Apathy and refunds are more dangerous than Piracy

[ImpulsE69]

Do people really call up companies for support on products they have pirated? Shockingly the answer is yes. And they don't intentionally break products. They make it so removing their DRM causes a specific bug to show up. If you bought it you would never see the bug.

Actually...for years they have in fact broke games for pirates, and people who pirated called in for support. There is plenty of Wiki info out there talking about it. It's been happening since the 80's, and not surprisingly, it also broke the game for buying consumers in some cases. (Google about the Ultima series as an example).

 

[BoberFett]

Another interesting thought I just had... If a company was successful in eliminating piracy completely, you're no longer competing with free versions of your product. However, you are still competing against other products which can be pirated. If one company can eliminate piracy, but others cannot, will the pirates simply play games that they can pirate?

That sends the conversion rate of pirate to customer even lower.

 

[waggy]

Actually...for years they have in fact broke games for pirates, and people who pirated called in for support. There is plenty of Wiki info out there talking about it. It's been happening since the 80's, and not surprisingly, it also broke the game for buying consumers in some cases. (Google about the Ultima series as an example).

yeah One of the reasons why there are big patches released the NIGHT the game is released.

many of them fix the issues that are in the game.

 

[lxskllr]

If you bought it you would never see the bug.

That's not true at all. DRM is an anti-feature. It gives the consumer nothing, and reduces the value of the product, giving it reduced-no functionality. The prudent gamer(or any media user) will download a crack after purchase to ensure the game operates correctly. I shouldn't have to jump through hoops to make the item I purchased work. If the companies don't want to support broken products, don't create broken products.

I've pretty much given up gaming. The only DRM infected game I'll reluctantly buy is the Bioshock franchise, and it's a moral dilemma every time I do. I consider my purchase a sellout of my principles, and don't feel especially good about it. For books and everything else, if I can't crack it, I won't buy it. If company breaks my purchase because I made it function as it should, it'll be the last thing I buy from them, and I'll actively campaign against them to anyone who will listen. Regardless of the popular trope, not all publicity is good...

 

[Midwayman]

What does it matter if his estimate is way off? You said it yourself, we actually dont know.

His point is, is it worth spending money and time on something you cant even quantify, especially when you know almost anything you do will upset your paying customers?

So you're saying we should spend money on DRM with no justification?

Sheesh I didnt think his writing was that difficult to understand!

Well the difference between 10% piracy and 1000% piracy is pretty big. We don't precisely know but they can estimate based on torrents, attempted connections online from pirated copies, support calls etc. It matters because some fraction of that is lost sales. Even if we don't know the fraction, he could be off by orders of magnitude.

If his point was really that its not worth spending time to combat piracy, it was made very poorly. He spent most of the article pretended it had no effect. If the added cost of DRM and possible annoyance in worth it is a whole other discussion. Its possible on a low budget indie title with a very low selling price like SMB, DRM was just too much expense.

FWIW- Just because I don't agree with his premise doesn't mean that I don't understand it. Too many people have a predisposition to latch onto anything that helps them rationalize their piracy.

 

[purbeast0]

there is 1 really really stupid person posting in this thread.

 

[Midwayman]

That's not true at all. DRM is an anti-feature. It gives the consumer nothing, and reduces the value of the product, giving it reduced-no functionality. The prudent gamer(or any media user) will download a crack after purchase to ensure the game operates correctly. I shouldn't have to jump through hoops to make the item I purchased work. If the companies don't want to support broken products, don't create broken products.

Perhaps I should be more elaborate. If you bought and it and don't modify the software you should never see the bug. Once you start hacking software it not really realistic to expect the company to be responsible. If you don't like DRM, by all means vote with your wallet.

 

[foghorn67]

he's right, also providing excellent online gameplay is an automatic way to reduce piracy. Just think age of empires II HD.

Wait...what? I have to look this up. Sounds awesome.

 

[lxskllr]

Perhaps I should be more elaborate. If you bought and it and don't modify the software you should never see the bug. Once you start hacking software it not really realistic to expect the company to be responsible. If you don't like DRM, by all means vote with your wallet.

and if you do nothing, it sometimes won't work. DRM=broken by design. It's like a car with square wheels. You put round wheels on it so it works correctly, and the motor blows up. I absolutely do vote with my wallet, but I have no sympathy for a company's support costs when they release intentionally broken products. They earned their loss of money, and trying to redirect the blame is disingenuous.

 

[AstroManLuca]

Perhaps I should be more elaborate. If you bought and it and don't modify the software you should never see the bug. Once you start hacking software it not really realistic to expect the company to be responsible. If you don't like DRM, by all means vote with your wallet.

