Drm Restricted Commercial Games

[Anhaedra]

I dislike the restrictions because if my SD card dies from writing millions of .png files that the devs like to include with their games, then I would have to buy the commercial game all over again.

 

[Talyz]

I wouldn't buy anything with DRM protection; which device or media it concerns doesn't matter. DRM means big hastle and affects only innocent people; if there is an interest in pirating a something, it will be cracked - then it's just a matter of time...

 

[Dzz]

In other words, what difference does it make to the "little guys" if 3000 people pay for their product and nobody can pirate it, or if 4000 people pay and 10,000 more pirate it. I'd be happy with the second, but people obviously think "oh no! there's 10,000 lost sales, we're totally screwed."

In the second example, MORE people have actaully BOUGHT the game than in the first example, and none of those 10000 people who obtained a pirated version would have bought the game anyway, really, so any possible money loss there is irrelevant. But, because there is no DRM, a whole 1000 MORE people have actaully BOUGHT the game, earning the developer/publisher MORE money than in the example where the DRM exists.

Developers or distributors use copy protection because they do not believe this theory about sales. They believe that it's more likely that without the protection they would have 2000 people paying and 10,000 pirated copies, which is 1000 less sales.

They may be right and they may be wrong; it's difficult to prove either way. For every anecdotal case supporting one view another one can be found to support the other view.

But in any case, this is not news to software makers, it's not that they never considered the potential drawbacks and benefits of anti-piracy measures. They just do what their own analysis leads them to believe is the best thing.

Sometimes the analysis probably boils down to: "I don't have enough concrete data to decide whether copy protecting is a good idea or not. Therefore I will do what the large successful companies do, on the theory that they thought it through and it seems to work for them."

 

[MSweeney]

We plan to release all of our products with no copy protection for about $5-$10 a game. While I do not agree with blatant piracy, I think users should have to right to try a game before buying - and I do not mean Demos.. Demos are often released after a game is out on the PC now so they can fix bugs that shipped with the game (im not blaming this on developers, publishing houses are mostly to blame here).

Personally, I like the Steam model -- but then again there is no chance we will be competing with that market. We want to just make enough money to keep making more games, getting super rich isnt a large possibility - although it would be nice

Also I don't buy the 'lost sales due to piracy' crap - Its just another excuse for greed upon greed, which is the reason our country is going down the tubes anyway IMHO.

As noted, we will release silly little fun games, for very cheap prices.. go ahead and pirate it if you want, heck, go ahead and pay extra if you want =)

 

[FluffyPanda]

NO DRM = NO GAME!

You need to read Parkydr's links. GalCiv2 did FAR better than they could ever have dreamed, even without so much as a CD check. They are a small company and bad sales would have hurt them very badly indeed, but they knew that their customers would respond better to a DRM-less product. They knew this because their customers weren't thought to be the average joe (it's a turn-based strategy title) who's downloading fifa 2007 and tekken 6 or whatever, but people passionate about the game and wanting it to succeed.

Sound familiar?

We're not exactly mainstream here and I just can't imagine that there'll be a huge number of people screwing the platform just to save thirty quid here and there. The pirates will be the ones that don't intend to buy anyway and, really, what do I care about them?

DRM can actually equal commercial suicide. Napster, for example, is finding excessively DRMed music a very hard sell. Apple's DRM on the other hand is laughably easy to ignore and they are ruling the market.

When the potential market is so small it becomes really important to not alienate people.

We plan to release all of our products with no copy protection for about $5-$10 a game.

<snip>

As noted, we will release silly little fun games, for very cheap prices.. go ahead and pirate it if you want, heck, go ahead and pay extra if you want =)

Now I know where my cash will be going on gp2x games. This is the kind of marketing model that a primarily hobbyist device deserves.

Bravo.

 

[Dzz]

Also I don't buy the 'lost sales due to piracy' crap - Its just another excuse for greed upon greed, which is the reason our country is going down the tubes anyway IMHO.

