17 ms·

I suppose that the title assertion is to be expected. DRM only works if you don't know how it works. ~~~ I'm not sure I see anything wrong with DRM per se (th

I suppose that the title assertion is to be expected. DRM only works if you don't know how it works. ~~~ I'm not sure I see anything wrong with DRM per se (this could be my fever talking), there are probably good uses I'm too dim to think about, but I do think it's unnecessary as part of the HTML specification. There's no industry or company that has switched to DRM-free content, that I know of, that has failed or suffered because of it: * Music is largely available DRM-free now, thanks to Amazon's MP3 store (at the least, I'm sure there are others) * For games, Steam makes it easy to avoid SecuROM Hell * Despite DRM, all of Netflix's original series House of Cards was available on The Pirate Bay within hours of release. This doesn't seem to hurt Netflix's wish to create more content, or police it more heavy-handedly. (Maybe they would if they could) For that matter, I think in the modern case every single time a business went DRM free it turned out OK. Isn't that right? In all modern cases, maybe after 2006-ish, DRM-free businesses were accompanied with an easy way to get the content online, and sales did not seem to suffer because at the end of the day piracy can appear (or be) shady and people (rightfully) don't trust shady websites, even The Pirate Bay with all of its popups. I wish we had better numbers. I would like to see a real analysis on all the reasons people don't pirate and instead buy on Steam. I wish there was a good way to convince media businesses at large. But I guess this is all water under the bridge, and I'm preaching to the choir.

