

DRM done right: Puppygames - ewjordan
http://www.puppygames.net/blog/?p=574

======
lukifer
The Pepsi Challenge of any DRM scheme is this: Will I end up regretting that I
didn't just pirate it instead? (ie: Did the purchase experience leave me with
anything less than warm fuzzies, and/or did the product end up being crippled
in some way?)

Though hardly bulletproof, or optimal, this particular mechanism clearly
passes that test, and should be lauded.

~~~
maushu
Yeah, this happened to me regarding Starcraft 2. I ended up regretting buying
it after it took me half a dozen tries just to play single-player with my not-
so-good mobile internet connection.

~~~
robryan
Had no problems with starcraft 2 at first, but the real telling moment came
when I noticed that I couldn't play single player without first registering my
account for offline play with a net connection that I didn't have where I was
at the time.

Felt weird having a game I had paid for and installed legit that I was being
prevented from playing.

~~~
maushu
Yeah, I forgot about the need to register on battle.net

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patio11
I wonder how long it is going to take the fickle and rabidly cynical usual
suspects to realize that "Our DRM / lack of DRM / pseudo-DRM / loud opposition
to DRM _is different_ " is, in fact, Marketing 101, and that they hate
marketing almost as much as they hate paying for software.

~~~
mjgoins
I don't mind paying for free software, if I think it's worth it. But I
wouldn't take their proprietary software even if you paid me.

~~~
weaksauce
That's ok. You are not their customer.

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princec
hello everyone! This is Cas from Puppygames. It's been very interesting
reading this thread (thanks ewj for posting!)

A few straight from the horses mouth facts:

I sat down and worked out what our revenues are, and they work out as
$750/month over the last 7 years. Out of that, we pay for hosting,
advertising, accountancy, and tax, leaving about $400/month and then Chaz and
I split the remainder. Chaz just about scrapes a meagre existence in Spain. I
live in the UK though so I have to keep on doing a day job (I've got a family
to support). So up till now Puppygames has always been part-time! It'd be nice
to do it full time.

If you're wondering why we bother at all, well, it's because it's actually a
monumental pain in the arse to release two versions of every game - a demo and
a full version. It's loads easier just to do a full version which can be
unlocked. That's all our "DRM" is, really - just a really simple way of doing
unlockable demos which won't go wrong and is practically impossible to not
understand.

Also, anyone who thinks that it was a "lot of work" developing the system
should probably know... it wasn't. It's really trivial stuff, and most of the
hard bits are built in to Java anyway like the public/private key encryption.
We're already working our little fingers off making the game, can't afford to
spend any more time on unlocking schemes!

It really is utterly trivial for anyone with half a brain to defeat, and even
crack and release. It's Java - any fool with JAD and Eclipse can rip it out.
But what we're getting at here is... what's the point? The demos are lengthy,
the games are cheap, the rights we give you along with the games are exactly
the rights you would expect to have and want. They're exactly the rights I
expect and want from things I buy, anyway.

Lots of piratey types give all sorts of feeble excuses as to why they get
dodgy copies of things but at the end of the day we basically addressed every
single one of them except one which is that the games cost too much and you
wanted them anyway! Which we're figuring out how to address right now. We
tried in the past reducing the prices of the games but discovered they made
even less money.

Any suggestions?

~~~
ido
Excuses is exactly what they are.

The overriding reason people pirate is that they can something for free, so
why pay for it?

When I was a poor student I pirated games too, but now that I'm a somewhat
well payed software developer I buy pretty much every (mostly indie) game I
play (and quite a few I end up not playing) because ~$20 every month or two is
simply not an amount of money I will notice missing.

------
ewjordan
The tl;dr bullet points:

1) Sharing with friends and family is allowed, and encouraged

2) Your e-mail is your registration key - when you try to activate on another
computer, an activation link is sent to you via e-mail, and you can do this 10
times. After that, you've just got to ask Puppygames for more activations and
they'll almost always approve them (I assume the main exception would be if
someone was passing around a registration all over the Internet, which is
pretty easy to notice if it happens).

3) If anything screws up re: the DRM system, it errs in your favor. In
particular, if you haven't registered when you boot the game and you can't
reach the server, it will assume that you're good to go, and turn the demo
into the full game. It will never shut you down because it can't phone home.

4) The only way the full game gets disabled is if the server tells it that
you've asked for a refund (which they always honor).

5) They're aware that 3) and 4) are very easy to game (block the Internet
connection once you get your refund), and that's fine, they prefer not to
hassle legit users unduly.

IMO, this strikes a pretty good balance - it tends to err on the side of the
user while still throwing up a tiny barrier to piracy (pretty much just enough
to thwart the casual pirate). To do more is not worth it, because people that
will go through the trouble of bypassing the registration process on the demo
would probably just find a cracked version anyways if it was any more
difficult to do.

