This morning I found an excellent article called PC Game Piracy Examined written by Koroush Ghazi over at TweakGuides.com that addresses the current state of PC video game piracy, and the so called “death of PC gaming” theory that has been circulating the internet as of late. Readers will recall my DRM essay uploaded some months ago that concluded among other things that
The basic flaws inherent in every DRM system, the rampant destruction of customers right to first sale and fair use, and the fear of device lock-in and market stagnation lead this author to believe that a better solution need be proposed to protect the intellectual properties of media producers.
Upon reading through Ghazi’s lengthy ten page article, I have to admit that I’ve been forced to take a hesitant step backward and re-evaluate some of the opinions that I’ve long held regarding DRM technologies. While I still agree and stand by many of the points made in my essay, his writing has cleverly challenged some of my conclusions.
The concept of Zero-Day Piracy is one that I did not research when writing my essay, and deals with the idea that hype for any product is at its height on launch day. Many expectant fans will rush to obtain the product by whatever means possible as soon as they can, and if a pirated version of that product is available on or before launch day, the first spike of revenue (often what ensures that the studio breaks even and continues to release subsequent products) is lost. In this regard, producers realize that their products will eventually be pirated, and use DRM to ensure that their products stand available only in legitimately purchased form for at least a week after launch. While it sounds hopeless, this week of legitimate sales is instrumental in ensuring the economic success of the product.
Another part of the article that really resonated with me was the discussion of how game developers and publishers are changing their business models to adapt to the problem of mass piracy. Some are choosing DRM, while others are moving toward MMORPG’s with a subscription model, and some are moving away from the PC entirely. As a portion of this section, the author discussed things that developers and publishers can do to try and reduce the number of pirated copies of their games. One of these suggestions called strongly for more demos. I especially appreciate this, as for some reason graphics-heavy games tend to crash my video card drivers on a regular basis (I blame Vista and/or Ultramon), and I like to try a game out to ensure that it will in fact run stable on my system before putting my money down. I had this problem after purchasing Left 4 Dead the other day ($50 later, it’s almost unplayable), and thought twice about buying Far Cry 2 this morning, realizing that it would probably push my machine too far, even though my video card is listed as supported. A demo of that game would have eased my choice along considerably.
While I still believe that DRM is bad for the system in the long run, Ghazi successfully pounds the point home that publishers turn to DRM systems in an effort to offset the damage done to their business by piracy. To excuse piracy on the basis of clever DRM systems that are hard to bypass is to turn a blind eye to the destruction reaped upon the digital marketplace by that same act of piracy and to in effect lend oneself to the continued downfall of beloved products, including music, movies, and video games.
I would recommend that any person who has in the past participated in the piracy of software, movies, or music take the time to read through this article, lengthy though it may be. Entertainment distribution is in a tough place across the board these days, but PC game development in particular is a sector that many inspired artists are dropping out of all together because they can no longer afford the risks involved. These same risks can make it nearly impossible to break into the business as an independent developer, as evidenced by the piracy rate documented by 2D Boy, developers of the incredible title World of Goo. In effect, by continuing to pirate products that we know and love, gamers are contributing to the downfall of this valued form of entertainment, and whether we agree with DRM or not, I think that it is important that we all take a moment to consider the real entertainment value of these products that we take for granted, and consider the true implications of our actions.
DRM is a very controversial topic I think. The purpose of DRM is to keep honest users honest; it cannot protect against sophisticated pirating. If DRM limits the ability of the average user to access the information that user has paid for, that user will not invest in such technology again.
DRM remove software is needed then.
This is the very point of the essay that I wrote – DRM is a waste of time and money, because sophisticated pirates will break it anyway, and the honest people that it frustrates will just become downloaders. However, that essay was written primarily with music in mind, while this post deals with DRM put on video games.
The stakes are a little different in games, because of the multi-million dollar investments, fast moving marketplace, and stiff competition within individual genres. If a publisher doesn’t make back their investment within weeks of launch, they may never, because the next game will come along and eclipse their works. In this case, DRM is justified as a desperate attempt to simply break even, in an effort to ensure funding for the next title.
So what do you do in an environment when piracy is still growing even though most companies are starting to remove DRM from their products (Amazon, iTunes, etc)? What do you do when you try and sell to a country that has a 90% piracy rate *WITH* DRM?
While removing DRM provides a lot of good will in the short term, that might only be short lived. Take the last Radiohead album for example. It was cheap or even free from their official website and yet more people pirated it through torrent sites than downloaded it legitimately from their website.
What you need to do is control mindshare. I know it sounds like a hippy term, but the point is to shift the public thinking away from legitimizing piracy. You want to look at the Radiohead album or at World of Goo, fine: In both of those examples, the product in question was a critically acclaimed one that was easily available for little (or no) cost at all – and yet people still went to the pirate bay to pick up the latest torrents for both products.
This is the problem of mindshare, and can be expressed in terms of a dependency ratio if only to demonstrate how unsustainable the system is. There are too many people out there who automatically pirate whatever they want without first considering its availability through other channels.
Another part of that essay I wrote dealt with how the record companies fucked up their mindshare after the napster debacle. Had they an application similar to the iTunes store at that point during the napster trials, they might have had a chance to swing the general public toward legitimate online music stores. Instead, there was a black hole online, and people learned to pirate.
At this point, these entertainment providers have a serious problem – preventing piracy on the PC is almost impossible because everybody in the world just regards it as OK. They have lost the mindshare. This isn’t an issue of economics or of ethics; it is an issue of advertising.