In theory, you're right. Legally buying a game should lead to a smooth, bug-free experience, and downloading the cracked version could lead to all sorts of unexpected behavior since the game code is being modified by outside influence.

In practice, you're way, way off. Just look at SimCity - buy the game legally, and it DOESN'T WORK (did EA fix it yet? I haven't been keeping up with gaming news). Download the cracked version from BitTorrent, and you can play all you want even without an internet connection.

Wait...what? I have to look this up. Sounds awesome.

It's a re-release of Age of Empires II (including all the expansions) that supports high resolution, widescreen resolutions, has a few updated graphics (mostly for backgrounds and interface elements I think), and uses modern online multiplayer instead of having to use that godawful GameSpy service. It doesn't appear to be modernized in any way regarding the gameplay, which could be good but it would also mean there's still no attack-move command (biggest shortcoming with the game IMO).

 

[Pr0d1gy]

I remember when we used to buy things on a physical medium and share them with each other. Of course these companies would count that as piracy, too. Greedy &^*%$.

 

[SunnyD]

If his point was really that its not worth spending time to combat piracy, it was made very poorly. He spent most of the article pretended it had no effect. If the added cost of DRM and possible annoyance in worth it is a whole other discussion. Its possible on a low budget indie title with a very low selling price like SMB, DRM was just too much expense.

It's true. He could have summed it up better with the following:

"If you make a crappy game, regardless of the DRM scheme if any, and people pirate it, odds are you won't get sales out of those people AND word-of-mouth sales will suffer likely causing a net loss in profitability for the title.

However, if you make a good game, regardless of the DRM scheme, and people pirate it, odds are much much better that due to the same reasons the net effect will be that that one piracy event has influenced one or more individuals to PURCHASE the title, thereby causing a net gain in profitability, or at the very least a margin net breakeven."

In any event, the author is absolutely correct - piracy has no immediately quantifiable effect on the dollars and cents of the product itself. In certain scenarios, you may be able to discern that out of X recorded sales, your DRM scheme has recorded X + Y recorded copies of the title being used. Then it becomes quantifiable on the bottom line in that respect. But you never know how many X you never sold (or were sold) due to the influence of Y in the first place.

Someone will always bitch whenever there's potential money left on the table. Regardless, it's these intangibles that the industry refuses to see for what they actually are and what they provide for, simply because all they see are the ones that are "money left on the table", rather than potentially be an intangible hidden revenue driver that really doesn't cost them anything given the nature of the product.

Disclaimer: My job directly involves software licensing and security, ie: DRM development. Ironic, isn't it?

 

[AnitaPeterson]

Thank you for posting this, OP... very interesting!

 

[M0oG0oGaiPan]

just want to toss in my opinion that I thought super meat boy was awesome, one of my favorite games of all time. I completed it 100%. It's a pure fun platformer and easily lets you move on to other levels if you get frustrated. if you are willing to put in a lot of time it is really rewarding because you can get really good at it. I destroy levels with meat boy, never got around to using other characters because I like the pure run/jump gameplay with meat boy. only thing I didn't like was not being able to change the controls because I use a fightstick and wanted the buttons to be run then jump, like the original super mario, but I just rewired a fightstick to accomodate this. awesome game, reading this makes me want to play it again. $15 was a bargain and anything cheaper even better of a deal. I bought the game on x360, pc, bought the comics and some of the other junk merchandise they sling because I love the game. McMillen is right, people who love certain games will buy and support them.

I think the graphics and humour of the game is great. I just think the gameplay is not that great. It just ramps up the difficulty instead of mixing things up or being innovative or doing anyting interesting. I get the appeal because it has an old school feel and it's extremely hard but I don't really want a game to be hard for the sake of being hard. VVVVVV is like that and I was bored pretty quickly also.

 

[Ancalagon44]

I agree to an extent. I think it depends on the type of protection used.

People fall into a spectrum in terms of how much effort they are willing to take to circumvent copy protection. No scheme will stop every thief, but most of them will stop a majority of them.

Highly technically sophisticated people can find their way around these systems. But average Joes will not. It's a lot easier for the typical consumer to cough up $20 for a game than to spend hours trying to figure out how to get it for free. All that protection does is provide a disincentive for casual stealing.

The thing is, any right minded piracy kiddie these days will either A) copy the game from his friends, or B) download it himself from a torrent. He is not going to try to fiddle with editing the binary directly to try to crack it.

Piracy is easy! It was easy back then, its easy now. You dont need to be technically sophisticated, you barely need to have a brain. It doesnt take hours trying to figure it out, it might take hours for it to download. If it is cracked ANYWHERE in the entire world, any 15 year old with either enough friends or an Internet connection can get it the following day. In fact, in most cases, piracy is easier than battling with online DRM.

