My OperaWorld of Goo developer: DRM is a waste of money
Tuesday, March 24, 2009 12:40:03 AM
http://www.vg247.com/2009/03/23/gdc-drm-is-a-waste-of-time-says-2dboy/
That's right. When Ubisoft released Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, they did so rushing the game past development, pushed it onto cheap discs, and ensured with the then entirely fresh Safedisc 4 that no one could play it legally on anything but a fresh win- install. I am not exaggerating - any dvd or cd drivers, burner programs or roxio plugins (installed through legally bought programs) would make the game mysteriously hang. Or worse, play with degraded performance while Windows struggled with the device- driver requests failing. On my computer, that meant I had two choices - one, install a crack, three minutes. Or two: spend quite a while uninstalling all my disc and disk- authoring tools, extra hard- drives, as well as disabling the dvd- drive on the primary IDE channel - and then cleaning up the registry. After that, I would have to run the program and install as root/admin, in order for the mysterious device- driver to complete it's calls during play.
If that wasn't bad enough, the disc- quality meant that any sector- failure would only be re- read so many times before the device- driver would fail, ending up with terminating the program during any point in the game - a feature included in Safedisc 4, to protect against pirates.
In addition, as Carmel says, it costs money for the developer, and makes sure that legitimate customers get the game perhaps only a week later than the pirated version. So here's a pro- tip for game- developers: choose convenient publishing methods scaled for your project - and choose predictably timed and quality produced launches, and the buyers will come. If not, you force people who want to play the game to install cracks. In order to get the game working out of the box, as we say.
Honestly, while I was a dedicated enough gamer to buy the game anyway, most would simply return the disc, or pirate it. And why wouldn't you, when it not only doesn't cost you money, but also is better than the product you can buy on a disc?
We could see the same with the release of NeverWinter Nights 2 - extremely dedicated gamers easily forked out money for the box. But many if not most of them still played the cracked release on the first official patch (the origin of that release should remain a mystery, of course) for as long as they played the game.
That's the reality of the pirate- scene: dedicated gamers who buy a faulty product to support the developers of a game they enjoy. And whose money is then shared between the developer, and a publisher trying to put itself out of business.
It's a thought that with the PC market, this was almost successful. Meanwhile, the console currently selling the most games (xbox, xbox360) is the most eminently hackable device yet, and with the absolutely largest collection of pirated games available.
Yes - it's almost as if DRM just doesn't pay off, isn't it, and that it actually hurts sales when it inconveniences the buyer.
“You just end up giving the DRM provider money. Anything that is of interest gets cracked, and the cracked version ends up having a better user experience than the legit version because you don’t have to input in some 32-character serial number.
That's right. When Ubisoft released Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, they did so rushing the game past development, pushed it onto cheap discs, and ensured with the then entirely fresh Safedisc 4 that no one could play it legally on anything but a fresh win- install. I am not exaggerating - any dvd or cd drivers, burner programs or roxio plugins (installed through legally bought programs) would make the game mysteriously hang. Or worse, play with degraded performance while Windows struggled with the device- driver requests failing. On my computer, that meant I had two choices - one, install a crack, three minutes. Or two: spend quite a while uninstalling all my disc and disk- authoring tools, extra hard- drives, as well as disabling the dvd- drive on the primary IDE channel - and then cleaning up the registry. After that, I would have to run the program and install as root/admin, in order for the mysterious device- driver to complete it's calls during play.
If that wasn't bad enough, the disc- quality meant that any sector- failure would only be re- read so many times before the device- driver would fail, ending up with terminating the program during any point in the game - a feature included in Safedisc 4, to protect against pirates.
In addition, as Carmel says, it costs money for the developer, and makes sure that legitimate customers get the game perhaps only a week later than the pirated version. So here's a pro- tip for game- developers: choose convenient publishing methods scaled for your project - and choose predictably timed and quality produced launches, and the buyers will come. If not, you force people who want to play the game to install cracks. In order to get the game working out of the box, as we say.
Honestly, while I was a dedicated enough gamer to buy the game anyway, most would simply return the disc, or pirate it. And why wouldn't you, when it not only doesn't cost you money, but also is better than the product you can buy on a disc?
We could see the same with the release of NeverWinter Nights 2 - extremely dedicated gamers easily forked out money for the box. But many if not most of them still played the cracked release on the first official patch (the origin of that release should remain a mystery, of course) for as long as they played the game.
That's the reality of the pirate- scene: dedicated gamers who buy a faulty product to support the developers of a game they enjoy. And whose money is then shared between the developer, and a publisher trying to put itself out of business.
It's a thought that with the PC market, this was almost successful. Meanwhile, the console currently selling the most games (xbox, xbox360) is the most eminently hackable device yet, and with the absolutely largest collection of pirated games available.
Yes - it's almost as if DRM just doesn't pay off, isn't it, and that it actually hurts sales when it inconveniences the buyer.
