Ubisoft is at it again - DRM follies

If it's not too late for me to weigh on the piracy mini-discussion here, the problem with draconian DRM is that end result is that it makes piracy a more attractive option. That is, if pirates are offering your game for a better price point (nothing) you're not helping things along by making it so they're providing a better service too. Which isn't hard to do if NOT ruining a computer is set as some kind of perverse baseline.

Am I suggesting that a product not be protected at all? Of course not. Piracy is a real problem for game developers. Not just the big ones but even startup studios like Gaslamp Games need every penny they can get.

I heard Extra Credits say the key is providing a better service and community than the pirates do.

 

DRM is a pain, whether it's Steam (often credited as being a useful solution for consumers, and I would only half-agree) or the absolutely destructive piece of "software" that was StarForce (which is still around, albeit rarely used).

What publishers don't really get is that DRM affects them as much as the consumer. How much time do they spend addressing issues with Steamworks, Games for Windows Live, SecuROM, UPlay or whatever solution they've chosen? I would think a lot. Think how many man-hours in lost productivity that is. I'm sure our hosts at Gaslamp will be able to confirm that Steamworks has caused them issues in the past (achievements, for example!).

I don't even crack games I've bought, though, so... yeah

 

GOG uses no DRM and while their games can be found on torrents, most of their games have been released quite a few years ago. They've been pirated to hell and back, yet people buy games at GOG. So un-protected games aren't a bad idea. Who wants to buy them, will buy them. Who will pirate them no matter what, was not willing to become a customer in the first place. It is the matter of spine. Or lack thereof.

GFWL did not put much effort into improving, though. Disconnecting, stupid updating (every single patch has to be approved by them and in many times they took their sweet time) and so forth. But most amusing thing is their list of supported countries. Slovakia is not on the list (but all of our neighbours are, though I am not sure about Ukraine), so we have to fake our location. Hell, even in the Dawn of War 2 manual (the game uses both GFWL and Steam) was a text on how to set up a GFWL account. Selling the game in unsupported country, now that's a facepalm worthy fail, isn't it?

 

Well of course, because most people are not pirates. I like to think that most people, left on their own, will tend to do the right thing. On the other hand, I see people rationalize all the time, lots of little wrongs -- stealing towels from hotels, eating cereal from a sealed box in a the supermarket (not to mention shoplifting), tailgating on the highway because they are in a hurry.

So I personally can't claim to have any idea what the truth is about this.

What you need is some kind of metric -- the relevant question should be how many sales (if any) are actually gained by adding DRM, and is the cost and inconvenience (and hence loss of customer good will) worth the increase (if any) in revenue. If you don't have a way of measuring that, then you can't say that DRM is good (or bad).

But people are not always rational. Decisions are made more on emotion than on practicality. It may actually turn out to be more practical to ignore the pirates and not use any kind of DRM -- just the honor system. But the problem is that human psychology says that despite the practicality, people may not be satisfied with that solution. Profits can become overshadowed by a general feeling of righteousness indignation (and no matter what your feeling is about DRM, indignation at the pirates is certainly righteous).

Anyway, that's just a theory, and it's predicated on the assumption (which also may not be true) that DRM is never a good thing in games even from a business perspective. I think a lot of us are making assumptions here.

The only thing I think we'd all agree on, though is that bad DRM is bad, no matter what.

 

GOG still isn't 'perfect', though. There are games on there that people feel are overpriced considering previous deals (e.g. Steam sale), age and work gone into them - The recent Telltale releases as a prime example of a product that is considered overpriced for what it is. This has also happened at the existing $10 price point, but also the newer $15 and $20 ones - how many times has Assassin's Creed been on sale for <$5 on other vendors, for example?

On top of that, GOG offers games without DRM - games people already own. Some people feel justified, rightly or wrongly, in pirating the GOG editions because they already own it. This is similar to people pirating copies of games they already own but cannot play because of, say, a damaged disc or some fault with the software (so they may pirate a version that will work).

Games for Windows Live is a very divisive system. You tend to get three groups; people who can't use it, people who can use it but don't like it much and people who it doesn't work for. I'm in the middle group. But you are right, Microsoft have not really tried to improve it much. In fact, I'd say they've gone the other way. You cannot easily browse the GfWL marketplace like you used to be able to - it's been integrated into Xbox.com in a very poor manner.

In a way, GfWL could be the best system - better than Steamworks, even. But it isn't, because Microsoft haven't been bothered to try and make it more stable, more compatible, more user-friendly and - as you pointed out - to substantially increase the number of countries in which it's available.

The only good thing MS really did with it was remove the Gold fee.

 

GfWL is the reason I stopped playing Bioshock 2 (acquired via Steam). The simple fact even the Steam version will not let you save at all if you don't have an account was a dealbreaker, as the only alternative was to try and finish it in one session (er, no).

The rest of this post may not go anywhere, but...