Well the difference between 10% piracy and 1000% piracy is pretty big. We don't precisely know but they can estimate based on torrents, attempted connections online from pirated copies, support calls etc. It matters because some fraction of that is lost sales. Even if we don't know the fraction, he could be off by orders of magnitude.

If his point was really that its not worth spending time to combat piracy, it was made very poorly. He spent most of the article pretended it had no effect. If the added cost of DRM and possible annoyance in worth it is a whole other discussion. Its possible on a low budget indie title with a very low selling price like SMB, DRM was just too much expense.

FWIW- Just because I don't agree with his premise doesn't mean that I don't understand it. Too many people have a predisposition to latch onto anything that helps them rationalize their piracy.

But so what, it still doesnt matter! You cant do anything about those lost sales. With or without DRM, games will be pirated, and as I've said, DRM doesnt make piracy more difficult for the end user. He just runs the cracked EXE.

Its like saying, we lost sales because of the economic down turn. Yes you may have, but so what? What can you do about it? Moan? In fact, it gets worse, instead of accepting that it is inevitable, you introduce DRM which irritates paying customers but doesnt harm pirates!

 

[Midwayman]

In theory, you're right. Legally buying a game should lead to a smooth, bug-free experience, and downloading the cracked version could lead to all sorts of unexpected behavior since the game code is being modified by outside influence.

In practice, you're way, way off. Just look at SimCity - buy the game legally, and it DOESN'T WORK (did EA fix it yet? I haven't been keeping up with gaming news). Download the cracked version from BitTorrent, and you can play all you want even without an internet connection.

Exception to the rule. The vast majority of the time for the vast majority of users its not a big deal. Usually you enter a code once and you're done. I can't even remember the last game I bought that had legit DRM issues. I feel like the reaction to the occasional DRM fumble is much like the gun-grabbers when there is a shooting. Statistically it not a big deal, but they latch onto it like a pitbull and use it to drive their agenda. I sort of wish there could be some sort of happy medium for users. Maybe have the publisher patch out the DRM 6mo-1yr after release. That way they get their all important initial sales and the folks who are opposed to it still could get a game without the DRM.

 

[Ancalagon44]

Exception to the rule. The vast majority of the time for the vast majority of users its not a big deal. Usually you enter a code once and you're done. I can't even remember the last game I bought that had legit DRM issues. I feel like the reaction to the occasional DRM fumble is much like the gun-grabbers when there is a shooting. Statistically it not a big deal, but they latch onto it like a pitbull and use it to drive their agenda. I sort of wish there could be some sort of happy medium for users. Maybe have the publisher patch out the DRM 6mo-1yr after release. That way they get their all important initial sales and the folks who are opposed to it still could get a game without the DRM.

Okay, lets make a list of games that had issues because of their DRM, and games that only had issues when pirated.

Games that only had issues when pirated... Hmmm.. Wasnt there that one? Nope, that was DRM. Or what about? Nope, DRM.

SimCity is not the exception, its the rule.

EDIT: Their agenda? I have an agenda? Really? I'm an indie game developer (not a published one), and I dont pirate games. I also dont buy any games with online DRM. What, exactly, is my agenda? All I want is to be able to enjoy my single player games in the privacy of my own home, without worrying if my Internet connection, or the publishers bullshit server infrastructure, will keep me from playing what I have legally paid for.

Why should I, the paying customer, wait 6 months for a functioning copy of the game when the pirate can play it immediately?

 

[Midwayman]

But so what, it still doesnt matter! You cant do anything about those lost sales. With or without DRM, games will be pirated, and as I've said, DRM doesnt make piracy more difficult for the end user. He just runs the cracked EXE.

Its like saying, we lost sales because of the economic down turn. Yes you may have, but so what? What can you do about it? Moan? In fact, it gets worse, instead of accepting that it is inevitable, you introduce DRM which irritates paying customers but doesnt harm pirates!

Only if you think that DRM is supposed to totally prevent piracy. The real purpose it to delay it and make casual piracy difficult. It will never make the hardcore pirate change his ways. However the guy on the edge who can't find the new game for a month on torrent may break down and buy it. If they find they can't play on normal servers with their friends, they may break down and buy it. DRM is about converting edge cases. Gamers aren't black and white in terms of buy vs pirate.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

Piracy is easy! It was easy back then, its easy now. You dont need to be technically sophisticated, you barely need to have a brain. It doesnt take hours trying to figure it out, it might take hours for it to download. If it is cracked ANYWHERE in the entire world, any 15 year old with either enough friends or an Internet connection can get it the following day. In fact, in most cases, piracy is easier than battling with online DRM.

It's easy for you, and it's easy for me. Would it be easy for your dad? Probably not, if he's typical.

DRM is not designed to combat "piracy kiddies" -- they are the "professionals" of the piracy world, like those guys who can get through a locked door in a few seconds.

