@Giles: You’re rewarding DRM by buying it first, then rewarding NO-DRM by buying it again on GOG?
No. First time he’s buying the game. Second time he’s rewarding the removal of DRM.
I have yet to see a major (single player) PC game for which an unprotected executable did not exist after some time. When games become shovelware (or GoG-ware or mag cover stuff) they always end up being rereleased in unprotected form and there are legal sites that collect those executables for you even when the publisher doesn’t bother. So that knocks out one argument against copy protection.
Protecting the initial sales window (i.e. first 4 to 6 weeks) is essential for most games. Most PC games sales curves look identical to blockbuster action movies, i.e. half-value reductions every week after release. Cost of copy protection has always been negligible (less than 2% of sales price or even free in the case of Steam) so any noticeable effect of it will create a positive net result for the publisher.
I guess it depends on what you define as “major.” Just recently over on RPS, someone posted about Cryostasis in the “Have you played…” feature they have periodically, which inspired me to dig up my old files (I got the game as an added value with a graphics card purchase maybe 3 cards back) and install it. It did install, I’ll give it that. I played a bit of the first level and it seemed to work. When I try to patch it to the latest version (which greatly improves PhysX and fixes bugs), however, no matter which patch program I try (I first tried the Digital River store version, since that’s the version of the game I have), I get “Cryostasis is not installed.” I can’t just re-buy it from GOG or Steam or Amazon (not that I should have to) because hey, they don’t sell it (Steam and Amazon used to). Digital River’s store doesn’t even come up in my browser, so no possibility of support there. I bet dollars to donuts it’s the installed game’s DRM that is interacting with Windows 7 x64 in such a way that the patch program can’t see it (or deems the installed game a pirated copy for some reason).
Is No One Lives Forever major enough? That’s been in “who-owns-the-rights” limbo for nearly a decade and no one can buy the game except by purchasing a disc-based copy, with whatever DRM it had on it. Did that ever get a legit DRM-free version?
I agree that DRM is a necessary evil for the initial sales window, but removing it after a reasonable time period should be a budgeted-for (and probably quite minor) expense.
I’m just waiting for this to happen so the industry sees there’s no difference in profits.
Then maybe they’ll realize all the money spent on developing hinder technology was wasted too. And then maybe we’ll have engineers who put work on something useful instead of something hampering.
For every $ spent on giving Denuvo money they could have spent to work on game optimization to not be utter crap.
It’s just ridiculous that money is spent to pay smart guys developing more elaborate obstacles.
Again, optimizing for another month (or with more guys earlier on) usually costs a lot more than the less than 2% spent on copy protection. Cost simply is no valid argument against attempting to protect a product.
They’ll never decide their magic anti-tiger stone isn’t really fending off tigers. They’ll just decide there’s lions out there instead.
There is no evidence to suggest that infecting a title with DRM will increase sales - and it would be near impossible (barring you somehow being able to start an alternate reality and then get the results from both) to obtain any such evidence as you either sell the game with DRM, or you do not. When games are sold without DRM it is usually mentioned, like with Kickstarters and GOG (and other sites), whereas when a title has DRM you usually need to dig to find out exactly which one – and how they have messed up the title.
The only evidence of anything involving the title is that there will be a # for IP addresses listed on various torrent sites shown as seeders or leechers of a repackaged version of the title. Those numbers do not convert 1:1 to people who would have bought the game - regardless of the title having had a USAGE restriction on it or not.
You also have sales numbers for games that have DRM and sell well, and games that do not have DRM and also sell well. And most likely the same title would have sold well with or without it used – because the majority of people through their actions fall into the CONSUMER category, and they do not care about that issue or consequences. Whereas the small minority who consider themselves CUSTOMERS is too few in numbers to warrant attention, except for very niche titles.
That still doesn’t take away from the fact that DRM is a bit like taking some of the more questionable supplements to your diet. As long as you feel fine you think that it is because of the supplements, and if you get sick it was probably the flu or something else, so it didn’t matter, or maybe you just needed to take these extra pills as well - then you wont get sick again.
Regardless, the future is in Microtransactions and mobile games, isn’t it?
Correct. Except that I should have been more specific: I’m not rewarding the publisher so much as I am ensuring an archival copy for myself. I don’t like DRM at all. But I don’t dislike it enough to totally boycott all games that have it.
I’ll agree with you that I am part of the DRM problem. I purchase games infected with the stuff, therefore, I am supporting it. There was a time, not that long ago, when I fought the good fight, and I did boycott those games. I did not install Steam until 2009. I think it was at that point that I gave up the fight. It was gradual. It was Tom’s review of FEAR 3 that got me to install Steam. And I felt like shit for doing it, since FEAR 3 wasn’t all that great. So that was the only game I had on Steam for maybe a year. Then, another game came along that I REALLY wanted to play, and another. Now I have 63, which isn’t all that many compared to some, but it shows I’m still not playing a lot of games that I normally would, because I don’t feel like I own my copy.
