Original post follows: Who should stop screwing the customer? And how should they stop? Any discussion of fixing the music (EDIT: or gaming) industry or stopping piracy needs answers to these questions. One of the advantages of piracy, one of its conveniences, is that you can get anything you want in one place. But no one is in a position to provide this legally. Spotify (and others (EDIT: such as Steam for games)) would like to, but they can only legally provide what record companies (EDIT: or gaming companies... I think I can stop with the line by line clarifying now; the point is that this applies to all pirated digital content) will provide to them. And they will only provide what it is cost-effective for them to acquire and license. They aren't going to have truly independent artists, because dealing with artists rather than labels isn't cost effective on such a large scale. The only way to overcome this I can think of is a compulsory license for distributing music, akin to the compulsory license for playing covers. But there's no way I can foresee the unintended consequences of such a fundamental change in how copyright is understood. But whether or not such a compulsory license is a good idea is not the point. The point is that "stop screwing the customer" is vague to the point of meaninglessness.
- LarrySDonald 15y ago
  There is no law against making your catalog widely available. Yes, currently they seem unable to do so. That isn't the consumers problem (quite literally). Very few things are so awesome that you'll have people begging you to take their money (and root access on their box, the right to revoke the product at any time, etc), so few in fact that the publishers should firmly assume they are not it. If they can't sort that out between themselves, tough shit - customers/pirates/in-betweens will not care. The ball is not in their court and it will be extremely hard to put it there by force.
- jamesgeck0 15y ago
  But we're not talking about music piracy. :) Steam is missing a few major titles (mostly from EA and Blizzard), but it's one of the most complete digital download services. It also seems to be rather indie friendly.
Symmetry 15y ago
Steam certainly does use DRM, but they use it to provide a service that ends up being providing a better user experience than their competitors. It lets them safely let you do things like download games ahead of the release date or re-download a game from their servers whenever you want onto as many computers as you want.
w1ntermute 15y ago
> I'm lucky enough to live in an English-speaking country, but I'm sure that if I lived in a country that typically sees long delays before localization, I'd find a way to get it early. Localization isn't just bureaucratic nonsense that was conjured up to aggravate gamers in foreign countries - the games actually need to be translated to the local language. As for if you were living in one of those countries as an expat, as you suggest, that's a very small market and not worth pursuing.
- kelnage 15y ago
  But yet they pirate the games anyway. My guess is that you'll find that a large percentage of "gamers" in non-English speaking countries speak English well enough to understand most games and don't want to wait the 6+ months required to translate the game to their local tongue when they could be playing online against US players. This was especially true a few years back, when some publishers wouldn't release games in the UK until the "European" translation was finished!
  - GreenNight 15y ago
    It depends. A shooter? Yeah, piece of cake. An RPG? Sorry, but depending on the country no that many people could understand it well enough to follow the story. TV Series do get around the moment they get on a torrent site, but many many people can follow them thanks to the subtitles provided by fellow viewers. If not they would have a harder time following them.
- tjoff 15y ago
  the games actually need to be translated to the local language. Uh. No. Also, most games are not translated at all.
  - tjoff 15y ago
    When I said that most games are not translated I kind of focused on my country (Sweden). If you are from Germany or France you probably have another view of it. Point is that localization really isn't the only thing that delays a launch in, for instance, Sweden. I guess we have to wait for it to be localized to other parts of Europe before we get to play it in English (or German, but I'd guess that few Swedes prefer German over English). Which is just stupid. And if it really is translated to Swedish you'd pick English anyway (exception: if you are a group of friends it can be quite fun to laugh at the poor translation). In a country where you don't dub movies/TV you get quite good at understanding English at a young age and in such a country I don't really think gamers would prefer a localized version anyway.
forrestthewoods 15y ago
