So the inevitable happened. The honest people who bought Assassins Creed 2 cannot play their game because the authentication servers went down. Meanwhile, the pirates have been able to play the game with no problem, since it's been cracked since the day it was released. Dear Publishers: DRM SUCKS. I don't buy your games anymore because of this and their shitty quality anyway. But feel free to keep tilting at those windmills anyway.

At least it still works when the servers are up and you have an Internet connection (why do you need an Internet connection to play a single-player game? beats me). I have bought the SW:Empire at War gold pack and I can't play it because the DRM won't recognize my drive and keeps telling me to insert the correct cd... so I went into the cd and installed by hand, but of course all that does is make the apparently installed game crash once you try to run it...

Completely agree. Same goes for movies. I paid for the damn movie, do not force me to watch your fucking retarded anti-piracy movie. If I'd pirated the damn thing, it wouldn't have this crap.

Gabe Newell hit the nail on the head. Pirates are providing a better service than most content providers. If you're going to defeat piracy, do it by offering a better service, not a worse one.

That said, the "waaahh, I'm not happy with DRM, so I'm going to pirate it"* argument is even more retarded than the "Hey! let's screw over the guys who actually paid for our game" argument.

*Not accusing you of this, but it's prevalent on the internet.

You are not alone, DRM was probably the main reason why Spore got a very bad rating on Amazon.com, read the comments.

What I don't understand is why the game producers are more concerned with their relationship with people who are not customers than with people who are. Maybe, just maybe they ought to consider trying to improve the experience of their customers who are willing and happy to pay for their product (yes that is me ... or it was me).

Honestly, I am angry. I feel like I have been dumped by a pretty girl for some abusive alcoholic redneck jock -- and she still wants to eat the food out of my fridge. A pissing contest between pirates and CEOs has ruined my gaming experience and my brand loyalty. "Hey Ubisoft! Yeah over here. You see me? I'm the one with the money in my pocket set aside to buy your game. No, I don't really care how big your dick is, but I was wondering if I could play that game? Hello? Is that a no? Hello? OK, I can see your busy with some petty arms race or whatever. If you ever start selling games again, maybe let me know ... you're not listening are you? Whatever, I'll see you around ... I guess."

Neither the pirates nor the greed mongers will win in the end, but the rest of us, the ones with some sense of ethics (yes, both pirates and publishers have failed ethics) will have to deal with the fallout. Great.

There have been plenty of 'studies' or at least estimates that try to guess how much money is lost due to piracy. Has anyone ever done a study to see how much money is lost because of retarded DRM systems? How many more customers would have bought these games if they had no DRM? How much did the DRM system cost in the first place? How many developer hours, customer support hours, and quality assurance hours were burned through when adding the DRM?

Sounds to me like publishers still can't get it right. How many more times is this going to have to happen before someone gets the message?

Quote: Original post by Mithrandir
Dear Publishers: DRM SUCKS. I don't buy your games anymore because of this and their shitty quality anyway. But feel free to keep tilting at those windmills anyway.

Do you honestly believe that the publishers don't know that?

Do you honestly believe that these big organizations that have built so much of the community, don't participate in the community?

You complain about DRM itself, yet you rant is about Ubisoft's software. You seem not to notice DRM systems used by Steam and Direct2Drive and Apple's iPhone DRM, and many others.

The only model that has proven successful is to require an online connection to play. This is 'software as a service". All others have been (and continue to be) broken. Yes, everybody knows that they are broken. Copy protection systems have been in place and broken in computer games on the Altair, since before 1976, likely before you were born.


Copy protection systems are a deterrent, publishers are not so stupid that they believe it will stop piracy.

Studios and publishers really do listen. We are part of the community. We play games, too. We try to make the best game we can, and still make enough money to keep the studio alive.




If you know of a model that makes everybody pay the game developers for their work, then please share it. Or patent the process and bring it to market on your own, either way.

But if you don't....

Unless and until there is a better solution than the copy protection systems now in use, your complaint is just noise.

Based on news stories, roughly 8000 game programmers lost their jobs last year due to low sales and the correspondingly high piracy. I know we had to lay off a lot of good people. We had to cut game features. Our studio's most recent title, a DSi sku, is showing over 60% piracy. Heaven help the teams working on PC games, which have piracy rates that hit the mid 90's.

Complain about DRM all you want. I know many programmers, and have heard of thousands more, who have even stronger complaints against the pirates.

I can't wait until OnLive and the day where piracy is impossible. I actually don't mind DRM since it's never really bothered me. Sounds like the only thing that's making DRM not work is DOS attacks against their servers by people that want to make DRM look retarded (or more depending on your stance).

Quote: Original post by Moe
There have been plenty of 'studies' or at least estimates that try to guess how much money is lost due to piracy. Has anyone ever done a study to see how much money is lost because of retarded DRM systems? How many more customers would have bought these games if they had no DRM? How much did the DRM system cost in the first place? How many developer hours, customer support hours, and quality assurance hours were burned through when adding the DRM?

Yes, publishers do that kind of tests.

Yes, it has happened in the past. Remember World of Goo? It had no copy protection, and telemetry showed well over 90% piracy.

Yes, it is still happening. Remember Mass Effect 2, launching just one month ago? It uses only a CD check at install. You can be certain that they are watching their telemetry, and comparing notes against everything else they own.

Quote: Original post by Moe
Has anyone ever done a study to see how much money is lost because of retarded DRM systems?

For big publishers, not much or at least not enough. They are designed to absorb losses from all possible sources. And the primary audience for retail PC software doesn't know what DRM is.

For smaller publishers or indies the losses are devastating to the point where it is no longer viable to develop quality software beyond quick monetization schemes - the investment simply wouldn't pay off.

This is why most of PC software is open source or free these days - it's impossible to recoup the costs of any non-trivial investment, even if quality of open source is poor considering the alternatives. But free is a magic word.

Quote: How many more times is this going to have to happen before someone gets the message?

Not long - three years tops, about the remaining life of PC as consumer platform.

The alternatives already exist and within next few years will become definitive standard and ultimate business model. App stores and SaaS. Under this model, big existing names will win much bigger, while small timers will be out of business permanently.

What most technical people do not understand is where the bulk of money is coming from and what consumer means in terms of money. DRM or not, rented or owned, service or download - are all terms that don't exist for a median consumer. They just wanna dual wield teh blades as ninja.

Different way to look at it - how many DRM-like systems are in your car? How many in your home? How many at your school/workplace? Consumer market doesn't know what DRM is.

After all this mess is over, consumer markets platforms will be Apple, Amazon and Google, all keeping tight control over every single piece of code published. Kinda like TV used to be before the internet. There is just so much money to be made in this, and with wild west quickly becoming a history, the traditional business schemes have returned. And most will welcome them with open arms.

Quote: roughly 8000 game programmers lost their jobs last year due to low sales and the correspondingly high piracy.

Ah - piracy...

What about the fact that economy crashed back to 1930's? No, piracy isn't to blame for job losses here, not for any other as far as big names go.