I get that I don’t own the game, only a license. But that also goes for games on GOG. I only have a license for those as well. And yet, I do feel like I own my copy of it when I get it from GOG. And that’s why I buy my favorite games twice when they later appear on GOG. I guess I am conflicted, because I reward the inclusion of DRM, and I also reward the removal of it.
Short of boycotting good games, I’m not sure what else I can do.
Gaming is one of my favorite hobbies, I love it, and I try to get a little gaming time in whenever I can. I do feel like some gamers (in general, not just in this thread) take it a little bit too seriously. I mean, at the end of the day, it’s just a hobby. If a game you bought 5 years ago is suddenly completely unavailable, is that really a big deal?
Only thing DRM does is stop pirates. It doesn’t increase your sales. You want to increase game revenue, increase the disposable income of your customers.
I guess I take it too seriously then. Yes, it’s a big deal when I can’t play a game I bought for whatever reason. I buy games for the same reason I buy movie DVDs, music CDs, and books: Because I want to have permanent access whenever I feel like it. If I want to read a favorite book, it’s here on my shelf. Same with games. I’ve got 600 boxed games from the last 23 years on my shelves. Granted, most of them will not run on my new computer. But as a collector, it’s up to me to keep a few older rigs around so that I can still play them. In that way, I’m not reliant on a third party. It’s totally up to me in regard to how radical I want to get.
Books, movies, games, music. It’s all the same to me. If I invest the money for a copy of any of those media, I want complete access to it because I paid money to have a copy in my house, rather than say borrowing a book from the library, in which case I’d be dependent on the library keeping a copy of the book available for me.
So has anyone here actually had any problems with games which use Denuvo? Outside vague complaints about potential performance issues that have not at all been proven to be caused by Denuvo and have many other plausible sources?
Personally I haven’t been following who was using Denuvo and who wasn’t. So in my case it’s very likely I’ve been playing Denuvo protected games with no issues. That said, some of the biggest games I bought last year had no protection, games such as Pillars of Eternity(kickstarted that one) and W3.
I currently have Kickstarter projects that I backed but haven’t played yet (such as Torment: Tides of Numenera and Liege), I have 129 games on Steam and around 10 on GOG, which I recently started using. I buy games, a lot of them. You would want more like me, not less.
Holy shit, you’re going all in. No, we don’t want more people like you. You just don’t get it. This board has many from the industry and you just flaunting the fact that you pirate games to make sure it’s what you want is no justification whatsoever. It’s just bile, the worst kind, trying to rationalize how you shit on game developers and then you want people to like you for it because gasp you buy games.
Grab a clue: it’s not OK, we don’t want more of you, and quit being a dick pirate.
I don’t shit on developers, you’re the one with anger issues, not I. You’re the one not getting it. If everyone bought as many games as I did (real priced games, not just 20 cent games in bundles) then the developers here would be a lot richer. But you hear “pirate” and go off your rocks. As if it’s some big secret phenomenon that NO ONE ELSE HERE ever partook in. BAH. You need the clue.
It’s not so simple. There’s no evidence that DRM does not increase sales either. While converting torrent downloads to direct sales is naive, restricting the availability of the game in illegal channels can increase the perceived value of the product in the consumer minds and (maybe) increase sales.
You don’t need a hard comparison between alternate realities. Yes, that would be nice, but you could also (for example) compare sales curves (not overall sales, just the behavior of the curve) in AAA titles (because those are the ones more affected by piracy due to their bigger media presence) before and after the break of DRM/availability in illegal channels and see if there’s a clear correlation/visible drop in the behavior of those curves, around the time the game becomes available (and if that drop is coherent along many different products and therefore not something specific to that game). I can think of several other ways to get strong (if not conclusive) evidence of how piracy affects (or not) sales.
Now, I don’t have those numbers (only the publishers do) and maybe the data actually shows no correlation at all. But it is possible to get that data.
Bear in mind that just a small 5% increase in sales in a AAA game would significantly increase revenue, way over the cost of licensing said DRM. So it could be sensible business decision even though it doesn’t really change the big picture (whether a game succeeds or fails). I’m not talking about huge drops or very obvious shifts in sales numbers, just nudges that can be very significant (in terms of dollars) given the volumes we are talking of.
Let’s assume that some publisher knows that they’ll increase revenue by around 5% if they include some new DRM mechanism. How much are they losing amongst the anti-DRM fanatics? How much are they losing from loyal customers who perceive the move as bad faith? I find it damn near impossible to have numbers on this.
Did W3 have DRM? No. Was it highly successful? Yes. Do any of you think it would have been more successful with some new unbreakable DRM on it? I just don’t see it personally.
I believe that retaining absolute control over the code that my CPU runs is of vital importance both for the security of my system and, in the long run, for political liberty. From that perspective, while games qua games might be of little importance, games qua software are an important battleground.