5 ms·

Paradox CEO Calls DRM a 'Waste of Money'

89 points by jconley 15y ago

steve8918 15y ago
This is a lesson that was learned back in the 80s, after valiant attempts to protect games from copying. I remember things like having bad disk sectors, which were foiled by the likes of copyiipc, and then it moved on to requiring the manual for specific passcodes, which was foiled by photocopies and people simply hacking the binaries. None of them worked because it was an eternal war of the game providers vs the pirates, but the pirates had a lot more incentive and opportunity to crack the games than the content developers had to protect them. As far as I can tell, there's absolutely no way around it except by having thin clients and running everything off the cloud. As long as the actual machine where the content is being run off is in the hands of the client, it can always be hacked, either through software or hardware. But things like streaming video and Louis CK are showing that people are willing to pay for content, as long as it's convenient enough and cheap enough.
- JonLim 15y ago
  > As far as I can tell, there's absolutely no way around it except by having thin clients and running everything off the cloud. You can protect yourself from piracy by making quality content that people genuinely want to support. You do more good by making it convenient, easy, and affordable to customers than anything else, and having an awesome game makes it even easier to hand over cash. Convenience and affordability is where a lot of people fail.
  - phoboslab 15y ago
    Case in point, Valve/Steam got it right: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves-Gabe-Newell-Says-Piracy-Is-a-Service-Problem http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves-Gabe...
    - eslaught 15y ago
      But Steam is a DRM platform, so that's not entirely relevant. They do try really hard to provide value and convenience to the customer, but they haven't stepped back from the DRM position.
      - jeffool 15y ago
        True; they still do a minimum to keep people honest, but all those methods, to my knowledge, are already defeated if you look around. Their stick is making piracy annoying to do, along with the carrot of a long reputation of good games.
        ROFISH 15y ago
        Partly because the benefits of Steam (infinite, fast, direct downloads; achievements and leaderboards; cloud game saves; fast patch download; occasional purchase perks such as TF2 hats) far outweigh the negatives (purchases tied to account name; only one account "online" at a time; occasionally weird/buggy "offline" support)
        jeffool 15y ago
        I actually consider everything tired to my account name a plus, as I can log in anywhere and get it. No secondary market, however, is the downside associated with that. And offline is way better than it used to be. Is it still problematic?
        vacri 15y ago
        I was a lifelong pirater of games, rarely bought any (though ironically Paradox games were bought, I loved them so much), and Steam turned that around. I don't buy AAA games at full price, which is ridiculously high here in Australia, but Steam has regular sales with significant discounts. I'm not a poor student anymore, plus Steam is much more convenient than pirating. I'll pay a few dollars to avoid spending time finding a torrent, then reading the comments to see if it's good or not, then waiting for the seeders, etc.
        15y ago
  - wtvanhest 15y ago
    In general I agree with you, but sometimes affordability isn't possible due to a limited market size. Adobe Photoshop is the best example in that even if it was only $50 (instead of $2000), the market size is limited by those who want edit photos. Adobe's answer to this was to make a student version and sell it for 15%+/- of the original price and allow those that want to edit photos but cannot afford the software still buy it for a lower price. They further versioned by releasing Light Room. They realized that they needed to make it affordable, but kept the DRMs in place and worked hard to make PS harder to copy. I'm sure it is still possible, but at $400 (student version) you get a lot of value and it becomes easier than pirating.
    - learc83 15y ago
      I've always thought photoshop was made intentionally easy to pirate, as an unfair competitive advantage to keep other companies out of the market (companies and serious professionals buy it--everyone else pirates it). CS5 didn't even require a crack, you just have install the trial version with a fake serial and edit your hosts file to stop it calling home.
      - wtvanhest 15y ago
        Maybe it is relatively easy to crack compared with games, but non programmers like me don't even know what host files are. That being said, if it is relatively easy to crack you are probably right. It would be financial suicide to compete with them since you couldn't limp in with a weak program. Great point.
      - eru 15y ago
        Isn't that the same position as Microsoft is suspected to have?
  - chaz 15y ago
    I've mentioned this before, but World of Goo did everything right: great game, 90 on Metacritic, easy purchase through Steam or direct from their website, no DRM at all, and priced at $19.99. But an estimated 90% of players were on pirated versions of the game: http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/ http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/. Is there something else they could have done?