shmerl 13y ago
Steam can't be considered DRM free in many cases, for example because they don't let you backing up installers / packages, so if the service closes down you lose your collection. The only completely DRM-free gaming distributor is GOG. Humble Bundle and Desura are mixed. You are right in general though. Going DRM free not only won't hurt any publisher, it will only gain respect from customers and will improve the quality of their products in a sense of improved usability, because any DRM means a crippled product (i.e. limited platforms availability, inability to make backups and etc. and etc.). The problem is, that most legacy publishers are rarely customer focused and think that DRM helps their profits. And unprincipled distributors like Netflix are ready to oblige. But the irony is, those publishers only hurt themselves by continuing using DRM. It's mostly innovative publishers, or self published studios (and crowdfunded projects) that have common sense and avoid using DRM. Luckily some distributors are also principled enough to reject DRMed products from publishers. But such are a minority still.
- darklajid 13y ago
  Can you explain the "no backups" part? I'm sure you know about the backups you can create in Steam itself, bundling the application. What is the missing detail? Being unable to extract the data again, without Steam? Is Steam unable to restore these bundles in offline mode?
  - crowleysimon 13y ago
    Correct. You can backup a game when offline, but steam wont allow you to restore one without being logged in.
  - ekianjo 13y ago
    Steam will require you to be connected to their servers once in a while at least. There's no pure offline mode.
    - gcb0 13y ago
      steam is just like any other drm system for your games. it phone home and prevents you from playing without a connection to the mothership. they just have saner fallback times than other ill talked solutions from EA. but besides its pretty eyes, its the same virus. good luck running online games as root.
      - jeena 13y ago
        I once bought and downloaded SuperHexagon on Steam but didn't have the time to test it at home. Later on the train (I'm commuting for two hours a day) I wanted to test it. Sadly I wasn't allowed without a internet connection which was really annoying.
        jamesgeck0 13y ago
        Sometimes the game executable doesn't actually require you to be online the first time you launch it, even though Steam does. If you launch the binary from Windows explorer, there's a chance it'll work.
eridius 13y ago
> For games, Steam makes it easy to avoid SecuROM Hell Steam is not DRM-free. It's just gamer-accepted DRM.
- MichaelGG 13y ago
  Which seems more rooted in the overall ease-of-use and lock-in Steam creates as well as goodwill towards Valve from their games. Steam's terrible - fight them on a transaction, and you could lose your entire library.
  - jamra 13y ago
    I don't think you lose your library. From what I was told, your account is put into a no-purchase mode where you can play your games but can't purchase any new ones.
    - makomk 13y ago
      They used to ban users altogether, I think they've changed their policy. They also used to ban users if someone gifted them a game and the transaction buying the game was charged back.
      - statusgraph 13y ago
        It's pretty unreasonable to claim fraud (charge back) if you buy a game and then someone gifts you...
        jrockway 13y ago
        I think the problem was, I could have your account shut down by gifting you a game and charging back the purchase.
  - gfosco 13y ago
    Maybe if you're a total jerk about it?... I purchased the full iD collection once for like $90+, and the next day I requested a refund because several of the old titles didn't want to run. Despite the no-refund policy, they reversed the transaction. I've heard more positive stories than negative ones.
nsxwolf 13y ago
DRM enables movie rentals over the internet and that's about the only good use I've seen for it.
jamra 13y ago
I think that the early exploitation of Napster against the music industry made publishers feel like they were losing large amounts of revenue. There was one programming publisher who was trying to make the argument that the lack of availability for an affordable price was the reason why people were downloading illegally. The counter argument was that his small niche was not indicative of a large industry. What you are mentioning about Amazon is pretty enlightening for me to read. If you think about it, the lock-in you suffer from iTunes is an outdated and anti-consumer stance. It is absolutely unnecessary to force a purchaser to store his digital goods on the cloud.
philwelch 13y ago
iTunes doesn't DRM music anymore either. Haven't for years.
- warp 13y ago
  This is up to the publisher, audiobooks and most japanese music is still DRM'ed on iTunes. (and the most annoying thing about it is there is no way to see that before you purchase).
tzs 13y ago
> Music is largely available DRM-free now, thanks to Amazon's MP3 store (at the least, I'm sure there are others) Apple should get significant credit here. It was Steve Jobs' open letter of 2007-02-06 to the big four labels calling for them to go DRM free that got the ball rolling. EMI agreed, and Apple started selling DRM-free tracks from them on 2007-05-27. Amazon's public beta of their MP3 store launched on 2007-09-25, four months after Apple had started selling DRM-free music. Amazon was the first to get contracts in place with all four major labels for DRM-free music.
- rmc 13y ago
  Actually I think you can also attribute it to (a) the iPod becoming massively popular and becoming synonmous with "portable music player", (b) Only Apple DRM and non-DRM-able MP3s supported on the iPod. The iPod won the music player market, so if you tried to sell music with DRM you need to either (i) play by Apple's rules or (ii) have mundane tech users being confused when they can't play the music they bought on the what at become THE standard music player. In 2006, during discusion of the Broadcast Flag DRM, an 82 year old senator was given an iPod and started to realise that lots of DRM wouldn't work with it. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2006/01/history-and-senator-stevens-ipod https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2006/01/history-and-senator-st...
