About DRM in video games

[Le fishe au chocolat]

Some publishers said they used DRM to prevent piracy.
But if a player didn't have money to buy a game, would he/she buy the game even when it couldn't be cracked? If he/she wouldn't buy the game anyway, so what is the point of the DRM?
Furthermore, piracy is a huge risk for every system. It might cause damages to the network, track users' IP and sneak trojan into the computers. Because of that, a normal user must avoid piracy anyway.
So in my opinion, publishers don't have to put DRM in their video games because piracy has its own price as well.

[Sixtyfivekills]

I don't know how forcing me to use EA Play or Ubisoft Connect is gonna stop piracy, but I despise them. I just want to play my games, why do I need another account?

[Hammer Of Evil]

it does stop a ton of piracy just because of two things

1- you are never guaranteed the pirated application does not contain other malware unless you check it yourself. (do you check it?)

2- its convenient to find the software on various secured platforms, and often with competative sale prices.

drm doesn't stop all piracy, but it stops most which is what matters.

oh man, if you even knew what i could do to a bunch of stolen software, put my own little treats inside it, and then put it back up for download, you'd never download another repack or cracked game ever again, and i'm not even practiced at it, just standard programming skills.

[Le fishe au chocolat]

Originally posted by Hammer Of Evil:

it does stop a ton of piracy just because of two things

1- you are never guaranteed the pirated application does not contain other malware unless you check it yourself. (do you check it?)

2- its convenient to find the software on various secured platforms, and often with competative sale prices.

drm doesn't stop all piracy, but it stops most which is what matters.

oh man, if you even knew what i could do to a bunch of stolen software, put my own little treats inside it, and then put it back up for download, you'd never download another repack or cracked game ever again, and i'm not even practiced at it, just standard programming skills.

1 - I haven't tried pirating software, but in my country school teaches me about the risks of piracy and why I must respect people's works.

2 - Yes, that is how the market works.

Bruh, software piracy is a serious crime, at least in my country. It's like shoplifting on cyber environment. People are arrested in real life for that. So there are no way to get a legal copy without purchasing.
I just feel DRM is annoying and wish it would be gone someday.

[Le fishe au chocolat]

Originally posted by Sixtyfivekills:

I don't know how forcing me to use EA Play or Ubisoft Connect is gonna stop piracy, but I despise them. I just want to play my games, why do I need another account?

Yeah, those launchers are too annoying. They consume RAM and require always-online just to play single-player games.

[Hammer Of Evil]

Originally posted by ω猫:

Originally posted by Hammer Of Evil:

it does stop a ton of piracy just because of two things

1- you are never guaranteed the pirated application does not contain other malware unless you check it yourself. (do you check it?)

2- its convenient to find the software on various secured platforms, and often with competative sale prices.

drm doesn't stop all piracy, but it stops most which is what matters.

oh man, if you even knew what i could do to a bunch of stolen software, put my own little treats inside it, and then put it back up for download, you'd never download another repack or cracked game ever again, and i'm not even practiced at it, just standard programming skills.

1 - I haven't tried pirating software, but in my country school teaches me about the risks of piracy and why I must respect people's works.

2 - Yes, that is how the market works.

Bruh, software piracy is a serious crime, at least in my country. It's like shoplifting on cyber environment. People are arrested in real life for that. So there are no way to get a legal copy without purchasing.
I just feel DRM is annoying and wish it would be gone someday.

oh i see my bad.

at the same time my use of 'you' is obscured due to learning some languages at the same time, the 'you' is an 'all encompassing you' for any users viewing the thread and participate in the black flag, they're likely paying for someone's yacht right now and don't realize it. how could they.

not to insinuate you are participating, bad translation sorry.

i would agree - however if every country were able to adopt your country's laws on software crime, we would see some nice changes, and likely a decrease in drm usage. drm only really arose to give developers more power over what they create tbh.

[Devsman]

Originally posted by ω猫:

Some publishers said they used DRM to prevent piracy.
But if a player didn't have money to buy a game, would he/she buy the game even when it couldn't be cracked? If he/she wouldn't buy the game anyway, so what is the point of the DRM?

I've seen plenty of websites with a "don't copy my original artwork please" disclaimer on them, even when they're not selling the art or access to it at all. Some people just want to be able to control their intellectual property and its distribution, and it's not an unreasonable expectation unless you just take issue with intellectual property at a conceptual level.