    - qntm 15y ago
      Unless pirate players have a significant negative effect on the gameplay experience, which doesn't seem to be the case from what I can see for this game in particular, World Of Goo's makers do not care how many people pirate their game, either in absolute terms or as a percentage. All that really matters is the absolute number of legitimate sales.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
    - InclinedPlane 15y ago
      It doesn't matter how many people pirate content vs buy it. What matters is whether DRM would have increased or decreased the total revenue. More than likely it would have caused it to decrease. The people who pirated it would not have necessarily been paying customers, and fewer people playing the game overall would likely have led to less publicity and fewer total sales. Edit: a lot of game makers are adopting this sort of model as an intentional business practice by going "free to play". Having a big installed base is great if per user costs are low (which they can be if everything is digital) and can improve average perceived value for multiplayer games, all of which can make it easier to pull in more revenue from a small subset of players who voluntarily choose to pay for certain things than to attempt to charge everyone a flat fee.
- Scaevolus 15y ago
  One exception is multiplayer games. You can still pirate them, but you won't be able to play online with the majority of players. This makes the copy significantly worse, so Blizzard doesn't have to worry much about Starcraft 2 piracy.
  - dlikhten 15y ago
    Lol, not true. SC2 disabled LAN play because of this. People would just do LAN games via Hamachi. That's the point. To "protect" themselves, they hurt legitimate consumers.
    - yason 15y ago
      That's kind of a revealing statement, in fact. It's about ownership. If game companies need to hurt their customers in order to "protect" what they think they're selling, then what are the customers buying after all? The companies think the customers want to buy a copy of the game, so it logically follows that thus, making copies of the game must be restricted. But the customers obviously are buying something else if they feel hurt even after they've rightfully received their copy and even go lengths to "fix" the situation by turning to pirated versions. It is my guess that what customers want is the abstract concept of ownership. People buy games and music and movies because they think those games and music are good, and they admire them, thus they want to own these products. Anecdotally, most of what I own is because I wanted to specifically own it. I own movies on physical DVD disks that I still downloaded from Piratebay for viewing after I bought the DVD because they have better DVD rips and it takes less time to download than to rip myself. Whatever games I bought and my friends bought when we were teenagers were the best ones that we thought we wanted to own. We wanted to have the game, we wanted to own the game to feel good about owning something we liked. All my game boxes were like that. Monkey Islands. F1GP. Eye of the Beholder. Obtaining a pirate copy wouldn't have satisfied my need to own those titles. Me and my friends pirated stuff that we didn't feel for, and if we hadn't been able to pirate them we wouldn't have bought it. We didn't buy games to get a copy, we bought games for ownership, we wanted to own them and cherish them. And that is exactly what DRM games don't want to give you: ownership.
  - 15y ago
- ConstantineXVI 15y ago
  > As far as I can tell, there's absolutely no way around it except by having thin clients and running everything off the cloud. OnLive does precisely this. It's effectively perfect as far as copy-protection goes; but it's also seamless to the user and (provided you have a decent pipe) actually has a few benefits as things like download time, system specs, or syncing saves are no longer an issue.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
stcredzero 15y ago
DRM period isn't a waste of money. DRM as it's commonly practiced is. DRM always entails a hit to the customer's convenience. If you're not giving the customer more convenience in a different way, then you're fighting an uphill battle. When you implement DRM, please be aware that you are engaged in an asymmetric conflict, and that you are the underdogs. The subset of the internet community interested in cracking your DRM most likely outnumbers and outguns whatever department in whatever company you're at. But asymmetric conflicts can be won: - concentrate on detection, bias to false negatives - separate by a significant interval in time the detection and any consequences of detection - never do anything that looks like a bug - never fight where you are weak and the enemy is strong You are strong where functionality depends on a server. If you ever have to keep someone out, do it there. If you can avoid doing that at all and fight in even sneakier ways, then do that instead. Remember, in this conflict you are the guerrillas, and the pirates are the big empire. You can only win if you keep them guessing where you will strike, not the other way around.
- nupark2 15y ago