It is designed to stop the sort of people who would happily share their music and software with friends if all that is needed is to put it on a USB key, but who will not start futzing with bittorrent.

Only if you think that DRM is supposed to totally prevent piracy. The real purpose it to delay it and make casual piracy difficult. It will never make the hardcore pirate change his ways. However the guy on the edge who can't find the new game for a month on torrent may break down and buy it. If they find they can't play on normal servers with their friends, they may break down and buy it. DRM is about converting edge cases. Gamers aren't black and white in terms of buy vs pirate.

Exactly.

 

[Ancalagon44]

It's easy for you, and it's easy for me. Would it be easy for your dad? Probably not, if he's typical.

DRM is not designed to combat "piracy kiddies" -- they are the "professionals" of the piracy world, like those guys who can get through a locked door in a few seconds.

It is designed to stop the sort of people who would happily share their music and software with friends if all that is needed is to put it on a USB key, but who will not start futzing with bittorrent.

No, but my Dad never played games.

No, piracy kiddies are not the professionals! They are the average users! Flip!

I've got news for you. I come from South Africa, where piracy is far more rampant than in the USA. I no longer pirate, but I used to. We pirated games when I was like 8 years old, by copying floppies. Then when I was a teen, we'd meet up for LAN parties, and exchange games while eating dinner. Included in the game folder would be a cracked EXE. At university, much the same - a cracked EXE. Remember, primary school children and teenagers! Not programmers!

And it has not got more difficult since then, if anything, it has got easier. Nobody tries to copy games by copying the disc - we all knew when they introduced schemes to make that more difficult. More to the point, we never wanted to, since the disc was inconvenient.

Honestly I think you are quite far removed from the reality that is game piracy. Its a lot easier than you think. I dont pirate, but I shamefully admit that I used to. It was easy back then, pretty sure its easy now, and it doesnt require expert knowledge. Kids have friends, and their friends talk. And someone has an older brother, which means knowledge gets passed on.

If that is what it was like in South Africa, can you imagine China or Russia? Or India?

EDIT: Also copying a folder full of files is a lot easier than trying to figure out how to copy a disc. None of the games that we shared originally came from legal copies that one of our friends came - without exception, all of them came from someone who had obtained it from someone else who had obtained it from the Internet.

 

[Midwayman]

Okay, lets make a list of games that had issues because of their DRM, and games that only had issues when pirated.

Games that only had issues when pirated... Hmmm.. Wasnt there that one? Nope, that was DRM. Or what about? Nope, DRM.

SimCity is not the exception, its the rule.

LoL seriously? That's clearly not what I was talking about first. Most games don't intentionally introduce bugs when pirated anymore. Losing online content is the current choice. I guess you could consider that a bug if you like. Then it would be nearly all of them.

Expect for a small handful of people DRM issues are rare. Those mostly can be attributed to the wide range installed resident software, driver issues, etc, etc that in inherent on the PC platform. You'll never get software to work 100% on the PC.

 

[SunnyD]

Midwayman, somehow you quoted my post but with Ancalagon44's text in it.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Great read, he's completely right, and it's nice to see it coming from a potential "victim" of piracy as it means more than just some random person saying it.

DRM and DMCA need to be abolished. They do more harm than good.

 

[Midwayman]

Midwayman, somehow you quoted my post but with Ancalagon44's text in it.

Odd. Fixed.

 

[smitbret]

The thing is, any right minded piracy kiddie these days will either A) copy the game from his friends, or B) download it himself from a torrent. He is not going to try to fiddle with editing the binary directly to try to crack it.

Piracy is easy! It was easy back then, its easy now. You dont need to be technically sophisticated, you barely need to have a brain. It doesnt take hours trying to figure it out, it might take hours for it to download. If it is cracked ANYWHERE in the entire world, any 15 year old with either enough friends or an Internet connection can get it the following day. In fact, in most cases, piracy is easier than battling with online DRM.


But so what, it still doesnt matter! You cant do anything about those lost sales. With or without DRM, games will be pirated, and as I've said, DRM doesnt make piracy more difficult for the end user. He just runs the cracked EXE.

Its like saying, we lost sales because of the economic down turn. Yes you may have, but so what? What can you do about it? Moan? In fact, it gets worse, instead of accepting that it is inevitable, you introduce DRM which irritates paying customers but doesnt harm pirates!

This is the point entirely, isn't it? How much time and resources do the companies spend creating DRM schemes to fool 95 out of 100 people that wouldn't have purchased the product in the first place? Compared to the 5 that will buy instead of pirate because of the DRM, how many willingly paying customers chose not to buy the product because of DRM? If that # isn't astronomically lower than 5 then the company has lost money.