
Paradox CEO Calls DRM a 'Waste of Money' - jconley
http://www.industrygamers.com/news/paradox-ceo-calls-drm-a-waste-of-money/
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steve8918
This is a lesson that was learned back in the 80s, after valiant attempts to
protect games from copying. I remember things like having bad disk sectors,
which were foiled by the likes of copyiipc, and then it moved on to requiring
the manual for specific passcodes, which was foiled by photocopies and people
simply hacking the binaries. None of them worked because it was an eternal war
of the game providers vs the pirates, but the pirates had a lot more incentive
and opportunity to crack the games than the content developers had to protect
them.

As far as I can tell, there's absolutely no way around it except by having
thin clients and running everything off the cloud. As long as the actual
machine where the content is being run off is in the hands of the client, it
can always be hacked, either through software or hardware. But things like
streaming video and Louis CK are showing that people are willing to pay for
content, as long as it's convenient enough and cheap enough.

~~~
JonLim
> _As far as I can tell, there's absolutely no way around it except by having
> thin clients and running everything off the cloud._

You can protect yourself from piracy by making quality content that people
genuinely want to support. You do more good by making it convenient, easy, and
affordable to customers than anything else, and having an awesome game makes
it even easier to hand over cash.

Convenience and affordability is where a lot of people fail.

~~~
chaz
I've mentioned this before, but World of Goo did everything right: great game,
90 on Metacritic, easy purchase through Steam or direct from their website, no
DRM at all, and priced at $19.99. But an estimated 90% of players were on
pirated versions of the game: <http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/>.

Is there something else they could have done?

~~~
qntm
Unless pirate players have a significant negative effect on the gameplay
experience, which doesn't seem to be the case from what I can see for this
game in particular, World Of Goo's makers do not care how many people pirate
their game, either in absolute terms or as a percentage. All that really
matters is the absolute number of legitimate sales.

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stcredzero
DRM period isn't a waste of money. DRM as it's commonly practiced is.

DRM always entails a hit to the customer's convenience. If you're not giving
the customer more convenience in a different way, then you're fighting an
uphill battle.

When you implement DRM, please be aware that you are engaged in an asymmetric
conflict, and that _you are the underdogs_. The subset of the internet
community interested in cracking your DRM most likely outnumbers and outguns
whatever department in whatever company you're at. But asymmetric conflicts
can be won:

    
    
        - concentrate on detection, bias to false negatives
        - separate by a significant interval in time the 
          detection and any consequences of detection 
        - never do anything that looks like a bug
        - never fight where you are weak and the enemy is strong
    

You are strong where functionality depends on a server. If you ever have to
keep someone out, do it there. If you can avoid doing that at all and fight in
even sneakier ways, then do that instead. Remember, in this conflict you are
the guerrillas, and the pirates are the big empire. You can only win if you
keep _them_ guessing where you will strike, not the other way around.

~~~
finnw
\- _separate by a significant interval in time the detection and any
consequences of detection_

Why?

~~~
awj
The consequences of detection are also the validation step for people cracking
your DRM. They won't release something until they can confirm they've broken
it.

It's _much_ harder to work through removing DRM if you have to play the game
for half an hour each time you want to test a partial solution. Games that
dump you before even showing the title screen are actually making this
confirmation activity easier.

~~~
stcredzero
_It's much harder to work through removing DRM if you have to play the game
for half an hour each time you want to test a partial solution._

Actually, I think it's best if the time interval is something like _two
weeks_. Shift much of the revenue to downloadable content and online
multiplayer. Make the consequences for having been detected completely
invisible until then.

This gives the pirates two choices: either they can release their crack early,
and their customers will be screwed, because even if a new crack is released,
those users will already have been identified, or they can wait until well
after the release, when the downloadable content comes online, in which case,
you've won a reprieve where there are no sales lost to that pirate.

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quink
I pirated Paradox's Europa Universalis II when I was a poor student. I later
pirated the first version of Europa Universalis III and Victoria, both of
which I didn't much enjoy at the time, because they sucked at the time from a
technical/gameplay and gameplay perspective respectively.

Since then I purchased, because I initially pirated them, For The Glory
(effectively an EU2 final edition) and EUIII Complete and its two expansion
packs, including one for twenty dollars. I also purchased Victoria II.

DRM doesn't work, and because Paradox put all the effort that they'd put into
DRM into their game engines instead, I'm buying their products and am utterly
addicted to EU3 in particular.

For every seed and peer on BitTorrent of a Paradox game, I'm happy, because it
means that the community will grow larger and that there will be more paying
customers in the future. It helps that the parts of the forum with Technical
Support, Patches and Mods are only available to registered customers :)

There's only a few things that bother me with Paradox, and they are that
Victoria II is not much fun, because one has as much control over that game as
a leaf in the wind, that EU3 needs another dozen expansion packs and that not
everything is available for Steam on Mac when it should be...

If EU3 had three-time install only DRM, I'd have pirated it, and so would have
most others. Instead, Paradox seems to be a publisher that loves its
community, as the forums alone prove.

~~~
m_myers
Indeed. We never seriously considered DRM as an option for For the Glory, nor
will I again in the foreseeable future. If I would hate something as a gamer,
it's a good bet I won't be doing it as a developer.

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masenf
"But people who purchase a game should have just as easy a time as those who
pirate the game, otherwise it’s a negative incentive to buy a legal copy."

I thought this was a key point in the article and one that has been lurking
below the surface in the SOPA/PIPA discussion. In order to 'prevent piracy',
technical solutions are worthless compared to providing a quality service
where your customers' willingness to buy is on par with your price. As noted
by the author, DRM decreases the quality of a service, and often carries an
increased price [at least for company in production/support/etc].

For some industries, the price does not align with expectations. I can think
of retail Blu-ray for instance [the price is too high].

For others, the DRM encourages piracy to some degree. Often with Windows this
is the case. While I own legitimate copies, often a pirate copy is easier to
install [no key/activation] or find [no cd to track]. This is especially true
for quick n' dirty VM builds.

Finally, I believe in expressly Anti-DRM approaches, ya know.../trusting/
users with content. Encouraging users to purchase in order to support their
favorite [movie, game, software, comedy special] is the way forward. Piracy
will not go away, the game is converting pirates to customers by convincing
them that your product is worth their money.

~~~
dattaway
I no longer play games, because of DRM hassles in the past.

~~~
rcfox
DRM-free games are becoming more and more popular these days. Look at the
Humble Indie Bundles, for example. You get 3-6 indie games which are
completely free from DRM (and in some cases are open source!) for as much or
as little as you care to play. Heck, you don't even have time to finish all of
the games in one bundle before another one comes out.

If you want to play games, there's really no reason not to.

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diminium
iPhone store is DRM. It helps the customer in a way by preventing apps from
breaking the phone. I don't like it personally but I have a higher knowledge
level of technology than most people.

DRM is useful mostly to people who can't figure out anything in a technology
product. They are more likely to break their products without it than with it.
The big thing though is I wished companies offered an option to those who are
willing to risk it all vs fighting them.

~~~
iamandrus
You are confusing DRM for the locking down of a product or platform. Apple
locks down iOS for the benefit of the user (most of the time), but adds DRM to
apps to prevent unauthorized code from being executed on the device and to
prevent apps from being pirated (which Installous has proved futile).