  - pajop 13y ago
    I agree with this. When I was buying physical music CDs and play it on my laptop - different CDs had different DRM formats. After a while, I had 6-7 different DRM-enabled players. I stopped playing physical CDs on my laptop after that.
  - RexRollman 13y ago
    True, but the Apple music beast was really created by the music industry who insisted on them using DRM in the first place.
    - mseebach 13y ago
      Yes, Apple did a bait-and-switch on the music industry. First they won by playing by the rules, then they used their dominance to change the rules.
jasonwatkinspdx 13y ago
> DRM only works if you don't know how it works. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerckhoffs's_principle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerckhoffs's_principle
- captainmuon 13y ago
  Doesn't really apply here. When sending an encrypted message, the adversary doesn't know the secret key. With DRM, the adversary is the receiver of the message. You (or your computer) already has the secret in Kerckhoff's sense. It's just a matter of finding out where the key or the unencrypted data is stored - in the worst case by hooking up hardware to the mainboard or the screen. You could make DRM "Kerckhoff hard", but you'd have to use a completely trusted architecture with secure boot and signed applications - which is not conicidentially where all major players are moving. Even then, there are a couple of loopholes (bugs/jailbreaks, you could tamper with the hardware, or you could just record the signal during playback ("analoge gap"))
  - tripzilch 13y ago
    > or you could just record the signal during playback ("analoge gap") And for that we are striving for newer technologies to close that gap from the analogue side. I'm not being entirely serious (yet), but thinking about Occulus Rift or Google Glass, etc. Once we get our media/games to jack in directly to our brains, like all the cyberpunk novels prescribe, it's going to be pretty hard to get a tap between the analogue side :)
    - marcosdumay 13y ago
      Whatever means you use, you must have an unencrypted stream somewhere, and you can tap that stream. In your example, just make a computer that pretends to be your brain, and you'll get the data to post at Pirate Bay.
  - snarfy 13y ago
    People don't seem to understand this about DRM. It's based on encryption, but encryption only allows a secret message between alice and bob, away from the prying eyes of carol. But in a DRM situation, alice and carol are the same person.
masklinn 13y ago
> * For games, Steam makes it easy to avoid SecuROM Hell Steam has its own DRM, and games distributed via steam may have additional third-party DRMs (including SecuROM and other similar shite). IIRC GOG is only DRM-free games, although it is less convenient.
- lucian1900 13y ago
  GoG is actually quite convenient, it has a much better website and a good downloader. The only downside is the much smaller library than Steam.
  - masklinn 13y ago
    I find the site good, but I only got grief from the downloader (back when I tried it a year or 2 ago, it may have gotten better since), for all of its slowness Steam's installation and updating process is much more hands-off and convenient.
    - lucian1900 13y ago
      The downloader is quite smooth, at least now. You still have to install and update manually, which is a bit annoying. The one really cool thing in Steam is savegame sync, but not even all games support it.
      - masklinn 13y ago
        > The one really cool thing in Steam is savegame sync, but not even all games support it. Yes, that was a very annoying discovery when I came back from holidays, after I'd started playing Rogue Legacy on my laptop and realised I had to hunt the savegame locations and pray they were compatible between the OSX and Windows versions of the game (they were)
  - fafner 13y ago
    And no GNU/Linux support...
justincormack 13y ago
No, the organizations are just paranoid. I had to sign an NDA before seeing the Disney digital content handling requirements. That sort of document will be the W3C requirements. It didnt say anything detailed about implementation, just requirements about encryption, watermarking etc.
dogweather 13y ago
> DRM-free . . . Steam How is Steam DRM-free? You must first log in to your Steam account in order to play. Locked down. They seem to do it with very good UX, but it's DRM. I think this negates the first part of your thesis: that DRM-free is picking up.
- beshrkayali 13y ago
  They can also remove games from the store and from users' libraries: http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/12/30/steam-removes-game-order-of-war-challenge-from-user-libraries/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/12/30/steam-remove...
  - jamesgeck0 13y ago
    From the store, anyway. The update at the end of the article states that they were wrong, and the single player game is still in users' libraries.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
- talmand 13y ago
  Steam could be used simply as a distribution method, you have an account to purchase and download. The level of DRM protection is up to the developer/publisher to decide. It's possible for the game to no longer require Steam once it has been downloaded. Although, if the developer/publisher doesn't include an installer of some sort within the game files reinstalling without Steam might be a bit tough. Makes me wish for the old days when you didn't need installers, you just zipped up the folder as a backup. Need to reinstall? Unzip to new folder.
fmavituna 13y ago
Overall I agree with you except your example of Steam. Steam is DRM. Gaming is going towards more online by adding value (just like SAAS can't be pirated like traditional software) always online games by nature such as Battlefield 4 can't be pirated as well. That's possibly why also Simcity decided to go online but the added value wasn't enough and caused a backslash.