"Steam's pre-release anti-piracy has no yet been broken" That's because it can't be broken. You can't break what isn't there. Pre-load only downloads 99% of the game. Let the user download the game sans a few important bits, say the entire executable, and upon release enable download for the last tiny bit. Most retail games release weeks early because it's impossible to stop once the disc hits manufacturing. Retail discs that require one-time Steam activation can be uncrackable because those important bits aren't on the physical disc. Once a Steam game is unlocked for play it's immediately cracked and released into the wild.
- kornholi 15y ago
  I'm pretty sure that it downloads 100% of the game in an encrypted format, and the decryption keys get sent out on release.
polymatter 15y ago
> But it should be noted that Steam's pre-release anti-piracy has no yet been broken. So it's not like they don't do DRM... I'm not sure what you mean. If you mean that there's been no Steam game that has not been pirated before it was released, I know for a fact the recent game "Orcs Must Die" was pirated. I was impressed playing it at a friends place, tried to buy it on Steam when I got back home but it hadn't been released yet.
bluedanieru 15y ago
>I'm lucky enough to live in an English-speaking country, but I'm sure that if I lived in a country that typically sees long delays before localization, I'd find a way to get it early. Even if that meant learning English and engaging in piracy. Well lucky you. Steam is no better in this regard than anyone else though; they do region lockouts. Valve doesn't with their games afaik, but Steam certainly does.
- Tsagadai 15y ago
  They do and it is a pain. There is a way around it though. You can use Steams website to buy games. Use http://store.steampowered.com/?cc=XX http://store.steampowered.com/?cc=XX where XX is the two letter country code you have access to. They still check address and payment details match but this does allow you to use paypal. The sooner the content world gets rid of silly region restrictions the better we will all be. It is ridiculous that even with trade agreements North American companies insist on charging non-US customers more for a usually sub-par service.
  - jasonlotito 15y ago
    In many ways, the content world is also limited by local laws. For example, in Canada, media distribution is required to provide a certain amount of Canadian content (iirc). The point is, it's not just one sided.
    - sdm 15y ago
      This only covers radio and television. The CRTC has been very clear it can't/won't regulate online services. See it's decision a few months back about Netflix.
  - wnight 15y ago
    Watch it. If they find out you do that they'll disable the games and perhaps your whole account. Region coding should be illegal. Or rather, enforcing it.
dorian-graph 15y ago
> .. creating pirates of them. People choose to become 'pirates' because no one is forcing them to play video games. They have choices—pay for a game, don't play a game (A horrible thing to suggest, I know) or get a game without paying for it (Often called pirating). It's always amused me that people seem to speak of playing videogames as some right that they have and how dare anyone take that away from them.
nickolai 15y ago
>I'm lucky enough to live in an English-speaking country, but I'm sure that if I lived in a country that typically sees long delays before localization, I'd find a way to get it early. Even if that meant learning English and engaging in piracy. Add to this that the translations are often very badly broken - my eyes and ears bleed when I play French versions of games. I actually prefer to get the english version through Steam, and I am sure a sizeable fraction of players would agree. The only successful localization ive seen to date is stracraft2 - so good that I didnt even bother redownloading the english version from Blizzard. Admittedly i havent even been checking out most localized versions for a while - so it may have been improving lately without me noticing.
Derbasti 15y ago
> I'm lucky enough to live in an English-speaking country, but I'm sure that if I lived in a country that typically sees long delays before localization, I'd find a way to get it early. Even if that meant learning English and engaging in piracy. Translations are often bad and delayed. This is as true for games as it is true for movies or books. I hate it. The obvious solution is to just get the english versions. But the worst thing is, there is often no legal or practical way to get the english version. Books are easy. You can get just about any english book through Amazon (.de, .fr, .etc). Movies are somewhat bad. DVDs usually include english language. iTunes doesn't feature (many) english movies, but Ebay sells US iTunes gift cards. Games are actually really hard. It is possible to order from Amazon UK or Amazon US, but shipping will be weeks and there is a good chance you will have to pay customs. Steam requires a VPN and a foreign account and a credit card proxy (Entropay works fine). Not what you would call convenient.