  > DRM period isn't a waste of money. DRM as it's commonly practiced is. Not necessarily disagreeing, but DRM would always be a waste of money if it wasn't for the anti-circumvention laws that prevent disseminating DRM work-arounds. The law serves to raise the bar on just how annoying DRM has to be before most people are willing to work around it.
  - stcredzero 15y ago
    Not necessarily disagreeing Actually, part of my point is that DRM doesn't have to be very annoying at all. It's just that most companies are short sighted in how they apply it, which is foolish. Those companies are annoying their best customers the most.
- finnw 15y ago
  - separate by a significant interval in time the detection and any consequences of detection Why?
diminium 15y ago
iPhone store is DRM. It helps the customer in a way by preventing apps from breaking the phone. I don't like it personally but I have a higher knowledge level of technology than most people. DRM is useful mostly to people who can't figure out anything in a technology product. They are more likely to break their products without it than with it. The big thing though is I wished companies offered an option to those who are willing to risk it all vs fighting them.
- iamandrus 15y ago
  You are confusing DRM for the locking down of a product or platform. Apple locks down iOS for the benefit of the user (most of the time), but adds DRM to apps to prevent unauthorized code from being executed on the device and to prevent apps from being pirated (which Installous has proved futile).
masenf 15y ago
"But people who purchase a game should have just as easy a time as those who pirate the game, otherwise it’s a negative incentive to buy a legal copy." I thought this was a key point in the article and one that has been lurking below the surface in the SOPA/PIPA discussion. In order to 'prevent piracy', technical solutions are worthless compared to providing a quality service where your customers' willingness to buy is on par with your price. As noted by the author, DRM decreases the quality of a service, and often carries an increased price [at least for company in production/support/etc]. For some industries, the price does not align with expectations. I can think of retail Blu-ray for instance [the price is too high]. For others, the DRM encourages piracy to some degree. Often with Windows this is the case. While I own legitimate copies, often a pirate copy is easier to install [no key/activation] or find [no cd to track]. This is especially true for quick n' dirty VM builds. Finally, I believe in expressly Anti-DRM approaches, ya know.../trusting/ users with content. Encouraging users to purchase in order to support their favorite [movie, game, software, comedy special] is the way forward. Piracy will not go away, the game is converting pirates to customers by convincing them that your product is worth their money.
- dattaway 15y ago
  I no longer play games, because of DRM hassles in the past.
  - rcfox 15y ago
    DRM-free games are becoming more and more popular these days. Look at the Humble Indie Bundles, for example. You get 3-6 indie games which are completely free from DRM (and in some cases are open source!) for as much or as little as you care to play. Heck, you don't even have time to finish all of the games in one bundle before another one comes out. If you want to play games, there's really no reason not to.
quink 15y ago
I pirated Paradox's Europa Universalis II when I was a poor student. I later pirated the first version of Europa Universalis III and Victoria, both of which I didn't much enjoy at the time, because they sucked at the time from a technical/gameplay and gameplay perspective respectively. Since then I purchased, because I initially pirated them, For The Glory (effectively an EU2 final edition) and EUIII Complete and its two expansion packs, including one for twenty dollars. I also purchased Victoria II. DRM doesn't work, and because Paradox put all the effort that they'd put into DRM into their game engines instead, I'm buying their products and am utterly addicted to EU3 in particular. For every seed and peer on BitTorrent of a Paradox game, I'm happy, because it means that the community will grow larger and that there will be more paying customers in the future. It helps that the parts of the forum with Technical Support, Patches and Mods are only available to registered customers :) There's only a few things that bother me with Paradox, and they are that Victoria II is not much fun, because one has as much control over that game as a leaf in the wind, that EU3 needs another dozen expansion packs and that not everything is available for Steam on Mac when it should be... If EU3 had three-time install only DRM, I'd have pirated it, and so would have most others. Instead, Paradox seems to be a publisher that loves its community, as the forums alone prove.
- ericd 15y ago
  Yeah, EU3: Complete is fantastic (I heard it was substantially worse before the In Nomine expansion). I really, really wish Steam would offer the other expansions currently available for the Mac, I'm always puzzled why they only have the PC version up when they have the Mac versions of some of the other expansions.
- m_myers 15y ago
  Indeed. We never seriously considered DRM as an option for For the Glory, nor will I again in the foreseeable future. If I would hate something as a gamer, it's a good bet I won't be doing it as a developer.