lucian1900 13y ago
Sadly, both Steam and Netflix still include DRM, it's just a bit less annoying.
- fafner 13y ago
  Netflix along with Google and Microsoft are the companies behind the HTML5 DRM proposal.
cbhl 13y ago
I recall DreamCast failing primarily because of piracy -- everyone burned games to CD-Rs instead of buying them.
- bagosm 13y ago
  Not really... in the PSX there used to be TONNES of copied CDs and we all know how that went...
- greyfade 13y ago
  The failure of the Dreamcast was the pitifully small library, not piracy.
  - throwaway2048 13y ago
    the dreamcast had 700+ games, more than gamecube and xbox combined
    - zinkem 13y ago
      390 of which were only released in Japan. The xbox actually had ~900 games and the GameCube had ~700. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dreamcast_games http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dreamcast_games http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nintendo_GameCube_games http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nintendo_GameCube_games http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_games http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_games
    - stormbrew 13y ago
      Wikipedia lists 967 games for the xbox alone. The Gamecube appears to have come in somewhere around 500 or so. But it's probably worth noting that no one ever claimed either of those consoles had massive libraries, either.
- Sssnake 13y ago
  It is amazing how that myth persists. Piracy was much more common for the playstation, and I seem to recall it did ok.
lazyjones 13y ago
> For games, Steam makes it easy to avoid SecuROM Hell Not really, there are Steam games with all kinds of additional vendor-specific DRM, including SecuROM. http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Big_List_of_3rd_Party_DRM_on_Steam#SecuROM http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Big_List_of_3rd_Party_DRM_o...
Fuxy 13y ago
Personally as one of those pirates they are trying to stop piracy is only an issue when your content is not easily accessible the legal way or it is too expensive. I have experienced both. For instance songs are very cheap when your monthly income over £1,500 but when your monthly income is £300 (that's the equivalent in pounds in the country i grew up in) that's a bit too much for just one song. Same for everything else since they're all price for the US,UK,etc market. Now that i can afford it i choose to pay for the content i like (it's my way of encouraging the people creating the things i like) even though i could still pirate it. Then again I'm still forced to pirate some things that can't get legally. Wish i didn't have to but it's not like their giving me a choice.
- tesmar2 13y ago
  > forced You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
  - wernercd 13y ago
    Depends... He could live somewhere that he can't get access to legal copies of TV shows he wants to watch (Some TV shows take months, if ever, to show up locally). Or live somewhere like Australia where everything costs prohibitively more than elsewhere. If I want a TV show - Say House of Cards - and it's not available, or it's available much later than elsewhere, or it's prohibitively more pricey... They want the show and the only reasonable way to get it... then it will "force" people who want it to Piracy.
    - k-mcgrady 13y ago
      >> "They want the show and the only reasonable way to get it... then it will "force" people who want it to Piracy." I would very much like a Ferrari California. It's unlikely I will ever be able to afford one - it is prohibitively expensive for me. I am not being forced to steal it. I understand like a rational human being should that if I can't afford something or it isn't available to me and it isn't essential to my survival I have no right to take it. I know that physical theft analogies aren't very good when comparing to piracy but seriously - you are not being forced to do anything. You make a choice to steal it. Whether that's morally right or wrong is your decision to make.
psionski 13y ago
The reason for piracy is simply bad salesmanship. Nobody would bother with torrents if there is a much easier and correctly priced alternative - when Steam started selling games in Bulgaria I stopped pirating games. When Spotify started selling in Bulgaria I stopped pirating music. When, eventually, Netflix starts selling in Bulgaria - I'll stop pirating movies. The solution to piracy is simply knowing how to sell your product. DRM is an attempt at a technological solution to a non-technological problem.
yarrel 13y ago
> DRM only works if you don't know how it works. Which is why it doesn't work. But it is very useful for excluding competitors and pissing off consumers.
ZoFreX 13y ago
> DRM only works if you don't know how it works. That's not entirely true, I don't think? What about AACS, which uses a very clever master key / sub key + key revocation mechanism. People figured out exactly how it worked well before it was actually "broken" - and it was broken by stealing private keys from devices. > For games, Steam makes it easy to avoid SecuROM Hell Steam is DRM. Sure, it's fairly nice as DRM goes, but it is still DRM.
- jeltz 13y ago
  > Steam is DRM. Sure, it's fairly nice as DRM goes, but it is still DRM. Depends on what you mean by DRM. Many Steam games run without Steam and only use it as a platform for digital distribution.
debacle 13y ago
> all the reasons people don't pirate and instead buy on Steam. Because the sames are stupidly, insanely reasonably priced. $5 for 20 hours of content? Games from time to time being 50% off? The ease of getting new content in a few clicks? Contrast that with movies that are available for download at the same time they show up on DVD in stores: $15 for <2 hours of content that's probably not going to be that great, when my alternatives are to go to the movie store and pick it up for $2 as a rental or to pirate it for free.

