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DRM 'A Waste of Time,' Says World of Goo Dev
by Chris Faylor, Mar 23, 2009 3:00pm PDTUtilizing digital rights management as a means to prevent piracy is "a waste of time," according to 2D Boy co-founder and World of Goo co-creator Ron Caramel.
"Don't bother with DRM," he said during a GDC 09 talk attended by GameSpot. "You just end up giving the DRM provider money. Anything that is of interest gets cracked, and the cracked version ends up having a better user experience than the legit version because you don't have to input in some 32-character serial number."
The topic of digital rights management has become increasingly controversial, as publishers feel they must make some effort to prevent piracy while protesters complain that DRM punishes legitimate buyers with install limits and online activations.
"We don't see the point in having DRM," he added. "Anybody who wants the game is likely to find it on BitTorrent sites. It's going to get cracked even with DRM, it's going to be available very quickly."
Comments
People wake up. Steam IS DRM!!
that's why I sold my account, I hate stupid steam...
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The issues I've encountered
- Steam being a bitch about starting a game when you don't have internet. The whole offline mode should be automatic. I shouldn't have to go in and configure it.
- I worry about my Steam purchases. Valve says if they ever shut down the Steam servers they'll release a mega patch to free up all of our games. I don't believe them. My thought, why don't they start showing some examples by releasing their older titles. Why must every game continue to be locked into Steam? So until then I do my best to avoid Steam as much as possible.
- Some devs/publishers (Activision COD WaW) locking down LAN mutiplayer. I shouldn't have to buy two copies of one game to play with my kid. I have no issue with locking down single or online play but leave LAN alone. LAN play sells games. I've seen it many times at the LAN I've attended. People get to try a game out in a real gaming environment then they buy it for the single/online play or future LANs so they don't have to keep asking for discs to reinstall or disc one to start the game.
You have to have some DRM, however mild, because otherwise people will pirate like crazy.
Yes they will. They really will.
People, by and large, believe that anything they are not supposed to do they will be prevented from doing. They will teeter on the edge of a subway stop because they believe that if they're not supposed to then someone would have put up a rail (which is why a few people every year die because they fell in front of a subway).
They believe that if they are not supposed to pirate a game then it would have some sort of copy protection. I've literally been told by people "yeah go ahead and borrow this game and install it - it doesn't have a disc check or anything"
Yes, Stardock has a lot of sales for their non-DRM titles. Kudos. Their sales are a fraction of AAA titles because they exist in a niche. And their sales would not be much more with DRM because they exist in a niche. They are, I'm sorry, not indicative of the rest of the industry.
Mild DRM works. Excessive DRM doesn't. Make a disc check or a CD key the standard, as it has been, and leave it alone. Steam as DRM works well. But over the top activation shemes just don't work, and neither will a lack of copy protection.
The proper reaction to the over-the-top SecuROM protection is to ratchet away the activation check and go back to the standard disc checks like we've always had.
But if you think stripping away DRM entirely will work you're fooling yourself.
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OK, I'm on an x64 OS (which I have reasons for using, reasons that are none of your fucking business and have no bearing on this topic), and I just installed KOTOR (for the record, I legally own this game) and I tried to run it. The wonderful DRM which is there to protect their investment kept the game from launching. Went to Bioware's website and there's no patch to remove or even upgrade the copy protection. I didn't pirate this game, why is the DRM affecting me? In the end I had to crack the game and what do you know... it worked like a charm. Good job DRM! You kept an honest user from using their purchase.
Sure, I could have went out and purchase a license for a 32 bit OS, repartition (or fuck it, buy yet another harddrive) and install it just for this game. Sure, I could have blown > $100 for a $19.99 game. But I didn't. Clearly I'm a horrible pirate.
The real rub is that there are pro-DRM asswipes out there claiming it's all just a case of "nerd-rage" which is just a weak reply to an argument they CAN'T WIN because they aren't intelligent enough to refute the problems with DRM.
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I do think the way it is implemented is often pretty bad and I wish that more companies would bother to patch it out once it has served its purpose.
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But I completely agree. DRM is a waste of money for the publishers and a hassle for the honest consumers while being just an insignificant speed bump for the warez community. DRM needs to die because it just doesn't do what it is intended to do.
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Love World of Goo. Glad I bought it!
Also, yeah...DRM fucking blows.
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