The root driver of all this may well be the way the games industry (or the so-called AAA portion of it) has adopted the Hollywood production model. The budgets are getting bigger, but the creativity is being squeezed out because nobody tossing around that kind of money is willing to take any risks (see: proliferation of sequels and franchise games with the year of release in their title). And similar to Hollywood, the idea is to draw customers before word of mouth gets involved (compare the tactics for cinema opening weekends against the push for preorders and taming review websites; both seem to be about getting your money before you can likely make an informed decision).

DRM fits into that picture for the same reason that it does with DVDs, etc: the product is perceived as too expensive for what you get, so the incentive to obtain it other ways increases. (This goes extra in this country: our dollar is currently worth US$1.05 and has been over parity for some time now. I understand the launch price for Diablo 3 in America was US$60. Stores here charged AU$90+... even if you argue that this is to cover shipping, digital distribution has a habit of doing the same gouge as well...)

Pair this with publishers refusing to have any notion of "acceptable losses" that's above 0% and you'll get them jumping on anything that promises to be a cure, no matter how many side effects its implementation causes -- even if it winds up turning away more people than actually increasing sales, but nobody's going to bother measuring that because it's an impossible outcome, the guys selling the DRM said it would fix everything so it must be true, etc...

It's possible, by percentage, that indies are hurt more per pirated unit than AAA is, but they aren't trying to cover multi-million dollar production budgets. As they also aren't having to tick any externally-imposed demographic boxes or cater to market research ("Dungeons of Dredmor? Great, we'll get Unreal licensed and-- what do you mean it isn't a first person shooter? It's a sports sim? No? Huh!?") there's the whole "something different and fun for less cost" element.

 

I'm not sure what Steam has to do with this at all.

 

I'd assume the issue is that they acquired the game on one service on one services DRM, but it still required ANOTHER service and the DRM associated with that to run?

 

Except Steamworks is Steam/Valve's DRM, and BioShock 2 does not have it. GfWL is a matchmaking service as well as a DRM solution (like Steamworks) and that's why all vendors sold BS2 with GfWL - it was the service 2K chose for BS2's multiplayer and DLC management, amongst other things.

It's really only indies and mid-range publishers (e.g. Kalypso) that change the DRM to include Steamworks (or replace it entirely with Steamworks), and often it's exclusive to copies bought on that platform.

But no, DRM doesn't change from vendor to vendor in most cases. What it comes with, particularly if it's something like GfWL or UPlay, is fixed across all vendors.

 

Wolg, while I respect your opinion, your points seem pretty tenuously connected. I'm not sure DRM necessarily has a causative relationship with the design-by-committee prettied-up-dumb-down direction the industry has taken, or at least you didn't offer a logical connection within your rant. Let me help out by suggesting a potential one: a lot of their audiences are children.
I know people don't like to actually admit this, but I'm willing to bet a substantial amount of Battlefield and Call of Duty players are elementary and middleschoolers. The stereotype online is that the target audience of AAA titles like these are just "stupid" but I stand by my belief that violent and realistic games are marketed to children. We don't let ourselves talk about it because it makes us sound like we're tacitly admitting on some level that nanny politicians have a point.

(warning: incoming rant!)

Not just those games, but many of the AAA titles have a userbase well under twenty years old. It just makes financial sense to market to them. They have a lot of disposable income and they're much easier to please. I don't believe for a minute the ESA fights violent video game laws out of the goodness of their hearts. It's because if overnight kids no longer wanted to play stuff like Bulletstorm their whole industry would die out.

Okay, so how does this relate to DRM and this particular topic? It's because when it comes to such things, kids are just flat out easier to walk on and control. Draconian DRM actually has a sinister double-purpose: not only does it make sure it controls its customer base (which I still insist is significantly comprised of young people) while also making sure that people like us don't play the product or mingle with the actual customers. It's by hanging around us old folk that the kids gets their standards raised and makes it harder to market to them. And of course kids aren't going to mind swallowing the absolute worst DRM that comes their way. Why would it seem strange to them? Look at the latter half of the acronym -- "rights management". Kids have their rights "managed" all the time. Having freedom is the exception, not the rule, with them. That's why kids are often more desirable by organizations looking to recruit unquestioning people, including the army itself. (or for that matter, strange white red-eyed creatures who offer a wish in exchange for becoming a magical girl.)

So yeah, Wolg, I'm with you that excessive DRM is kind of a sign of a corrupt industry. But I also think the corruption runs really deep, far deeper than people want to even think about. And when you dig at it long enough, you see the blame doesn't just lie with simple greed. We, collectively, share the blame for how things currently are. We're partially to blame for a culture where fantasy settings of any sort absolutely require the story to be violent to be successful. We're to blame for games where killing is the only activity that rewards progression. We're to blame for gaming being defined by its graphics over gameplay, ever since the number of "bits" were in our lexicon. We're to blame for caring more about company logos and treating corporations as people (i.e. "Capcom made this game!") and becoming lazy about paying attention to the activity behind those logos. The AAA titles and their gross DRM practices are the fruit of a diseased tree that we planted. It's all of the above taken to their logical conclusions. We look at the current games industry and cringe but rarely are we comfortable hearing that we're looking at a mirror.

