Article by Travis Meacham.

In this week's edition of Side-Quest Travis looks at the implications of the continuing battle between game publishers who support the use of DRM as an anti-piracy measure and the pirates who would thwart them.

http://www.tomsgames.com/us/2008/0 [...] rm_piracy/

Only pirates object to EFFECTIVE DRM. (note emphasis on EFFECTIVE) What other objections could there be? Effective means it prevents piracy while not creating other problems for the end user. That may not be the state of the art today but I'm sure it's the publisher's goal. I couldn't care less if my game sortware is required to obtain validation every time it opens. As I said, only a pirate would object.

I'm sorry, your opinion does not hold water for PC gamers. If this was a console, by all means do whatever you like DRM wise, for PCs, you are really punishing the Legit users, Pirates who will crack the DRM anyway will have a much better and hassle free experience than legit users.

Take the DRM EA is applying to their games. Mass Effect is a mess. You have 3 licenses for the game, and you have NO WAY OF REVOKING LICENSES. At least Bioshock provided a way by uninstalling the game, you can't do that with Mass Effect or Spore. EA is truly going to suffer from their arrogance by seeing a huge surge in the piracy of their games because people don't want to deal with their 3 license mumbo jumbo. If you are going to impose such limits at least give users the ability to get their licences back. Even the music industry which is far more uptight on protecting their IP is moving away from DRM simply because people will go elsewhere or use other means. DRM does not work.

As a PC Gamer, I reinstall my OS twice a year and upgrade my Hardware every year, with the restrictions EA puts on their game, I will run out of licences for my game within a year. And No, I should not have to call EA at my own cost for something I already paid for to see if they 'might' give me another license.

And for the record, I don't pirate games, I own over 300 PC games and over 50 Console Games, I don't advocate Piracy, but I also won't let a publisher bully me around. I refused to purchase Bioshock until they removed their activation limit, I continue to refuse to buy Mass Effect and as much as I want Spore, I won't purchase it with their limited licenses. EA can kiss my big fat wallet goodbye.

Double Post due to a crappy login system on these forums.

Well I've finally come to the conclusion that I'm in favor of DRM. I realized in debating the issues of Piracy and DRM in another thread that neither can really be stopped so I'm rooting for DRM. Piracy is here to stay, but obviously you can't just expect developers and publishers to just stand by and accept it. So DRM is inevitable also.
I firmly believe there is no other answer to Piracy. People try and come up with all different kinds of justifications for why Piracy happens and what else can be done to deter it. Really though there is only one reason - money. As long as people have the ability to get something for free they will. There's only two real deterrents to that. Either make it too risky or too difficult to do so. Since trying to go after Piracy from a legal/criminal standpoint is too troublesome itself DRM is the best answer - AND IT WORKS!!!
Cases were DRM works:
- Consoles are basically just big DRM boxes and always have been. People don't seem to care much and buy both hardware and software in droves.
- Low level DRM is highly successful. Just simply requiring a CD to be in the drive deters most users from Piracy.
- The most successful PC games use some of the most restrictive DRM. And I'm not talking about Bioshock or Mass Effect. WoW, along with most MMOs, and Steam games like The Orange Box and HL2 have the most restrictive DRM of all but they sell very well and have very low piracy rates. People bitch about the activations of SecuRom but these games require that you authenticate every single time you play. Even more restrictive is the fact that these games are tied to an account basically restricting use to the original owner only. I sold my first copy of Bioshock after one activation and the person I sold it to had no issues. But the second copy I bought on Steam is permanently tied to my account with all my other Steam games. Why don't people bitch about this more?
To be completely honest I've had my fair share of issues with the above listed forms of DRM. Every time a consoles of mine has bitten the dust all of the games become obsolete because newer consoles won't play them. Scratched or lost CDs have forced me to rebuy more than a few games. And MMOs and Steam games are always at the whim of my internet connection along with their servers. But none of this has every been such a huge hassle that it really bothered me, so I don't see why a little more will.

I'll just throw my internet weight behind Voodoo128. I'm another PC gamer that was very interested in Mass Effect and Spore and won't be purchasing either due to this new licensing model.