parfe 15y ago

>But it should be noted that Steam's pre-release anti-piracy has no yet been broken. So it's not like they don't do DRM... In regards to pre-lease, A bit of a stretch calling what Valve does DRM. The pre-release stuff is straight up encrypted. It's a convenience for the end-user to pre-load the data. Once the game gets released you don't need to contact valve's servers for decryption keys every time you want to play. Steam itself will install any game I own on any machine I log into. Steam competes directly with The Pirate Bay, and wins.

Cushman 15y ago
That's Steam's secret right there, yeah? Use DRM to make the product more convenient, and pirates will pay you for the privilege.
- aeturnum 15y ago
  I think this is one of the things that good DRM can provide the end-user that has been largely ignored by everyone. I mostly blame the industry for ignoring the possibilities, but they're exciting. You could "loan" games to people without physical contact, you can securely transfer ownership of the digital item, you can play your games from anywhere, etc. There's a lot of potential in having strong digital copy protection that protects the rights of all parties.
  - nene 15y ago
    Well... you can do all these things when there's no DRM at all. It's like counting up all the things you can do in a new modern prison, but it's still a prison.
    - aeturnum 15y ago
      You can do that sometimes...as long as your key isn't bound to a user account (Battle.net), and as long as you have the patience to get it working (mail the cds, give them your steam account password, find them a crack, etc). Some of those restrictions are reasonable and some aren't. My point is that good DRM can protect rights of both parties , but never does. Instead, if often restricts the consumer's rights in favor of the publisher. Steam comes closest to balancing interests, but falls short as well.
    - wmf 15y ago
      I'm skeptical that rental business models can work without DRM; the temptation is just too great.
      - te_chris 15y ago
        It doesn't need to though, the key thing with the rental business model is it needs to be easy and convenient enough. It's clear that it's a rental in the name, but people will get pissed off if it's not easy to get the content and outlandishly priced, and just go back to BT.
      - shuzchen 15y ago
        I can see where you're coming from, but in my view the general consumer won't put in the effort to exploit your model if you make it appealing enough. I've known people that rented from blockbuster|netflix and just made rips of the VHS|DVDs for their own collection, but it sure wasn't those pirates that destroyed (or is destroying) their business. GOG sells DRM free games and nothing stops me from giving it away to all my friends, but I still end up paying for a new "copy" when I gift one away.
- ineedtosleep 15y ago
  Right, and even if the user does not play it the instant it gets decrypted, the user still benefits by having preloaded days in advance (especially with huge games > 10GB, i.e. BF3). So when the user finally finds time to play a preordered game, it's already sitting in the Steam library, ready to be played.
- InclinedPlane 15y ago
  DRM by itself offers no benefit and significant down sides to end users. It's a bitter pill to swallow on its own. Most game makers slap DRM on a game and call it a day, then wonder why users complain. Valve adds enough sugar to their DRM to make it woorthwhile overall. To offset the downsides of DRM you get the benefit of super easy digital distribution, "cloud" storage of game saves and settings, easy installation on multiple computers, etc.
Maxious 15y ago
They also just leave key .exe/.dll files out of the downloadable content until release day. With Dead Island, Steam accidentally distributed debug builds on release, leading to some hilarious misuse of cheats.
- lreeves 15y ago
  I'm pretty sure Steam didn't do that; the developer and publisher are responsible for uploading the bundles to Valve for distribution.