...

Of course by "we" I totally don't mean the Gaslamp Games community. That sounds like a hasty addition, but I'm not jut making a cheeky joke. I poked around here before registering and what I saw was a healthy and friendly place where we're actively encouraged to improve on the game. I saw the future of the industry here. At the very least the AAA games industry is well on its way to a nasty crash since they're offering overpriced, over-abundant yet underwhelming luxuries to an audience whose households may be struggling to keep up with rent.


Phew, I went on for a while there. I'm done. I hope I didn't alienate anyone by having such a strong opinion.

EDIT: Also, sorry in advance if I inadvertently wind up getting this thread closed.

 

I know I'm not the only gamer to boycott games with stringent DRM. I simply refuse to pay for them. It's a fairly large market of gamers that refuse to purchase anything with GfWL or Ubisoft on the box, just like starforce before them.

 

Actually the majority of gamers (especially the majority of gamers that they're marketing to, cause they have the money for $60 titles) are in their thirties. (I can try to dig up citations on this too, although I don't have them off the top of my head)

 

I'd be curious how they get their data, because it's become rather standard practice to lie about your age online if you're under 20.

EDIT: I'm not actually refuting that statistic, either. I just believe that the core audience of a lot of AAA titles are young people. I'm including Madden in this.

 

I won't buy Activision games because of Bobby Kotick, but I'll buy Ubi games regardless of DRM. Why? Because Activision are, well - were, a plague on the industry, but Ubisoft are keeping some very important franchises (Might & Magic, Anno & The Settlers) going, even though the audience is made up largely of German PC gamers.

 

@Midnight Tea
For a long time the games market only offered violent games, or sub par sport games.
You cant realy blame the buyers of games for current trends, sure they are partly the reason but just as much are developers/publishers. The simple fact of the matter with games (and movies for that matter), is that (to use an analogy) you are only offered a green, red and blue apple, you tend to buy an apple if you want fruit. Thus marketing says apples are a popular fruit so lets offer more apples, it's a self fulfilling situation. We may not actually want 'apples' but if thats the only game on offer we are still likely to buy it as the only other option is to not game at all.

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As to DRM, I am rather interesed in the numbers of them that have caused people to pirate, that otherwise wouldn't. While as well as the numbers that have bought games due to initially trying it via piracy (Microsoft used to see the advantage of this, and likely has it's current large windows market because of it too).

 

I'd like to point out that in tabletop gaming (which has the same problem with people pirating, they're just pirating pdfs instead of exes), the Open Game License made Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 the biggest gaming phenomenon since tabletop gaming's invention*. While many books were literally free to acquire (because the OGL required derivative products to also be under the OGL and thereby un-copyrightable), people bought them anyway.

However, they weren't buying the products on a promise: most of the time, people bought the products because they had already tried the product out and decided they liked it enough to support the developer. 4th Edition D&D has the Game System License, which has a lot of the OGL's good parts, but also a lot of bad baggage attached to it that a lot of people don't like (like Wizards reserving the right to counteractively claim the rights to your GSL-legal material).

I personally feel that the PC gaming world needs to move to a system like this, and in many cases (see: any freemium game ever [TF2, Dota 2, LoL...]) it already has.



*the tl;dr on the OGL is that it makes the game's mechanics available for anyone to use as a basis for their own game and allows referencing the majority of existing material, but denies referencing anything deemed "Product Identity", which basically means iconic creatures (the beholder, the illithid, the umber hulk) or iconic characters (Raistlin, Drizzt, Mordenkainen).

 

Considering the amount of money (sales) GOG has made, I'd say that no DRM works just fine. The fact that they can sell titles at a higher price point imo illustrates the value of GOG games (which is not only no DRM, but also work they have done to fix bugs and compatibility issues with their games).

 

But you have the situation of GOG largely being the only vendor to sell numerous games. On top of that, what's the bigger selling point? Old games working out of the box (as it were) or no DRM, or both? Or maybe it's the extras. You'd have to do a very in-depth survey to see how big a factor DRM free is, but also why it's a factor. Is it a technical thing, or just flipping the bird at publishers?

 

Sure, the games they sell could pirate anybody and their dog, but as I have said earlier, they earn money. Yes, some feel justified by pirating GOG games, though in some cases the torrent links got comments like "grow a spine and buy them instead of pirating, GOG does not bend you over as other usually do" and such. But people like the service and support it.

Many people on the GOG forums are quite militantly anti-DRM. Sure, "some people on the forums" means jack shit in terms of proper answer to your question, but it may kick you in the right way. However, game functionality may not be such a big deal, because many games are playable on current OS, sometimes with a minor tweaking (it does not work always, though) and DOS-based games are a question of a few clicks in DOSBox + D-Fend. On the other hand, human laziness is not to be underestimated.

 

Rationally, it is right for game consumers to reject DRM unless it drives down prices. Steam has somewhat succeeded in that regard but for many other distributors they haven't been able to deliver cut prices as an exchange for putting up with DRM, so rebellion and suspicion make perfect sense.