Not sure which country you mean, but I do know that the supposed "anti-piracy" mechanisms for old Amiga 1000 games in the mid-80s were highly obnoxious (I remember some games came with colored glasses you had to put on to read the startup codes out of the specially printed manuals, to discourage photocopying!). There's nothing new about copy protection.

Your model sounds like a straight classic shareware model, which has worked well for many products.

 

[Ravnos]

Treated as a criminal?

You mean they´ll put us in jail?
That´s got to me the most stupid comment i read today. :lol:

Not quite so stupid if you live in the United States. Do you know what the DMCA is? Do you know that it makes it a crime to circumvent copy protection for any reason, even fair-use backups? The content industries tried to bring in a similar law in Canada last summer but that Parliamentary session ended before it could pass. Don't be surprised if similar laws begin popping up in Europe, either. This sort of thing is in the WIPO treaty, and all signatories are supposed to have similar copyright and IP laws.

We plan to release all of our products with no copy protection for about $5-$10 a game.

Who is "we"? Do you have a website I can check out? I'd be interested in looking at what you're working on.

 

[MSweeney]

Treated as a criminal?

You mean they´ll put us in jail?
That´s got to me the most stupid comment i read today. :lol:

Not quite so stupid if you live in the United States. Do you know what the DMCA is? Do you know that it makes it a crime to circumvent copy protection for any reason, even fair-use backups? The content industries tried to bring in a similar law in Canada last summer but that Parliamentary session ended before it could pass. Don't be surprised if similar laws begin popping up in Europe, either. This sort of thing is in the WIPO treaty, and all signatories are supposed to have similar copyright and IP laws.

We plan to release all of our products with no copy protection for about $5-$10 a game.

Who is "we"? Do you have a website I can check out? I'd be interested in looking at what you're working on.

Well you got me at a bad time Our previous website *was* here:

www.digitalstormllc.com

Although unless it is cached somewhere you won't find anything now, and I think even the forwarding address is probably incorrect. This was basically a terrible failure, as I ended up having to take a proper job and never had the time to get things going. Our inital goal was Windows Mobile software, and not even games at that - just utilities and such.

I am still working the full-time circuit, but we are going to try and give it another go under a different company name as-of-yet unregistered in Washington. I am currently in the process of learning Linux and working with the Gp2X hardware - while I have been developing for many years, it has mostly been on Windows platforms (unless you count C64, ZX-Spectrum etc). I worked for a few years in the PC gaming industry at humanhead studios in Madison, WI. We released a few games in that time, a budget title and a couple of more major titles that actually made some cash. They are a great company, but I just didn't have the time to work 18 hours a day and have a normal life at the same time =(

Speaking of humanhead, they are about to release 'Prey' for the Xbox360 and PC, which is looking to be an excellent title indeed. If you are interested in first-person games you may want to check it out:

www.humanhead.com

They are a fantastic group of people, and very talented - if all works out for them, Prey will be their golden-ticket to the chocolate factory Some of you may remember the original Prey concept from 3d-realms, which sported an amzing dynamic portal engine - way ahead of its time, but the game never materialized (just like Duke Forever-forever-forever-forever).

Oh my i'm rambling and this is way off topic, so Ill stop now. If you have any interest in our progress, you can still reach my e-mail at:

matthew.sweeney@digitalstormllc.com

Oh, and *we* currently consists of myself, my wife, and a few friends - nothing serious yet, but i'm trying really hard to move things along. I am nothing close to a super-developer, but I think we have what it takes to release some fun games and if we have fun in the process thats what counts (some $$ would be nice too).

Cheers,

Matt

 

[skeezix]

DRM doesn't really hurt sales; ie: Remember cartridges?

you mnight call it a 'format', but you might also call it 'DRM' since it was more or less impossible to copy. Proprietary formats and DRM aren't really 'bad'.