shmerl 13y ago

Steam can't be considered DRM free in many cases, for example because they don't let you backing up installers / packages, so if the service closes down you lose your collection. The only completely DRM-free gaming distributor is GOG. Humble Bundle and Desura are mixed. You are right in general though. Going DRM free not only won't hurt any publisher, it will only gain respect from customers and will improve the quality of their products in a sense of improved usability, because any DRM means a crippled product (i.e. limited platforms availability, inability to make backups and etc. and etc.). The problem is, that most legacy publishers are rarely customer focused and think that DRM helps their profits. And unprincipled distributors like Netflix are ready to oblige. But the irony is, those publishers only hurt themselves by continuing using DRM. It's mostly innovative publishers, or self published studios (and crowdfunded projects) that have common sense and avoid using DRM. Luckily some distributors are also principled enough to reject DRMed products from publishers. But such are a minority still.

darklajid 13y ago
Can you explain the "no backups" part? I'm sure you know about the backups you can create in Steam itself, bundling the application. What is the missing detail? Being unable to extract the data again, without Steam? Is Steam unable to restore these bundles in offline mode?
- crowleysimon 13y ago
  Correct. You can backup a game when offline, but steam wont allow you to restore one without being logged in.
- ekianjo 13y ago
  Steam will require you to be connected to their servers once in a while at least. There's no pure offline mode.
  - gcb0 13y ago
    steam is just like any other drm system for your games. it phone home and prevents you from playing without a connection to the mothership. they just have saner fallback times than other ill talked solutions from EA. but besides its pretty eyes, its the same virus. good luck running online games as root.
    - jeena 13y ago
      I once bought and downloaded SuperHexagon on Steam but didn't have the time to test it at home. Later on the train (I'm commuting for two hours a day) I wanted to test it. Sadly I wasn't allowed without a internet connection which was really annoying.
      - jamesgeck0 13y ago
        Sometimes the game executable doesn't actually require you to be online the first time you launch it, even though Steam does. If you launch the binary from Windows explorer, there's a chance it'll work.

eridius 13y ago

> For games, Steam makes it easy to avoid SecuROM Hell Steam is not DRM-free. It's just gamer-accepted DRM.

MichaelGG 13y ago
Which seems more rooted in the overall ease-of-use and lock-in Steam creates as well as goodwill towards Valve from their games. Steam's terrible - fight them on a transaction, and you could lose your entire library.
- jamra 13y ago
  I don't think you lose your library. From what I was told, your account is put into a no-purchase mode where you can play your games but can't purchase any new ones.
  - makomk 13y ago
    They used to ban users altogether, I think they've changed their policy. They also used to ban users if someone gifted them a game and the transaction buying the game was charged back.
    - statusgraph 13y ago
      It's pretty unreasonable to claim fraud (charge back) if you buy a game and then someone gifts you...
      - jrockway 13y ago
        I think the problem was, I could have your account shut down by gifting you a game and charging back the purchase.
- gfosco 13y ago
  Maybe if you're a total jerk about it?... I purchased the full iD collection once for like $90+, and the next day I requested a refund because several of the old titles didn't want to run. Despite the no-refund policy, they reversed the transaction. I've heard more positive stories than negative ones.

