DRM

Digital Rights Media is kind of a touchy subject to gamers. Many of us have been inconvenienced by DRM that makes it difficult, or downright impossible to play the games we legitimately purchased. There are systems that have been used that installed programs that compromise our system, online authentication that affected our ability to play the game when it was down or when we are travelling, or having to download another program to run games from. Personally, I have bought The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Game of the Year Edition which refused to run on my PC, stating that I had a pirated copy. I had tried multiple ways to get it to work but to no avail. A search on the internet revealed the culprit: this is due to Securom DRM and I have tried not to purchase another game from Bethesda for the PC and have been more aware and weary of the types of DRM used in games.

Being a gamer, the natural inclination is to stand against DRM. However, piracy is a problem and has always been a threat to intellectual property, and games are definitely not the only victims. Pirated VCDs and DVDs used to be a problem for the movie industry, but now online streaming has become more rampant. I'm not sure about books, but they can probably be downloaded if we search hard enough. Companies do indeed need to be concerned. Games cost a ton of money and lots of time to produce and the efforts of the developers should be rewarded. Piracy eat into sales (so they claim, because who knows if they'll still play the game if they have to pay for it?), and publishers like EA and Activision have been known to close down developing teams, or fire people for games that don't sell well (but which could very well be because the game was BAD).

Each industry have tried different ways of combating piracy, to varying successes. For a while, music lovers had to face hard hitting measures that hurt those who bought their music legally - CDs that refused to play on computers, MP3's that were limited to play on certain devices. Gamers too faced inconveniences starting from passwords in game manuals, requiring CDs/DVDs to be in the drive to run games, and slowly, measures that make use of the internet have come into play.

DRM has brought about a few issues. Does it really stop piracy? I have yet to see an anti-piracy measure that works. Games get cracked shortly after release, no matter which method companies use to secure it. Curiously, some people who crack games are the ones who probably bought the game to crack them, and new DRM measures are things they look forward to as a challenge. I'm sure the hacker community is always looking for challenges and companies provide these on a regular basis. There's a pro-argument for DRM, and that's that people who bought the game legitimately will get to enjoy the game first. Total Biscuit from http://www.cynicalbrit.com/ (his youtube channel was listed in a previous post on dlc) mentioned that, if that's the case, DRM could be patched out after a pirated copy came out. This argument has it's flaws too, as the Ubisoft case mentioned below.

Who then suffers from DRM? Ubisoft's always online DRM upset gamers when servers went down shortly after Assassin's Creed was released resulted in pirates getting a better gaming experience than those who bought the game. My experience with Securom made me more cautious and also more critical of companies which use intrusive DRM. I 100% support their need to protect their intellectual property, but what blows my mind is that they can't see the problems these methods are causing to their consumers. It's hard to brush it aside when we see a gaming company like CD Projekt flat out refuse to use DRM because "the DRM itself is a pain for your legal gamers – this group of honest people, who decided that your game was worth the 50 USD or Euro and went and bought it. Why would you want to make their lives more difficult?" (Read their interview on pcgamerhttp://www.pcgamer.com/2011/11/29/interview-cd-projekts-ceo-on-witcher-2-piracy-why-drms-still-not-worth-it/) Yet, the sad truth is piracy will always exist.

Being in Singapore, we have a relatively good and affordable internet infrastructure, so always-on DRM doesn't hurt us as much, and I have seen many comments in forums stating that they don't mind DRM because it doesn't hurt them. It's sad to see people only caring about themselves and not think about people who do not have access to proper internet connection. And they are missing the fact that one day, DRM is going to evolve into something that will affect them. Perhaps companies will require you to key in private information like your social security number (or IC number for us in Sg), or having you to report your address and full name to log in. Perhaps you have to pay to play every single game. Things will get worse, and by then, most players lose even the right to complain because they would have played a major role in letting things get out of hand. And the worse thing is, people will still buy those games.

Standing up against such practices isn't about doing so for our own sakes, nor is it about being greedy (I could very well go and pirate the game if that were the case), it's about protecting the future of gamers. And if you're pirating, please don't - developers and honest gamers are suffering cause of piracy.