It is just 'better' without them, so you can copy 5 games to your fat SD card.. more convenient.

However, its more convenient to pirate too.

Our 'gut' is to say 'screw DRM' since in many cases it is insidiously evil; but for game protection.. is it _really_?

We shoudl ask Stardock

jeff

BTW, the DMCA does include rules to allow for circumvention. Look it up

The DMCA is asshat, but it does provide some benefits; ie: you can work around the protection in Pengo arcade, since it is nolonger supported or produced, and you have the right to transform it to support it yourself.

But I'm not a USian, so look it up yourself

jeff

Wow, multiple in a row posts and the boards merge them into one? How odd.

(Test)

jeff

 

[Redeeman]

So what if it is locked to an SD card? How is that different from a PSP UMD, NDS cart, PS2 DVD, XBOX DVD etc..?

may not be different, but still isnt right.. and for the record, i dont own nor buy games for any of those consoles.

alot of very stupid points have been made, most stupidly the

NO DRM = NO GAME..
well that may well be, but then its because the creators of the game are idiots..

it probably costs more to develop the drm stuff and/or copy protection than it saves in the one or two few copies of the game that wont be sold.

if something is popular, it will be cracked very fast. and lets facy reality, the gp2x is unknown to next to everyone.. so it would probably take abit time for it to be cracked(probably a week), unless someone interrested in it knows someone. but that doesent mean people that wouldnt freeloot a cracked version would simply buy the stuff..
and to proove that, i have a little example for you..

A music album takes 40-80mb in mp3.. we will take a high value
A music album costs $15 to $20.. we take lowest

mp3 album = 80mb, $15.

So lets take this guy, local nerd joe. joe has a nice server, with a 1 terabyte raid, filled with music albums.
joe has: 125000 albums
joes albums are worth $187500

joe spend 2 years getting this.
Conclusion: if joe couldnt have downloaded this for free, joe would each day spend $256 in the local music shop..

but at the end of the day, lets not forget that joe also likes to play pc games, xbox games, playstation games and watch videos... (hint: he has a few more of those fileservers)

the thing about "nobody lives giving stuff for free"..
well not entirely true.. i can download redhat linux for free.. they develop it for me, they give it to me for free.. canonical even wishes to send me cd's for free.. and they do make a living.. but that aside.. it wouldnt be giving away for free, in fact, if there was no drm, and people got it without buying, they would be STEALING, no different than breaking into a shop taking retail boxes.. and people would download illegal copies if there are DRM and if there ARENT DRM. cause it will get cracked, and we do after all, live in a world with internet, in the old days people had to wait up to a month before latest games was cracked, cause it was snailmailed around, now adays it gets cracked the very same day its released if its popular stuff, else it takes around a week. so drm or not, the ones who want to steal the stuff will do anyway.

however i can tell you RIGHT now, that there are people that wont buy with copy protection, and others here also stated that they wouldnt, however you have no idea how many would download if there were no drm (and more importantly, you dont know how many will download WITH drm, as it WILL get cracked.)

 

[nickspoon]

Hmm.

Now, DRM is going to be worked around, that's for certain. No matter what form it comes in. I don't mind any way (SD lock, system lock, no lock) because I'm going to legally purchase any games that I want, nobody I know has a GP2X and if I brick it it's not hard to get the same ID.

I have had the idea of some sort of program that will allow you to copy your game to an invisible partition on your SD with a system lock, although I've already thought of a few flaws with this

To be honest, I don't really mind how companies protect their games so long as I feel that these restrictions are fair on both company and consumer, and games continue to be produced.

 

[GP2x = GP32]

I think DRM is neccasary to avoid a massive loss of profit. Or corrercial failiure in other words.

I need little wizard to be decrypted to work on my BLU though.

 

[nubie]

I really don't care about DRM.

I am really really concerned about ARM though, (Analog Rights Management), you know: that thing that makes our headphone ports quit working

I didn't vote because my option didn't even exist.