nsxwolf 13y ago

DRM enables movie rentals over the internet and that's about the only good use I've seen for it.

jamra 13y ago

I think that the early exploitation of Napster against the music industry made publishers feel like they were losing large amounts of revenue. There was one programming publisher who was trying to make the argument that the lack of availability for an affordable price was the reason why people were downloading illegally. The counter argument was that his small niche was not indicative of a large industry. What you are mentioning about Amazon is pretty enlightening for me to read. If you think about it, the lock-in you suffer from iTunes is an outdated and anti-consumer stance. It is absolutely unnecessary to force a purchaser to store his digital goods on the cloud.

philwelch 13y ago

iTunes doesn't DRM music anymore either. Haven't for years.

warp 13y ago
This is up to the publisher, audiobooks and most japanese music is still DRM'ed on iTunes. (and the most annoying thing about it is there is no way to see that before you purchase).

tzs 13y ago

> Music is largely available DRM-free now, thanks to Amazon's MP3 store (at the least, I'm sure there are others) Apple should get significant credit here. It was Steve Jobs' open letter of 2007-02-06 to the big four labels calling for them to go DRM free that got the ball rolling. EMI agreed, and Apple started selling DRM-free tracks from them on 2007-05-27. Amazon's public beta of their MP3 store launched on 2007-09-25, four months after Apple had started selling DRM-free music. Amazon was the first to get contracts in place with all four major labels for DRM-free music.

rmc 13y ago
Actually I think you can also attribute it to (a) the iPod becoming massively popular and becoming synonmous with "portable music player", (b) Only Apple DRM and non-DRM-able MP3s supported on the iPod. The iPod won the music player market, so if you tried to sell music with DRM you need to either (i) play by Apple's rules or (ii) have mundane tech users being confused when they can't play the music they bought on the what at become THE standard music player. In 2006, during discusion of the Broadcast Flag DRM, an 82 year old senator was given an iPod and started to realise that lots of DRM wouldn't work with it. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2006/01/history-and-senator-stevens-ipod https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2006/01/history-and-senator-st...
- pajop 13y ago
  I agree with this. When I was buying physical music CDs and play it on my laptop - different CDs had different DRM formats. After a while, I had 6-7 different DRM-enabled players. I stopped playing physical CDs on my laptop after that.
- RexRollman 13y ago
  True, but the Apple music beast was really created by the music industry who insisted on them using DRM in the first place.
  - mseebach 13y ago
    Yes, Apple did a bait-and-switch on the music industry. First they won by playing by the rules, then they used their dominance to change the rules.

jasonwatkinspdx 13y ago

> DRM only works if you don't know how it works. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerckhoffs's_principle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerckhoffs's_principle

captainmuon 13y ago
Doesn't really apply here. When sending an encrypted message, the adversary doesn't know the secret key. With DRM, the adversary is the receiver of the message. You (or your computer) already has the secret in Kerckhoff's sense. It's just a matter of finding out where the key or the unencrypted data is stored - in the worst case by hooking up hardware to the mainboard or the screen. You could make DRM "Kerckhoff hard", but you'd have to use a completely trusted architecture with secure boot and signed applications - which is not conicidentially where all major players are moving. Even then, there are a couple of loopholes (bugs/jailbreaks, you could tamper with the hardware, or you could just record the signal during playback ("analoge gap"))
- tripzilch 13y ago
  > or you could just record the signal during playback ("analoge gap") And for that we are striving for newer technologies to close that gap from the analogue side. I'm not being entirely serious (yet), but thinking about Occulus Rift or Google Glass, etc. Once we get our media/games to jack in directly to our brains, like all the cyberpunk novels prescribe, it's going to be pretty hard to get a tap between the analogue side :)
  - marcosdumay 13y ago
    Whatever means you use, you must have an unencrypted stream somewhere, and you can tap that stream. In your example, just make a computer that pretends to be your brain, and you'll get the data to post at Pirate Bay.
- snarfy 13y ago
  People don't seem to understand this about DRM. It's based on encryption, but encryption only allows a secret message between alice and bob, away from the prying eyes of carol. But in a DRM situation, alice and carol are the same person.