89 points by jconley 15y ago

This is a lesson that was learned back in the 80s, after valiant attempts to protect games from copying. I remember things like having bad disk sectors, which were foiled by the likes of copyiipc, and then it moved on to requiring the manual for specific passcodes, which was foiled by photocopies and people simply hacking the binaries. None of them worked because it was an eternal war of the game providers vs the pirates, but the pirates had a lot more incentive and opportunity to crack the games than the content developers had to protect them. As far as I can tell, there's absolutely no way around it except by having thin clients and running everything off the cloud. As long as the actual machine where the content is being run off is in the hands of the client, it can always be hacked, either through software or hardware. But things like streaming video and Louis CK are showing that people are willing to pay for content, as long as it's convenient enough and cheap enough.

JonLim 15y ago
> As far as I can tell, there's absolutely no way around it except by having thin clients and running everything off the cloud. You can protect yourself from piracy by making quality content that people genuinely want to support. You do more good by making it convenient, easy, and affordable to customers than anything else, and having an awesome game makes it even easier to hand over cash. Convenience and affordability is where a lot of people fail.
- phoboslab 15y ago
  Case in point, Valve/Steam got it right: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves-Gabe-Newell-Says-Piracy-Is-a-Service-Problem http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves-Gabe...
  - eslaught 15y ago
    But Steam is a DRM platform, so that's not entirely relevant. They do try really hard to provide value and convenience to the customer, but they haven't stepped back from the DRM position.
    - jeffool 15y ago
      True; they still do a minimum to keep people honest, but all those methods, to my knowledge, are already defeated if you look around. Their stick is making piracy annoying to do, along with the carrot of a long reputation of good games.
      - ROFISH 15y ago
        Partly because the benefits of Steam (infinite, fast, direct downloads; achievements and leaderboards; cloud game saves; fast patch download; occasional purchase perks such as TF2 hats) far outweigh the negatives (purchases tied to account name; only one account "online" at a time; occasionally weird/buggy "offline" support)
        jeffool 15y ago
        I actually consider everything tired to my account name a plus, as I can log in anywhere and get it. No secondary market, however, is the downside associated with that. And offline is way better than it used to be. Is it still problematic?
      - vacri 15y ago
        I was a lifelong pirater of games, rarely bought any (though ironically Paradox games were bought, I loved them so much), and Steam turned that around. I don't buy AAA games at full price, which is ridiculously high here in Australia, but Steam has regular sales with significant discounts. I'm not a poor student anymore, plus Steam is much more convenient than pirating. I'll pay a few dollars to avoid spending time finding a torrent, then reading the comments to see if it's good or not, then waiting for the seeders, etc.
      - 15y ago
- wtvanhest 15y ago
  In general I agree with you, but sometimes affordability isn't possible due to a limited market size. Adobe Photoshop is the best example in that even if it was only $50 (instead of $2000), the market size is limited by those who want edit photos. Adobe's answer to this was to make a student version and sell it for 15%+/- of the original price and allow those that want to edit photos but cannot afford the software still buy it for a lower price. They further versioned by releasing Light Room. They realized that they needed to make it affordable, but kept the DRMs in place and worked hard to make PS harder to copy. I'm sure it is still possible, but at $400 (student version) you get a lot of value and it becomes easier than pirating.
  - learc83 15y ago
    I've always thought photoshop was made intentionally easy to pirate, as an unfair competitive advantage to keep other companies out of the market (companies and serious professionals buy it--everyone else pirates it). CS5 didn't even require a crack, you just have install the trial version with a fake serial and edit your hosts file to stop it calling home.
    - wtvanhest 15y ago