I would buy any game I deemed worthy, DRM or no DRM.

I think many of the games are going to have a free demo, thus, play the demo wherever you want, buy it if you like it.

BTW, you are all forgetting that games can be locked to their SD, your SD or your console, it is not too hard to believe that we could fill a rather large SD card with commercial games legally and get them tied to the card.

I notice no one has mentioned the possibility that the games could be managed by a central source (AKA GPH or gbax), i.e. we would have an automated process to allow us to move games between units.

I don't find DRM would hurt anyone on an SD card, I mean for god's sake this is the smallest freakin cart I have ever seen, do we really need to bitch about carrying each game we bought around.

:lol: :lol: I just thought of the huge cases the PSP NDS GBA GBC and the rest are toting for a few goofy games.

If you want ANY games worth anything being developed by professionals, DRM; better known as copy-protection, is REQUIRED, I would love to see NFS 1, 2, 3, and 5 (4 sucked) on the GP2X, why won't we? It is not that EA wouldn't license the rights to the Pocketeers (they made some NFS versions available on the GBA), it's that they wouldn't license the rights to an entire scene (minus *some* ethical people) of people with a need to steal anything that came out.


If you don't want to buy a game, don't play it. I buy precious few PC games, not because of their DRM, but because I demo them and they don't impress me in the slightest.

You guys suck, quit bringing up DRM, it is ONLY being used to prevent Piracy of legal games, this console is completely unrestricted, you CANNOT compare it to PSP, XB, XB360, PSX, PS2, N64, NES.

If anyone of those consoles has allowed you free reign to use emulators and make your own games, I apologize, (I personally bought a $XXXX Grey PSX to demo things on /sarcasm).

NOT DRM, COPY PROTECTION

edit: I forgot to mention, DRM on a GAME, or APPLICATION, would make me more likely to buy it. I would take that as a sign that these people are serious about their business and are level-headed enough to not endager their liveliehood (sp?) by making their hard work meaningless by putting it out there completely un-protected.

There is still plenty available free, if you desire a commercial game, play the demo, read the reviews, don't bitch about DRM or percieved faults in the gameplay, interface, or storyline. After all, you did your homework and are not just some punk kid buying things willy-nilly on his credit card and blaming everyone else for his mistaken purchases.

 

[Redeeman]

You guys suck, quit bringing up DRM, it is ONLY being used to prevent Piracy of legal games, this console is completely unrestricted, you CANNOT compare it to PSP, XB, XB360, PSX, PS2, N64, NES.

it may be why they do it, but in reality it doesent accomplish this at all, however they do succeed in annoying customers, and even stopping some from buying..

and if we should get real.. those who have the mentality to only pirate games will pirate only, they wont buy no matter what, so in reality the game developer/retailer looses no money, however when he apply the drm, he counts me out as a buyer, thereby loosing money.. now i know stealing games in no way can be justified by not buying them anyway, however the reality is that the company doesent really gain money by it.

sure, if they could come up with a way to with 100% certainty stop pirating of their games, and the price is locking to one sd card, or locking to an uuid for the console, it would seem fair, however when they dont AT ALL stop piracy, and they at the same time annoying legitimate customers, thats just something i cant accept, i wont contribute to it, simple put, i wont buy.

 

[thelamer]

Talk about a leading survey , it is completely unbalanced and suggestive . These answers are worthless .

 

[Vimacs]

jep, the poll sucks.