masklinn 13y ago

> * For games, Steam makes it easy to avoid SecuROM Hell Steam has its own DRM, and games distributed via steam may have additional third-party DRMs (including SecuROM and other similar shite). IIRC GOG is only DRM-free games, although it is less convenient.

lucian1900 13y ago
GoG is actually quite convenient, it has a much better website and a good downloader. The only downside is the much smaller library than Steam.
- masklinn 13y ago
  I find the site good, but I only got grief from the downloader (back when I tried it a year or 2 ago, it may have gotten better since), for all of its slowness Steam's installation and updating process is much more hands-off and convenient.
  - lucian1900 13y ago
    The downloader is quite smooth, at least now. You still have to install and update manually, which is a bit annoying. The one really cool thing in Steam is savegame sync, but not even all games support it.
    - masklinn 13y ago
      > The one really cool thing in Steam is savegame sync, but not even all games support it. Yes, that was a very annoying discovery when I came back from holidays, after I'd started playing Rogue Legacy on my laptop and realised I had to hunt the savegame locations and pray they were compatible between the OSX and Windows versions of the game (they were)
- fafner 13y ago
  And no GNU/Linux support...

justincormack 13y ago

No, the organizations are just paranoid. I had to sign an NDA before seeing the Disney digital content handling requirements. That sort of document will be the W3C requirements. It didnt say anything detailed about implementation, just requirements about encryption, watermarking etc.

dogweather 13y ago

> DRM-free . . . Steam How is Steam DRM-free? You must first log in to your Steam account in order to play. Locked down. They seem to do it with very good UX, but it's DRM. I think this negates the first part of your thesis: that DRM-free is picking up.

beshrkayali 13y ago
They can also remove games from the store and from users' libraries: http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/12/30/steam-removes-game-order-of-war-challenge-from-user-libraries/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/12/30/steam-remove...
- jamesgeck0 13y ago
  From the store, anyway. The update at the end of the article states that they were wrong, and the single player game is still in users' libraries.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
talmand 13y ago
Steam could be used simply as a distribution method, you have an account to purchase and download. The level of DRM protection is up to the developer/publisher to decide. It's possible for the game to no longer require Steam once it has been downloaded. Although, if the developer/publisher doesn't include an installer of some sort within the game files reinstalling without Steam might be a bit tough. Makes me wish for the old days when you didn't need installers, you just zipped up the folder as a backup. Need to reinstall? Unzip to new folder.

fmavituna 13y ago

Overall I agree with you except your example of Steam. Steam is DRM. Gaming is going towards more online by adding value (just like SAAS can't be pirated like traditional software) always online games by nature such as Battlefield 4 can't be pirated as well. That's possibly why also Simcity decided to go online but the added value wasn't enough and caused a backslash.

lucian1900 13y ago

Sadly, both Steam and Netflix still include DRM, it's just a bit less annoying.

fafner 13y ago
Netflix along with Google and Microsoft are the companies behind the HTML5 DRM proposal.

cbhl 13y ago

I recall DreamCast failing primarily because of piracy -- everyone burned games to CD-Rs instead of buying them.

bagosm 13y ago
Not really... in the PSX there used to be TONNES of copied CDs and we all know how that went...
greyfade 13y ago
The failure of the Dreamcast was the pitifully small library, not piracy.
- throwaway2048 13y ago
  the dreamcast had 700+ games, more than gamecube and xbox combined
  - zinkem 13y ago
    390 of which were only released in Japan. The xbox actually had ~900 games and the GameCube had ~700. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dreamcast_games http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dreamcast_games http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nintendo_GameCube_games http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nintendo_GameCube_games http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_games http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_games
  - stormbrew 13y ago
    Wikipedia lists 967 games for the xbox alone. The Gamecube appears to have come in somewhere around 500 or so. But it's probably worth noting that no one ever claimed either of those consoles had massive libraries, either.
Sssnake 13y ago
It is amazing how that myth persists. Piracy was much more common for the playstation, and I seem to recall it did ok.