Also, I should mention that the demos that Puppygames provides are quite
substantial chunks of the full versions - if you've played enough of the demo
to reach its limits, then chances are you've been liking the game enough to
warrant buying it. I think this is pretty important, it's probably the main
reason they have so few refund requests.

Finally, I encourage everyone to check out the game itself at
<http://www.puppygames.net/revenge-of-the-titans>, too - Cas and Chaz have
always put together really polished and fun games, and it's a shame that they
haven't been able to figure out how to sell more of them (Cas was _not_ joking
at all with the self-deprecating stuff about people not buying the games, they
really are only selling a handful of copies every month). FWIW, I have no
relation to either of them, I'm plugging them because I've always liked their
games and would hate to see them give up.

------
borisk
"Firewall Revenge of the Titans so it can’t ever contact Puppygames and get
your totally free full game"

Using DRM at all in such a setup looks quite pointless to me.

~~~
IgorPartola
I agree, but what they are describing sounds less like the DRM we've come to
know and hate (yes, I know that's the point of the article, but let me
explain). When I think of DRM in, say, music purchases, I usually think of
some way of restriction. But here the title DRM actually makes sense: it's
Digital Rights _Management_. This actually enables the developer to distribute
the right to the full version of the game to it's customers, not to restrict
them. By that same token things like Valve's Steam allow Valve to distribute
games, although on much more restrictive terms. Of course the FSF would
completely disagree with any of this, but I would definitely like to hear
RMS's take on this particular setup.

I guess the big question is going to be "does this scale?"

~~~
TheAmazingIdiot
In the end of any scenario, DRM always means somebody who has rights on your
computer over you, the owner.

My computer is mine. I can give others limited access on them in terms of user
accounts. However, I will not give myself a user account and give them root.

The pirates can be said for getting things free. They are also more free due
to less restrictions on their version of the code.

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jrockway
This DRM doesn't do anything; it just seems like extra code to maintain for no
reason.

~~~
wccrawford
They make a big deal about the download having your name and address embedded
in it to deter people from spreading their copy all over the net.

And then they said that their demo version will be full version until it
contacts the server... And you can download the demo without an account.

They defeated all of their own protections.

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dekz
While I admire their attempt at a different view of the DRM model, how many
here have downloaded the game to either play or to at least test their DRM? I
for one have, and if that is enough to get me to buy a copy of any of their
games, I'd say the DRM (or at least the blog post) is a success.

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willvarfar
sad they say they aren't doing so well:

"It means if our DRM system breaks, like for example our server melts down
with the floods of sales we unfortunately aren’t getting, or Puppygames goes
completely bust because you buggers aren’t buying nearly enough games for us
to survive _," ... "_ Hint: you’re not :("

~~~
maushu
Well, if they aren't exaggerating with that 5% number. Then it means they are
making around $270 per month.

Kind of sad compared with minecraft that made $20k or something in a day.

~~~
c-oreills
I'd say Minecraft's more the exception here, not the rule.

Or, turning your comment on its head, Minecraft's income looks absolutely
amazing compared to this!

~~~
ido
Yes, this is far closer to the common indie experience than minecraft.

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tomjen3
Not really - you _still_ can't script the installation of it, which means that
you have to sit and type a bunch of numbers foreach and every single program
you want to install.

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jdietrich
_WAAAAAAAAYYYYYY_ too longwinded. This isn't a marketing message aimed at
customers, it's a bit of clever design aimed at the likes of us. It's still
massively inconvenient, in that I have to understand their ridiculously
complicated scheme in order to understand what I can do with my game. As a
rule, people who get angry about DRM aren't the kind of people you'd want as
customers even if they did pay for software, and the average user is likely to
be more put off by a complex permissive scheme than a simple restrictive
scheme. Customers generally don't mind big, bold-face caveats, it's the small
print that worries them.

All this is rather beside the point - according to the numbers in that post,
they're selling 20 copies a _month_. If you're writing good, attractive games
but making so little money, you have much bigger priorities than your DRM
scheme. Spend an hour implementing an off-the-shelf watermarking system to
give yourself basic legal recourse against wholesale piracy, then get on with
the job of selling.

If this is just a hobby then fair enough, I have no right to argue, but if
this is supposed to be a business then I really despair.

~~~
ewjordan
_It's still massively inconvenient, in that I have to understand their
ridiculously complicated scheme in order to understand what I can do with my
game._

Eh, as you mentioned, this post is aimed at people like us - to the normal end
user that's not trying to play the full version for free, there's nothing
complex at all. You just download the game, and enter your e-mail address. If
you've already bought the thing, then you just have to click a link in an
e-mail, otherwise you either play the demo or buy the thing, no surprises.
Even sharing with friends is easy, you just enter your e-mail address and it
works fine after you click the link.

The other details involve edge cases; perhaps Cas will at some point release
some stats, and tell us (for instance) how many people actually activate more
than 10 copies of the game. I can't imagine it's very many, and for everyone
else, the scheme is trivial.

 _If you're writing good, attractive games but making so little money, you
have much bigger priorities than your DRM scheme._

I'd tend to agree with this. The level of polish in their games makes it
surprising that they're doing so few sales, so there's probably a lot that
could be done marketing-wise to improve things. Of course, I have no idea what
these things are, myself. :)

I'm sure Cas would be open to suggestions on this front, I know he's aware of
this thread, so by all means, fire away if you've got advice...

------
rms
>Error establishing a database connection

Evidence that there is no such thing as DRM done right?