EDIT: Well, I phrased that wrong. People have the tools to copy whatever they can see, so in that sense it's an unreasonable expectation. But what I meant was more like, IP holders should be allowed to attempt to protect their IP.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by ω猫:

Some publishers said they used DRM to prevent piracy.
But if a player didn't have money to buy a game, would he/she buy the game even when it couldn't be cracked? If he/she wouldn't buy the game anyway, so what is the point of the DRM?
Furthermore, piracy is a huge risk for every system. It might cause damages to the network, track users' IP and sneak trojan into the computers. Because of that, a normal user must avoid piracy anyway.
So in my opinion, publishers don't have to put DRM in their video games because piracy has its own price as well.

No DRM is "uncrackable." After all, the DRM itself "cracks" what is necessary for the game to be run.

The issue is making it cost more energy and effort than it is worth for whatever the game is as well as putting in pitfalls like account/IP banning for cracked-copy evidence and even platform banning or true legal/law-enforcement involvement.

A ton of piracy doesn't have accompanying viruses and snoopware/malware. That may be included on their websites/groups/apps/whatever, though... The point being - If it was ALL dangerous, people wouldn't install the cracked-games that were actually dangerous. The offerings are riddled with malware "just enough" to try to slide below the level of alerting those who download/install such things.

However... DRM does discourage and make it more difficult for pirates to do their thing. It is not easy to remove/bypass the toughest DRM and there's a war on between DRM providers and pirates regarding energy required to crack vs lag-inducing performance disadvantages.


Developers/publishers need to make money. They need it to pay their employees who create the games so they can, in turn, make more games and feed their children. When a call comes out for d/p's to stop using DRM, what is it that they are really hearing?


What they hear is "stop trying to be in control of your own product and sales results." This is Bad ™.


Imagine if you owned a landscaping business that cut people's lawns and shrubbery. You pay yourself and another employee, pay for your work-truck, the fuel it and your equipment uses, lunch for you and your employee, and all appropriate fees, taxes, licensing.

You work at a customer's house, cut their lawn, trim their shrubs, then ring the doorbell to get paid.

Do you do this knowing they may not pay you? Knowing they don't have to pay you? Not knowing how much they will pay you for all the labor and expense you've already provided?

That's what "Don't Use DRM" campaigns are implying to developers and publishers that use DRM. It's a "trust me, bro" message. NOBODY who is putting in resources willingly wants that kind of market exchange "plan."


Note: Plenty of devs/publishers don't make use of DRM, as it is. It's usually the high-profile, high-hype, products that engage deeply with it and those can be multi-multi-million-monies products. For many others, service providers like Steam is enough. For some others, they require frequent, and sometimes intrusive, third-party online authentication as a stop-gap measure.

[Le fishe au chocolat]

Originally posted by Devsman:

I've seen plenty of websites with a "don't copy my original artwork please" disclaimer on them, even when they're not selling the art or access to it at all. Some people just want to be able to control their intellectual property and its distribution, and it's not an unreasonable expectation unless you just take issue with intellectual property at a conceptual level.

EDIT: Well, I phrased that wrong. People have the tools to copy whatever they can see, so in that sense it's an unreasonable expectation. But what I meant was more like, IP holders should be allowed to attempt to protect their IP.

In case of artwork, if they actually want to control their intellectual property, they should register a copyright for their work. It's hard to tell a stranger not to copy his/her work, specially in the Internet. Even AI companies DID copying an artwork and use it like they had created it.

[kilésengati]

Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) is malware that prevents people from using the product they bought the way they want and even spies on end-users. And given its history, it's also planned obsolescence.

https://drm.info/
https://www.defectivebydesign.org/

There's even an EU study that initially got covered-up finding that DRM has little to no financial benefit to companies using it on their product and is only obstructing end-users:

https://edri.org/our-work/did-the-eu-commission-hide-a-study/


It's a huge waste of resources and should be prohibited.


And always remember:

“One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue,”
–Gabe Newell, 2011.

[Devsman]

Originally posted by ω猫:

Originally posted by Devsman:

I've seen plenty of websites with a "don't copy my original artwork please" disclaimer on them, even when they're not selling the art or access to it at all. Some people just want to be able to control their intellectual property and its distribution, and it's not an unreasonable expectation unless you just take issue with intellectual property at a conceptual level.

EDIT: Well, I phrased that wrong. People have the tools to copy whatever they can see, so in that sense it's an unreasonable expectation. But what I meant was more like, IP holders should be allowed to attempt to protect their IP.