      Maybe it is relatively easy to crack compared with games, but non programmers like me don't even know what host files are. That being said, if it is relatively easy to crack you are probably right. It would be financial suicide to compete with them since you couldn't limp in with a weak program. Great point.
    - eru 15y ago
      Isn't that the same position as Microsoft is suspected to have?
- chaz 15y ago
  I've mentioned this before, but World of Goo did everything right: great game, 90 on Metacritic, easy purchase through Steam or direct from their website, no DRM at all, and priced at $19.99. But an estimated 90% of players were on pirated versions of the game: http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/ http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/. Is there something else they could have done?
  - qntm 15y ago
    Unless pirate players have a significant negative effect on the gameplay experience, which doesn't seem to be the case from what I can see for this game in particular, World Of Goo's makers do not care how many people pirate their game, either in absolute terms or as a percentage. All that really matters is the absolute number of legitimate sales.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - InclinedPlane 15y ago
    It doesn't matter how many people pirate content vs buy it. What matters is whether DRM would have increased or decreased the total revenue. More than likely it would have caused it to decrease. The people who pirated it would not have necessarily been paying customers, and fewer people playing the game overall would likely have led to less publicity and fewer total sales. Edit: a lot of game makers are adopting this sort of model as an intentional business practice by going "free to play". Having a big installed base is great if per user costs are low (which they can be if everything is digital) and can improve average perceived value for multiplayer games, all of which can make it easier to pull in more revenue from a small subset of players who voluntarily choose to pay for certain things than to attempt to charge everyone a flat fee.
Scaevolus 15y ago
One exception is multiplayer games. You can still pirate them, but you won't be able to play online with the majority of players. This makes the copy significantly worse, so Blizzard doesn't have to worry much about Starcraft 2 piracy.
- dlikhten 15y ago
  Lol, not true. SC2 disabled LAN play because of this. People would just do LAN games via Hamachi. That's the point. To "protect" themselves, they hurt legitimate consumers.
  - yason 15y ago
    That's kind of a revealing statement, in fact. It's about ownership. If game companies need to hurt their customers in order to "protect" what they think they're selling, then what are the customers buying after all? The companies think the customers want to buy a copy of the game, so it logically follows that thus, making copies of the game must be restricted. But the customers obviously are buying something else if they feel hurt even after they've rightfully received their copy and even go lengths to "fix" the situation by turning to pirated versions. It is my guess that what customers want is the abstract concept of ownership. People buy games and music and movies because they think those games and music are good, and they admire them, thus they want to own these products. Anecdotally, most of what I own is because I wanted to specifically own it. I own movies on physical DVD disks that I still downloaded from Piratebay for viewing after I bought the DVD because they have better DVD rips and it takes less time to download than to rip myself. Whatever games I bought and my friends bought when we were teenagers were the best ones that we thought we wanted to own. We wanted to have the game, we wanted to own the game to feel good about owning something we liked. All my game boxes were like that. Monkey Islands. F1GP. Eye of the Beholder. Obtaining a pirate copy wouldn't have satisfied my need to own those titles. Me and my friends pirated stuff that we didn't feel for, and if we hadn't been able to pirate them we wouldn't have bought it. We didn't buy games to get a copy, we bought games for ownership, we wanted to own them and cherish them. And that is exactly what DRM games don't want to give you: ownership.
- 15y ago
ConstantineXVI 15y ago
> As far as I can tell, there's absolutely no way around it except by having thin clients and running everything off the cloud. OnLive does precisely this. It's effectively perfect as far as copy-protection goes; but it's also seamless to the user and (provided you have a decent pipe) actually has a few benefits as things like download time, system specs, or syncing saves are no longer an issue.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]