~~~
StavrosK
Le cache:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?client=opera...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?client=opera&rls=en-
GB&q=cache:http://www.puppygames.net/blog/?p=574&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)

------
compay
"DRM done right" is an oxymoron.

~~~
billybob
"We succeeded at failing!"

------
eli
That's nice and all, but most games have much more invasive DRM yet they still
get pirated. What stops someone from hacking the game to not display their
name and to also never check in with the server?

~~~
c-oreills
I think their point is "we've left it loose because we trust you".

They say their demos will automatically become the full version if they can't
find a Puppygames server on first run. You don't _need_ to hack the game, if
you're so inclined to get it for free they've made it easy for you.

They're encouraging a culture of trust between you and them, in the hope
you'll thank them for it and actually pay for the game. Not a bad tactic
considering some of the piracy figures indie devs have cited. At the end of
the day they realise it's more beneficial to keep their paying customers
onside rather than slightly inconveniencing those who are going to pirate it
anyway.

~~~
eli
Hey, I'm totally down with that attitude.

My point is that if your DRM is going to be so minimal anyway, why bother? It
doesn't seem like this approach is likely to convince very many people to buy
the software who wouldn't otherwise, and it surely takes time and resources to
set up and run.

~~~
c-oreills
I think it plays on the psychology of concession. If you make me a concession
then I'm more likely to do you a favour.

They're saying, "We've made DRM, but we don't want to inconvenience our paying
users, so the DRM will be incredibly forgiving and infact can be easily
circumvented by someone with little technical skill".

I think their potential customers would look at that and be more inclined to
buy the games, because it appears they've been done more of a favour when a
company cuts back on DRM, even at the expense of their potential income, as
opposed to if they simply released the game for free.

------
cookiecaper
They should just take all of this out and tout that they are DRM-free. If they
trusted the user as they claim, they wouldn't feel like they needed to revert
your refunded full game into a demo.

Lots of people would have no problem registering the game to "Sir Pantsy
Higginbothom <pantsy@throwaway-email-provider.com>" and then what good does
their little name screen do?

If they always reset your registration count no questions asked, there is no
point in even having that there.

It seems like they're trying to strike a balance but I just don't see the
point. There's still extra hassle involved here, interestingly much of it is
on the publisher himself, and there's no particular benefit for anyone. The
publisher gains nothing from these measures because they are so easy to
circumvent and they'll just creep out / bother users that registered the copy
in their real name. Users gain nothing from these measures because they are
almost not there and there's some slight intrusion made after buying 10 games.
They don't add anything to the experience, unless you like your name flashing
up as one of the intro credits.

So there's really no point to any of this. They should just rip it out and
then they could put shiny "DRM-free" buttons all over.

~~~
ido
You ignore the fact that the purpose of DRM is to minimize piracy, not prevent
it completely.

if it introduced even a slight inconvenience in pirating the games it would
probably already shave off a nice amount of pirating.

PS: Puppy Games is just one guy trying to make a living from his games, it's
not really much of a "company".

~~~
city41
Is it just one guy now? I know for a while it was at least two, possibly
three.

Also, PuppyGames are the people responsible for LWJGL[1], which IMO is the
best way to go for making games in Java.

[1] <http://www.lwjgl.org/>

~~~
ido
AFAIK there is just one programmer, and he is on the LWJGL team but is by no
means the only LWJGL developer.

There might be someone else working with him, I couldn't really find anything
about it.

EDIT: apparently there are 2 people, Cas & Chaz:

[http://www.javagaming.org/index.php/topic,23005.msg190715.ht...](http://www.javagaming.org/index.php/topic,23005.msg190715.html#msg190715)

~~~
city41
And in that thread he did confirm they only make $250/month, split two ways.
That's sad. I bought their first game years ago (I forgot it's name, but it
doesn't appear to be for sale anymore). It was really good.

~~~
princec
Alien Flux. Thrice cursed. Mention it not.

~~~
kaffiene
Why?

~~~
princec
Total failure of a product which did almost everything just exactly wrong.
Wasted a year of my life on it before I realised it was a total flop.

~~~
ido
Sounds like there are some lessons hidden in there...I personally would love
hearing the story, a post-mortem of sorts :)

------
njharman
Sorry if I missed it in the long obfuscated explanation but why? Why bother
with DRM at all? Esp ineffectual DRM like theirs.