DanielStraight 15y ago

EDIT: It was rightly pointed out that I directed my comments to music whereas the topic was games. My thoughts drifted due to the more common association with piracy. Everything I said still applies though. To have a fair discussion, we need to be clear on who is screwing whom and how. And we need to be clear on how they can stop, and whether it is actually within their power to stop. Original post follows: Who should stop screwing the customer? And how should they stop? Any discussion of fixing the music (EDIT: or gaming) industry or stopping piracy needs answers to these questions. One of the advantages of piracy, one of its conveniences, is that you can get anything you want in one place. But no one is in a position to provide this legally. Spotify (and others (EDIT: such as Steam for games)) would like to, but they can only legally provide what record companies (EDIT: or gaming companies... I think I can stop with the line by line clarifying now; the point is that this applies to all pirated digital content) will provide to them. And they will only provide what it is cost-effective for them to acquire and license. They aren't going to have truly independent artists, because dealing with artists rather than labels isn't cost effective on such a large scale. The only way to overcome this I can think of is a compulsory license for distributing music, akin to the compulsory license for playing covers. But there's no way I can foresee the unintended consequences of such a fundamental change in how copyright is understood. But whether or not such a compulsory license is a good idea is not the point. The point is that "stop screwing the customer" is vague to the point of meaninglessness.

LarrySDonald 15y ago
There is no law against making your catalog widely available. Yes, currently they seem unable to do so. That isn't the consumers problem (quite literally). Very few things are so awesome that you'll have people begging you to take their money (and root access on their box, the right to revoke the product at any time, etc), so few in fact that the publishers should firmly assume they are not it. If they can't sort that out between themselves, tough shit - customers/pirates/in-betweens will not care. The ball is not in their court and it will be extremely hard to put it there by force.
jamesgeck0 15y ago
But we're not talking about music piracy. :) Steam is missing a few major titles (mostly from EA and Blizzard), but it's one of the most complete digital download services. It also seems to be rather indie friendly.

Symmetry 15y ago

Steam certainly does use DRM, but they use it to provide a service that ends up being providing a better user experience than their competitors. It lets them safely let you do things like download games ahead of the release date or re-download a game from their servers whenever you want onto as many computers as you want.

w1ntermute 15y ago

> I'm lucky enough to live in an English-speaking country, but I'm sure that if I lived in a country that typically sees long delays before localization, I'd find a way to get it early. Localization isn't just bureaucratic nonsense that was conjured up to aggravate gamers in foreign countries - the games actually need to be translated to the local language. As for if you were living in one of those countries as an expat, as you suggest, that's a very small market and not worth pursuing.

kelnage 15y ago
But yet they pirate the games anyway. My guess is that you'll find that a large percentage of "gamers" in non-English speaking countries speak English well enough to understand most games and don't want to wait the 6+ months required to translate the game to their local tongue when they could be playing online against US players. This was especially true a few years back, when some publishers wouldn't release games in the UK until the "European" translation was finished!
- GreenNight 15y ago
  It depends. A shooter? Yeah, piece of cake. An RPG? Sorry, but depending on the country no that many people could understand it well enough to follow the story. TV Series do get around the moment they get on a torrent site, but many many people can follow them thanks to the subtitles provided by fellow viewers. If not they would have a harder time following them.
tjoff 15y ago
the games actually need to be translated to the local language. Uh. No. Also, most games are not translated at all.
- tjoff 15y ago
  When I said that most games are not translated I kind of focused on my country (Sweden). If you are from Germany or France you probably have another view of it. Point is that localization really isn't the only thing that delays a launch in, for instance, Sweden. I guess we have to wait for it to be localized to other parts of Europe before we get to play it in English (or German, but I'd guess that few Swedes prefer German over English). Which is just stupid. And if it really is translated to Swedish you'd pick English anyway (exception: if you are a group of friends it can be quite fun to laugh at the poor translation). In a country where you don't dub movies/TV you get quite good at understanding English at a young age and in such a country I don't really think gamers would prefer a localized version anyway.

forrestthewoods 15y ago

"Steam's pre-release anti-piracy has no yet been broken" That's because it can't be broken. You can't break what isn't there. Pre-load only downloads 99% of the game. Let the user download the game sans a few important bits, say the entire executable, and upon release enable download for the last tiny bit. Most retail games release weeks early because it's impossible to stop once the disc hits manufacturing. Retail discs that require one-time Steam activation can be uncrackable because those important bits aren't on the physical disc. Once a Steam game is unlocked for play it's immediately cracked and released into the wild.