stcredzero 15y ago

DRM period isn't a waste of money. DRM as it's commonly practiced is. DRM always entails a hit to the customer's convenience. If you're not giving the customer more convenience in a different way, then you're fighting an uphill battle. When you implement DRM, please be aware that you are engaged in an asymmetric conflict, and that you are the underdogs. The subset of the internet community interested in cracking your DRM most likely outnumbers and outguns whatever department in whatever company you're at. But asymmetric conflicts can be won: - concentrate on detection, bias to false negatives - separate by a significant interval in time the detection and any consequences of detection - never do anything that looks like a bug - never fight where you are weak and the enemy is strong You are strong where functionality depends on a server. If you ever have to keep someone out, do it there. If you can avoid doing that at all and fight in even sneakier ways, then do that instead. Remember, in this conflict you are the guerrillas, and the pirates are the big empire. You can only win if you keep them guessing where you will strike, not the other way around.

nupark2 15y ago
> DRM period isn't a waste of money. DRM as it's commonly practiced is. Not necessarily disagreeing, but DRM would always be a waste of money if it wasn't for the anti-circumvention laws that prevent disseminating DRM work-arounds. The law serves to raise the bar on just how annoying DRM has to be before most people are willing to work around it.
- stcredzero 15y ago
  Not necessarily disagreeing Actually, part of my point is that DRM doesn't have to be very annoying at all. It's just that most companies are short sighted in how they apply it, which is foolish. Those companies are annoying their best customers the most.
finnw 15y ago
- separate by a significant interval in time the detection and any consequences of detection Why?

diminium 15y ago

iPhone store is DRM. It helps the customer in a way by preventing apps from breaking the phone. I don't like it personally but I have a higher knowledge level of technology than most people. DRM is useful mostly to people who can't figure out anything in a technology product. They are more likely to break their products without it than with it. The big thing though is I wished companies offered an option to those who are willing to risk it all vs fighting them.

iamandrus 15y ago
You are confusing DRM for the locking down of a product or platform. Apple locks down iOS for the benefit of the user (most of the time), but adds DRM to apps to prevent unauthorized code from being executed on the device and to prevent apps from being pirated (which Installous has proved futile).

masenf 15y ago

"But people who purchase a game should have just as easy a time as those who pirate the game, otherwise it’s a negative incentive to buy a legal copy." I thought this was a key point in the article and one that has been lurking below the surface in the SOPA/PIPA discussion. In order to 'prevent piracy', technical solutions are worthless compared to providing a quality service where your customers' willingness to buy is on par with your price. As noted by the author, DRM decreases the quality of a service, and often carries an increased price [at least for company in production/support/etc]. For some industries, the price does not align with expectations. I can think of retail Blu-ray for instance [the price is too high]. For others, the DRM encourages piracy to some degree. Often with Windows this is the case. While I own legitimate copies, often a pirate copy is easier to install [no key/activation] or find [no cd to track]. This is especially true for quick n' dirty VM builds. Finally, I believe in expressly Anti-DRM approaches, ya know.../trusting/ users with content. Encouraging users to purchase in order to support their favorite [movie, game, software, comedy special] is the way forward. Piracy will not go away, the game is converting pirates to customers by convincing them that your product is worth their money.

dattaway 15y ago
I no longer play games, because of DRM hassles in the past.
- rcfox 15y ago
  DRM-free games are becoming more and more popular these days. Look at the Humble Indie Bundles, for example. You get 3-6 indie games which are completely free from DRM (and in some cases are open source!) for as much or as little as you care to play. Heck, you don't even have time to finish all of the games in one bundle before another one comes out. If you want to play games, there's really no reason not to.

quink 15y ago

I pirated Paradox's Europa Universalis II when I was a poor student. I later pirated the first version of Europa Universalis III and Victoria, both of which I didn't much enjoy at the time, because they sucked at the time from a technical/gameplay and gameplay perspective respectively. Since then I purchased, because I initially pirated them, For The Glory (effectively an EU2 final edition) and EUIII Complete and its two expansion packs, including one for twenty dollars. I also purchased Victoria II. DRM doesn't work, and because Paradox put all the effort that they'd put into DRM into their game engines instead, I'm buying their products and am utterly addicted to EU3 in particular. For every seed and peer on BitTorrent of a Paradox game, I'm happy, because it means that the community will grow larger and that there will be more paying customers in the future. It helps that the parts of the forum with Technical Support, Patches and Mods are only available to registered customers :) There's only a few things that bother me with Paradox, and they are that Victoria II is not much fun, because one has as much control over that game as a leaf in the wind, that EU3 needs another dozen expansion packs and that not everything is available for Steam on Mac when it should be... If EU3 had three-time install only DRM, I'd have pirated it, and so would have most others. Instead, Paradox seems to be a publisher that loves its community, as the forums alone prove.

ericd 15y ago
Yeah, EU3: Complete is fantastic (I heard it was substantially worse before the In Nomine expansion). I really, really wish Steam would offer the other expansions currently available for the Mac, I'm always puzzled why they only have the PC version up when they have the Mac versions of some of the other expansions.
m_myers 15y ago
Indeed. We never seriously considered DRM as an option for For the Glory, nor will I again in the foreseeable future. If I would hate something as a gamer, it's a good bet I won't be doing it as a developer.