lazyjones 13y ago

> For games, Steam makes it easy to avoid SecuROM Hell Not really, there are Steam games with all kinds of additional vendor-specific DRM, including SecuROM. http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Big_List_of_3rd_Party_DRM_on_Steam#SecuROM http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Big_List_of_3rd_Party_DRM_o...

Fuxy 13y ago

Personally as one of those pirates they are trying to stop piracy is only an issue when your content is not easily accessible the legal way or it is too expensive. I have experienced both. For instance songs are very cheap when your monthly income over £1,500 but when your monthly income is £300 (that's the equivalent in pounds in the country i grew up in) that's a bit too much for just one song. Same for everything else since they're all price for the US,UK,etc market. Now that i can afford it i choose to pay for the content i like (it's my way of encouraging the people creating the things i like) even though i could still pirate it. Then again I'm still forced to pirate some things that can't get legally. Wish i didn't have to but it's not like their giving me a choice.

tesmar2 13y ago
> forced You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
- wernercd 13y ago
  Depends... He could live somewhere that he can't get access to legal copies of TV shows he wants to watch (Some TV shows take months, if ever, to show up locally). Or live somewhere like Australia where everything costs prohibitively more than elsewhere. If I want a TV show - Say House of Cards - and it's not available, or it's available much later than elsewhere, or it's prohibitively more pricey... They want the show and the only reasonable way to get it... then it will "force" people who want it to Piracy.
  - k-mcgrady 13y ago
    >> "They want the show and the only reasonable way to get it... then it will "force" people who want it to Piracy." I would very much like a Ferrari California. It's unlikely I will ever be able to afford one - it is prohibitively expensive for me. I am not being forced to steal it. I understand like a rational human being should that if I can't afford something or it isn't available to me and it isn't essential to my survival I have no right to take it. I know that physical theft analogies aren't very good when comparing to piracy but seriously - you are not being forced to do anything. You make a choice to steal it. Whether that's morally right or wrong is your decision to make.

psionski 13y ago

The reason for piracy is simply bad salesmanship. Nobody would bother with torrents if there is a much easier and correctly priced alternative - when Steam started selling games in Bulgaria I stopped pirating games. When Spotify started selling in Bulgaria I stopped pirating music. When, eventually, Netflix starts selling in Bulgaria - I'll stop pirating movies. The solution to piracy is simply knowing how to sell your product. DRM is an attempt at a technological solution to a non-technological problem.

yarrel 13y ago

> DRM only works if you don't know how it works. Which is why it doesn't work. But it is very useful for excluding competitors and pissing off consumers.

ZoFreX 13y ago

> DRM only works if you don't know how it works. That's not entirely true, I don't think? What about AACS, which uses a very clever master key / sub key + key revocation mechanism. People figured out exactly how it worked well before it was actually "broken" - and it was broken by stealing private keys from devices. > For games, Steam makes it easy to avoid SecuROM Hell Steam is DRM. Sure, it's fairly nice as DRM goes, but it is still DRM.

jeltz 13y ago
> Steam is DRM. Sure, it's fairly nice as DRM goes, but it is still DRM. Depends on what you mean by DRM. Many Steam games run without Steam and only use it as a platform for digital distribution.

debacle 13y ago

> all the reasons people don't pirate and instead buy on Steam. Because the sames are stupidly, insanely reasonably priced. $5 for 20 hours of content? Games from time to time being 50% off? The ease of getting new content in a few clicks? Contrast that with movies that are available for download at the same time they show up on DVD in stores: $15 for <2 hours of content that's probably not going to be that great, when my alternatives are to go to the movie store and pick it up for $2 as a rental or to pirate it for free.