kornholi 15y ago
I'm pretty sure that it downloads 100% of the game in an encrypted format, and the decryption keys get sent out on release.

polymatter 15y ago

> But it should be noted that Steam's pre-release anti-piracy has no yet been broken. So it's not like they don't do DRM... I'm not sure what you mean. If you mean that there's been no Steam game that has not been pirated before it was released, I know for a fact the recent game "Orcs Must Die" was pirated. I was impressed playing it at a friends place, tried to buy it on Steam when I got back home but it hadn't been released yet.

bluedanieru 15y ago

>I'm lucky enough to live in an English-speaking country, but I'm sure that if I lived in a country that typically sees long delays before localization, I'd find a way to get it early. Even if that meant learning English and engaging in piracy. Well lucky you. Steam is no better in this regard than anyone else though; they do region lockouts. Valve doesn't with their games afaik, but Steam certainly does.

Tsagadai 15y ago
They do and it is a pain. There is a way around it though. You can use Steams website to buy games. Use http://store.steampowered.com/?cc=XX http://store.steampowered.com/?cc=XX where XX is the two letter country code you have access to. They still check address and payment details match but this does allow you to use paypal. The sooner the content world gets rid of silly region restrictions the better we will all be. It is ridiculous that even with trade agreements North American companies insist on charging non-US customers more for a usually sub-par service.
- jasonlotito 15y ago
  In many ways, the content world is also limited by local laws. For example, in Canada, media distribution is required to provide a certain amount of Canadian content (iirc). The point is, it's not just one sided.
  - sdm 15y ago
    This only covers radio and television. The CRTC has been very clear it can't/won't regulate online services. See it's decision a few months back about Netflix.
- wnight 15y ago
  Watch it. If they find out you do that they'll disable the games and perhaps your whole account. Region coding should be illegal. Or rather, enforcing it.

dorian-graph 15y ago

> .. creating pirates of them. People choose to become 'pirates' because no one is forcing them to play video games. They have choices—pay for a game, don't play a game (A horrible thing to suggest, I know) or get a game without paying for it (Often called pirating). It's always amused me that people seem to speak of playing videogames as some right that they have and how dare anyone take that away from them.

nickolai 15y ago

>I'm lucky enough to live in an English-speaking country, but I'm sure that if I lived in a country that typically sees long delays before localization, I'd find a way to get it early. Even if that meant learning English and engaging in piracy. Add to this that the translations are often very badly broken - my eyes and ears bleed when I play French versions of games. I actually prefer to get the english version through Steam, and I am sure a sizeable fraction of players would agree. The only successful localization ive seen to date is stracraft2 - so good that I didnt even bother redownloading the english version from Blizzard. Admittedly i havent even been checking out most localized versions for a while - so it may have been improving lately without me noticing.

Derbasti 15y ago

> I'm lucky enough to live in an English-speaking country, but I'm sure that if I lived in a country that typically sees long delays before localization, I'd find a way to get it early. Even if that meant learning English and engaging in piracy. Translations are often bad and delayed. This is as true for games as it is true for movies or books. I hate it. The obvious solution is to just get the english versions. But the worst thing is, there is often no legal or practical way to get the english version. Books are easy. You can get just about any english book through Amazon (.de, .fr, .etc). Movies are somewhat bad. DVDs usually include english language. iTunes doesn't feature (many) english movies, but Ebay sells US iTunes gift cards. Games are actually really hard. It is possible to order from Amazon UK or Amazon US, but shipping will be weeks and there is a good chance you will have to pay customs. Steam requires a VPN and a foreign account and a credit card proxy (Entropay works fine). Not what you would call convenient.