Totally agree, people who want to pirate games always will and the genuine users always suffer. I too refuse to buy games (and music) with this kind of nazi drm. For every piece of DRM invented by someone, there are many more enthusiastic people who enjoy the challenge of breaking it and it's those people that will ALWAYS win in the end.

Just look at DVDs for the best example - companies protect dvds so that even legitimate users can watch them on dvd (pc) players, hackers tear up the protection within moments. Every time the dvd protection is tweaked, so is the hack. DRM is an ultimately futile effort which in the end frustrates people into investigating more shady means to get their media as it is simply much less hassle than fighting with DRM all the time [/rant]

Though I do agree that some people will never buy anything if they can get away with it.

Purplerat, the reason consoles are so popular is because people like simple. They like to know that they can go to walmart, pickup a box that says XBox on the side, plug that into their box that says XBox, and it'll work. The same cannot be said for PC Games...
And perhaps it's not as easy to copy console games, but you hardly need to when you can just hand your friend your copy with the firm instructions to 'bring it back when you're done'.

That is exactly the right approach to take. If you disagree with DRM you don't buy the game. And if enough people do that you might see companies back down from DRM. The problem is when people opt to not buy the game AND to pirate it instead. That gives publishers ammo to pursue DRM.

I originally mentioned MMOs in the article but I thought it was getting a bit too long. All the hysteria about Mass Effect's online authentication is nothing compared to what MMOs do. World of Warcraft requires you to authenticate with a username and password every time you play. And all the complaints about, "How will I play Mass Effect when they turn off the authentication server?" were just static to me. This has already happened in the MMO market. Break out your old copies of Earth & Beyond, Asheron's Call 2 and Auto Assault and try playing them. Where was the outrage then? Anyone who owns a copy of Earth & Beyond paid full price for a game with a monthly fee attached and was able to play it for less than two years.

Comparisons to the music industry don't necessarily hold up. We're talking about PC games here that exist alongside console games. The music industry does not have an alternative release channel with complete control over hardware and the operating system with a much lower rate of piracy. Game publishers have that with the consoles. If piracy continues to grow on the PC and we continue to "punish" publishers for employing DRM by pirating their products, they are only going to develop games for the consoles where they can control distrubution better.

That's exactly right. A console is just a big DRM machine. Don't think so? Try dropping a PS3 game into an Xbox 360 and see how far you get.

Consoles are not DRM. They in no way inhibit you from handing your content to a friend. They are vendor lock-in, but that's different. My VHS recorder wouldn't play Beta tapes either.

MMO's are also different, just as any subscription service is different. I can buy a DVD (like a game) and take it home and enjoy it, or I can have a cable subscription that provides me with more content for a monthly cost.

Quit trying to shoe-horn obviously different things into your argument.

Satellite radio?

lets put it this way.. DRM is bad for everyone. if you put DRM in music or movie, i dont really care as long as it work. if DRM stop my DVD movie from playing, guess what?? i return it.

now for PC, computer aren't only gaming machine, they also hosting alot other data such as business document, person email, password and possible banking information. it didnt matter if DRM not sending those data across internet or not. the fact that DRM will create a security hole alone would stop buying any game that whoever publisher offer. is that little 50$ game worth of security risk of countless nightmare? i love play game, but not enuff for me to put DRM in my pc. that is one major reason i shift to PS3

also, if you reading tomshardware most likely you build your own PC, i like control every hardware and software this pc of my what it can and can't do. DRM is unwelcome piece of software that i dont plan to ever put it on my computer.

i like the idea of copy protection, but DRM is wrong way to go for pc market. if pc only for gaming then so be it, but when it hosting important infomation such as bank account and such? i would risk on it.

ohh.. what i talk about is sony DRM that happen some time ago.. they recall every DRM music CD but the damage is already done. read the sony DRM story and tell me you welling to put DRM in to you computer!

I have never purchased a game I did not get to play first. Many times that means download, sometimes I have played on a freinds machine. There are many titles I wanted to try but haven't because I can't try them first. Too many games have been a huge disapointment for me to shell out $50 or more on one I haven't tried!

Edit:

I should mention that I have purchased many games and I don't continue playing games past a few minutes that I am not buying.