 

[nubie]

You guys suck, quit bringing up DRM, it is ONLY being used to prevent Piracy of legal games, this console is completely unrestricted, you CANNOT compare it to PSP, XB, XB360, PSX, PS2, N64, NES.

it may be why they do it, but in reality it doesent accomplish this at all, however they do succeed in annoying customers, and even stopping some from buying..

and if we should get real.. those who have the mentality to only pirate games will pirate only, they wont buy no matter what, so in reality the game developer/retailer looses no money, however when he apply the drm, he counts me out as a buyer, thereby loosing money.. now i know stealing games in no way can be justified by not buying them anyway, however the reality is that the company doesent really gain money by it.

sure, if they could come up with a way to with 100% certainty stop pirating of their games, and the price is locking to one sd card, or locking to an uuid for the console, it would seem fair, however when they dont AT ALL stop piracy, and they at the same time annoying legitimate customers, thats just something i cant accept, i wont contribute to it, simple put, i wont buy.

WTF, ???? :unsure:

What do you buy? hmm, un DRMed games, lemme think.

tell me where you buy games that aren't DRMed, also which games are those.

The only non DRMed game that comes to mind is LodeRunner, whose author provides it for free at the moment.

Why does it annoy you to have a game on an SD card? I am not annoyed that I have games on cartridges.

I suppose it is annoying to put a movie in your DVD player, I suppose it is at that, but such is life, things need media, I don't see what exactly you are bitching about.

 

[skeezix]

Remember that DRM is usually a requirement; ie: If your console doesn't do DRM, the big guys won't even look at it.. period. Its only the little guys that even have an option here which is what makes it interesting

jeff

 

[Redeeman]

Why does it annoy you to have a game on an SD card? I am not annoyed that I have games on cartridges.

well for example, now with networking capabilities i may wish to put the game on my server..
but in general, i wasnt complaining that the game needed to be on AN sd card, but THIS specific card.

and as for drm on games in general, on consoles i dont know, but i can tell you this, on the pc its only about 40% of the games that has drm/copy protection, which in fact, doesent protect shit.

and what really serves to keep me away from drm'ed stuff, is that i know the protection doesent keep the real thieves from stealing it, but it keeps me from doing what i want, even thought i bought the stuff

Remember that DRM is usually a requirement; ie: If your console doesn't do DRM, the big guys won't even look at it.. period. Its only the little guys that even have an option here which is what makes it interesting

which in fact is scary, since the big guys have analysts, lawyers and stuff, which if they did just abit of research, would find out that copy protection doesent really protect anything, those guys just implement it because it looks good on paper, for share holders and such "we protect YOUR investment!!!oneone111!!!". however in this case, it isnt a big guy with $10000 bills in his bathroom instead of toilet paper, which have to please 100 internal lawyers, lawyers of the share holders, and other people, about protecting stuff, and therefore it should be relatively easy to conclude that DRM isnt viable, as it looses customers, and doesent stop thieves, and after all, it is there to stop thieves right?

 

[FluffyPanda]

Do you know what the DMCA is? Don't be surprised if similar laws begin popping up in Europe, either.

We've already got it: EUCD (EU Copyright Directive)

I think DRM is neccasary to avoid a massive loss of profit. Or corrercial failiure in other words.

You may think so, but it is by no means proven

I didn't vote because my option didn't even exist.

I would buy any game I deemed worthy, DRM or no DRM.

Surely that's this one:
No more or less likely to buy (Piracy isn't an option, DRM doesn't bother me)

Talk about a leading survey , it is completely unbalanced and suggestive . These answers are worthless .

In what way? I tried to cover the possible stances: Less likely, more likely, no change. I saw two reasons for no change: don't want to pay or DRM doesn't bother me.

How could I have been more fair? If I hadn't come out in this thread so vocally against DRM would you still say that the poll was biased?

Remember that DRM is usually a requirement; ie: If your console doesn't do DRM, the big guys won't even look at it.. period. Its only the little guys that even have an option here which is what makes it interesting

Exactly. With an xbox or ps2/3 DRM is a given, and useful for a certain length of time. For the gp2x things are less clear. Much like with GalCiv2 there is a very select audience for gp2x games and piracy is a lot less likely to become a huge problem.

On the other hand, pissing off your user base when it's already quite small is fatal.