In case of artwork, if they actually want to control their intellectual property, they should register a copyright for their work. It's hard to tell a stranger not to copy his/her work, specially in the Internet. Even AI companies DID copying an artwork and use it like they had created it.

They should, because making money vs not making money is not the only possible motive behind protecting one's IP.

[Le fishe au chocolat]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

No DRM is "uncrackable." After all, the DRM itself "cracks" what is necessary for the game to be run.

The issue is making it cost more energy and effort than it is worth for whatever the game is as well as putting in pitfalls like account/IP banning for cracked-copy evidence and even platform banning or true legal/law-enforcement involvement.

A ton of piracy doesn't have accompanying viruses and snoopware/malware. That may be included on their websites/groups/apps/whatever, though... The point being - If it was ALL dangerous, people wouldn't install the cracked-games that were actually dangerous. The offerings are riddled with malware "just enough" to try to slide below the level of alerting those who download/install such things.

However... DRM does discourage and make it more difficult for pirates to do their thing. It is not easy to remove/bypass the toughest DRM and there's a war on between DRM providers and pirates regarding energy required to crack vs lag-inducing performance disadvantages.


Developers/publishers need to make money. They need it to pay their employees who create the games so they can, in turn, make more games and feed their children. When a call comes out for d/p's to stop using DRM, what is it that they are really hearing?


What they hear is "stop trying to be in control of your own product and sales results." This is Bad ™.


Imagine if you owned a landscaping business that cut people's lawns and shrubbery. You pay yourself and another employee, pay for your work-truck, the fuel it and your equipment uses, lunch for you and your employee, and all appropriate fees, taxes, licensing.

You work at a customer's house, cut their lawn, trim their shrubs, then ring the doorbell to get paid.

Do you do this knowing they may not pay you? Knowing they don't have to pay you? Not knowing how much they will pay you for all the labor and expense you've already provided?

That's what "Don't Use DRM" campaigns are implying to developers and publishers that use DRM. It's a "trust me, bro" message. NOBODY who is putting in resources willingly wants that kind of market exchange "plan."


Note: Plenty of devs/publishers don't make use of DRM, as it is. It's usually the high-profile, high-hype, products that engage deeply with it and those can be multi-multi-million-monies products. For many others, service providers like Steam is enough. For some others, they require frequent, and sometimes intrusive, third-party online authentication as a stop-gap measure.

I think a video game is an art. So if people liked it, they would pay for it even if the game didn't have DRM.

But, as you said, there are a lot of people who don't want to pay a cent for other's works. Because of that, a lot of governments introduce copyright law to create a fair market for creators. In Japan, there were some cases that people had been arrested for sharing and downloading illegal contents via P2P methods.

By the way, some DRM methods make people who paid feel uncomfortable because of lagging and always online checking. I wouldn't complain if I have to open only Steam to play my favourite game. But dear god, Steam and another launcher(s) combination must be every players nightmare.

[The nameless Gamer]

I'm alright with light DRM like Steam's, which lets me play my SP games in offline mode assuming I have them installed. Denuvo and other 3rd party DRM in singleplayer games is a no buy for me. I DON'T want my singleplayer games held hostage by my internet connection, since internet in my country is not really something to write home about.

[Le fishe au chocolat]

Originally posted by The nameless Commander:

I'm alright with light DRM like Steam's, which lets me play my SP games in offline mode assuming I have them installed. Denuvo and other 3rd party DRM in singleplayer games is a no buy for me. I DON'T want my singleplayer games held hostage by my internet connection, since internet in my country is not really something to write home about.

Even if you had a good internet speed, always-online-checking would still cause lagging problem somehow. S*GA's games which have Denuvo are good examples for this case.

[The nameless Gamer]

Originally posted by ω猫:

Originally posted by The nameless Commander:

I'm alright with light DRM like Steam's, which lets me play my SP games in offline mode assuming I have them installed. Denuvo and other 3rd party DRM in singleplayer games is a no buy for me. I DON'T want my singleplayer games held hostage by my internet connection, since internet in my country is not really something to write home about.

Even if you had a good internet speed, always-online-checking would still cause lagging problem somehow. S*GA's games which have Denuvo are good examples for this case.

Which is why Valkyria Chronicles 4 is not in my library despite how much I adored the first one.

[The nameless Gamer]

Originally posted by Tiberius:

Ask yourself why you spend money on steam and not on some drm-free app store

For me, the selection of games and the security. But every DRM on top of already implemented Steam DRM is crossing a threshold.