I got into an argument on a Discord server where i tried to convince people that DRM is bad and unethical. Unfortunately they wouldn't budge.


What are some examples of DRM being detrimental?


A major one, i think, is RDR2. I played the game more than a year after launch. However, apparently people couldn't launch the game because of DRM

What are some other examples of DRM spoiling games?

Games that require server connection overall. Pull the plug of any of these servers and the games that rely on it either become totally unplayable, or have at least a few aspects crippled.

Look up the history of Starforce DRM

https://crappygames.miraheze.org/wiki/Starforce

https://consumerist.com/2006/04/05/5m-starforce-class-action-lawsuit/

Steam exists.
I do not see how it could go worse than that.

There are numerous examples of all of these. In all of these cases, it can also be that it's a "portion of" rather than "entire game" (either/or/both).

* Game's servers are turned off, so everyone loses access to game. Even single player.
* Game store with DRM bans account, which in turn prevents that person from accessing their DRMed titles.
* Publisher/store/etc revokes a title from existence willingly (such as "we never had rights to publish it"), removing it from those who "paid" for it.
* Developer updates game in a way you don't like (such as removing its entire soundtrack due to expiring licenses), and you are no longer able to get/use the older version.
* DRM often causes lower performance.
* DRM often gets in the way of modding.
* DRM prevents people from being able to play in situations such as in a forest cottage, or on a military base, or when they move and are between Internet providers. Or even just when the Internet is experiencing issues or slow.
* DRM hampers game preservation activities (to preserve games as art for posterity/future generations).
* DRM for multiplayer-only portions of the game can make a game lose significant functionality.
* DRM can be tied deeply to a particular operating system version, hardware, driver set, etc, making it so you can't play it on other systems (say on Linux via Wine, or in Windows 10 when the DRM only worked in Windows XP).
* The previous can also be used to force you to upgrade to a new version on a new system.
* DRM can introduce security hazards/exploits to your system that may otherwise not be present.
* DRM can be used to enforce region locks, such as preventing a game from being played in a country that wants to censor it.
* DRM can limit you to a maximum number of installations or uses.
* DRM can force you into data collection, advertising, telemetry or any other "agreements" to be able to continue using a product.

Beyond the above, there are actually NO good, legit uses of DRM. Calling it "piracy prevention" is merely a red herring -- DRM almost exclusively harms actual purchasers and in most cases only causes a little bit of a bump for pirates.

Going beyond video games, some work-related programs require subscriptions that will cost more over time than a single purchase. Companies like Autodesk have gotten away with it because their software are widely used in their respective industries.

This is like saying "I got into an argument where I tried to convince people that tyrannical dictatorships are bad and unethical. Unfortunately they wouldn't budge. What are some examples of tyrannical dictatorships being detrimental?"

The argument should be self-evident. If it isn't, then it is not worth your time or effort to debate with this person.

DRM is a very broad term that can include having the cd in the drive to run the game to having to run anticheat or use licenses with activation and beyond. Overall DRM guarantees that intellectual property is harder to steal and can be thought of as good for the customer and innovation because it helps protect the rights owners. That said, there should not be problems with DRM and there often is, including performance issues and otherwise. The best thing that could happen for games is that they are sold without DRM at a point in time.

Way back in the day I had some game discs that wouldn't work with my DVD drive, but I think disc checks and DRM are different things really.

Kingdoms of Amalur on Origin required an online connection to play once you installed the DLCs for some reason, and I happened to be playing it during a move where I lost internet, preventing me from playing it for a week or so.

When Direct2Drive closed down they moved most thing over to whatever new service they had, I forget the details, but I lost some games that used their DRM and couldn't be transferred.

Those are the times I remember it impacting me personally. Overall though my main issue with DRM is more about long term video game preservation. I plan to be playing and replaying games from the 90s, 00s and such in my old age on legacy PCs and I want them to work. In many cases modders and such will likely keep them running for us, but 1) some niche games might be ignored, and B) with more effective DRM like Denuvo actually working, some games might be uncrackable.

So you know how Microsoft killed SecuRom?

All reasons why when a game is old, on sale a lot, no longer had DLC runs, no longer has patches often, and things of this sort - that is what DRM-checks for a game's EXE should be removed on any service.

Especially for preservation of games w/ single-player content.

About MP games - well, those games should have their skirmish content work offline w/ bots; and also should have LAN support. MMO's. Once the plug is pulled, the game no longer works.

At least w/ some games on Steam that don't have their CEG or Steamworks wrapped around it, it should work offline. Hopefully, games do support offline saving or saving w/out the game-client running, too.

I've had countless bad experiences with DRM in PC gaming and got fed up with it in 2006 and stopped buying games entirely for 6+ years. I discovered GOG in 2009 but didn't really start using the platform until 2012 when I realized exactly what they were all about and wanted to be a part of supporting that.

I could give a couple dozen stories of where myself and/or friends were negatively affected by DRM over the years to the point where we could not play the game we bought as we should have been able to, but... it would not change anything. No matter where you go on the Internet, no matter where you engage in conversation you will always find people who have had different experiences than you have, or who have wildly differing opinions that are 180 degrees the opposite of yours. Even if it isn't about opinions but rather about facts - people will have opinions that are counter to actual facts and will promote their ideas with extreme word salad.

"Oh no! Someone on the Internet is WRONG! I must correct them!" is a rabbit hole that we have all fallen into over time, and I'm as guilty as anyone here. We are all passionate about video games and various other topics of interest and when we see people sharing opinions etc. that we either know are straight up wrong factually, or that we have a strongly different opinion about, the temptation is to dedicate some portion of our life force to proving them wrong and schooling them. Almost always this ends in having no actual impact whatsoever, in not convincing anyone of anything no matter how strong your "facts" are, nor how much data they're backed up with.

Here's a quote from a favourite ole 80s movie - Wargames: "The only way to win the game, is not to play."

We'll all get sucked into the rabbit hole from time to time, but the best thing we can do when we detect the situation is at hand is to just not give a shit what other people's opinions are. There are always people out there who will be "wrong", and sometimes it'll be us. It's better overall to just let them be wrong and move on and go do something more entertaining, educational or productive with our time than to waste time "schooling" random people on the Internet that we barely know or don't know at all, whom we'll never meet in real life, and to whom their ignorance has no real world consequences for us.

It's much better when we catch ourselves about to do that and redirect our attention to actually playing games, learning something, or even watching paint dry.

Don't fall into the trap, just let people be wrong and smile to yourself if you think you know better than they do about the given topic. The more we master this and practice it, trust me - the better we will all feel in the end.

Steam was actually a very good thing for gaming in general. It provided a genuine possibility for indie devs to actually put their games in a place, with a large audience and gave the customers access to a library of games, that they would not have ever been able to purchase otherwise.

This is actually such a silly move. When a license expires the publisher loses the right to sell the product. Everyone who already "owns" the product should be completely unaffected by this. Nobody breaks into your home and replaces your GTA:SA disks with some new ones with some tracks missing. Yet that is exactly what Steam does.

Also DRM is often used to enforce censorship and geoblocking. Germans can sing many songs about that. Bought a game like Manhunt 2 (for instance in the UK)? Sorry, your key doesn't work from Germany. With some games you're stuck with low-violence or otherwise censored versions. That even included Half-Life 2 back in the day when it wasn't even blacklisted.