Those are different types of boycotts. It's not secret that Ubisoft for example lost of the majority of their PC sales by pushing always-online DRM into their big releases such as Assassin's Creed. This ended up with them having to backpedal.

I kinda like Ubisoft for now because they gave us MMX. Loved that game.

Im curious. Whats your take people who have actually bought a given game on Steam, then proceed to de DRM it with a cracked .exe etc?. You've already paid for said game and just want to be able to use it Steam DRMed free....
It has been pretty much for a while now :/

As far as piracy goes, here's some reading that some may find interesting:
http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_1.html

Well Steam essentially started legal game digital distribution, and because they "got there first" they are king of dd and it will be really hard to un-throne them unless they screw up big-time. Even with GOG's DRM-free and 30-Day Money-Back or Origin's 7-Day Return Policy, or excellent sales on games lacking Steam keys, people will pass on these because they want all their games on Steam because that's what they started with and fully associate with PC gaming, and they don't want to have to worry about change.

I think it's really exclusives on other services that have helped coax people out of using Steam all the time. DRM-free, while important to us, isn't necessarily all that important to the 70 million+ users of Steam, but being forced to get Planescape Torment, Theme Hospital, RollerCoaster Tycoon 2, etc. somewhere else helps people see other services, some of which might be as good as or better than Steam.

It's more like cyber-terrorism against the digital market,. All they will see is that DRM-free advocates pirate games, not that you're a large market that they're missing out on which is your intended goal. They don't see "this person is pirating because we have DRM, so we should probably remove it." in the same way that a person doesn't say "this person is breaking into cars because they have security devices on them, so lets remove them."

If you want them to get your message, you need to make them aware that you (a non-incognito anonymous downloader) are not buying (or stealing) this product because it does not meet your standard, and would like to purchase it should they provide it DRM-free. And you need to show them that this stance is a substantial market.

Like I've said before, I don't think it will happen due to the workshop support (Edit: updated first post). However, that's why I feel you are mistaken about your approach and what I believe to be more effective. A pirate is not a lost customer, a customer that was lost because of a policy is. Piracy is a non-sequitur and you're one irregardless of your ideology as long as you commit the act.

Jesus christ. Just fuck off.

It's not stealing. That's a fact. Your feelings on the matter are irrelevant. Just like abortion is not murder. In some places it's not even illegal.

Believe it or not, there are people who both pirate games and buy games. It's more than possible that someone who was going to buy a game ends up pirating it because of the company's policy. There are games that I've not bought because of DRM and pirated instead, only to buy them once they get the DRM removed. Was I not a lost customer at the time because I pirated the game?

Do you even know what that word means or did you just read/hear it somewhere and thought it would make you sound smart? Your sentence doesn't even make sense. You're one? One what? He's a piracy? He's a non-sequitur?
"Non sequitur (Latin for "it does not follow"), in formal logic, is an argument in which its conclusion does not follow from its premises"
If anything in what he stated was a non-sequitur it would be the argument as a whole, that being that bankruptcy or removal of DRM would not follow if people boycotted or pirated (without also buying, there are people who buy then pirate for DRM-free). Piracy would not be a non-sequitur. The conclusion would not be a non-sequitur. The entire argument would be.


Anyway, contributing a bit more worthwhile. There are games that have steamworkshop but are still available DRM-free. Dungeon Defenders is one. Don't Starve. Dungeons of Dredmor. Legend of Grimrock.
[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Steam_Workshop_games]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Steam_Workshop_games[/url]
Look at them and just make note of which are available DRM-free.

You're a very angry person, and unfortunately a pirate. I hope you feel better soon. ^^

Well, good for you pirate. Let's just see you pirate games when publishers embrace always-online/P2P/streaming (which is just a matter of time). Now that will be fun, right?

No, this is piracy. Piracy =/= capitalism.

Good luck convincing a judge/jury of that. :D

What's so wrong? Look at D3. It's always online, it can't be pirated (well, at least for now) and it sold millions of copies (even the expansion sold well). Do you think other publishers won't pull the same trick because of pirates like you?

You're not forcing anyone out of Steam. You're forcing publishers to use more draconian DRM, and you bet they will.

Boycotting is a valid way of protest, piracy isn't. You're effectively just using someone else's work for free and making up an excuse for it.

Now, completely boycotting certain games COULD change something. When they check the charts and notice that people are not interested in their game, they will have to change something about it. On the other hand, if the piracy rates are too high, instead of chaging their philosophy they will come up with more DRM.

And guess what? You're the one helping to build Steam's monopoly. The more piracy there is, the more publishers/developers will go for some kind of DRM scheme. Steam is already huge and with "DRM-free advocates" pirating games it will get even bigger.

Gabe Newell should send you a "THANK YOU" letter.
I'm fine with it.

That is a great article especially the part when he goes into the changing business model.

As for the argument that if a gamer chooses to pirate instead of boycotting a DRM game actually leads to more draconian DRM may seem intuitive but on a large scale, is that really true? Anyone with a source?

How so? :P

Let's see... Prince of Persia was released DRM-free in 2008 and was a commercial failure (despite being a critical success), Assassin's Creed 2 sold better on PC than the first one, despite the DRM, Ubisoft went on to call the DRM a success and clearly assumed that they owe an increase in sales at least to some degree to the DRM. When Ubisoft finally renounced the always-on DRM, they explained it with problems that their paying customers were experiencing. And yeah, I honestly believe that it was too many complaints from the people who actually did buy the game that drove Ubisoft nuts and made them patch the stuff out. Publishers do feel some responsibility for their paying customers, certainly more than for some angry nerds somewhere on the net who claim that *if* the publisher had done something differently there might have been one more sale.

Seriously, just buy the friggin' game and complain or buy and return it. Give the publisher something to actually think about, why the people who *did* get the product aren't satisfied - not some ridiculously abstract "what if" scenarios.

You do know right that publishers never release sales numbers? I doubt any numbers on AssCreed 2 on PC were that great given how much of a disaster it's always-online DRM was with customers and in the media. Ubisoft are a corporation, they wouldn't do anything if it didn't have a financial incentive behind it, believing they renounced always-online DRM simply out of concern for customers after previously calling it a success doesn't make sense, no business is that schizophrenic. They obviously did it because the bad rep of always-online DRM was killing their PC sales numbers, otherwise why would they do it at all?

They don't. They exist for profit. Publishers have no connection with anyone who buys their product versus anyone who pirates it, or anyone who complains about it on the internet, all of them are potential customers and there's no real distinction to be made, there just "customers".

How the freck would Ubisoft or any publisher even know who is a "paying customer" and who isn't?

If you think publishers think "paying customers" are in their cool super club I think you're quite naive, they couldn't care less who buys their stuff and who doesn't, as long as someone does.

The people who do "boycotts" on the internet like that lack sincerity. And who says a "boycott" is some kind of official declaration by an individual that they won't buy games from said publisher because XYZ reasons? It can just be any anonymous individual who decides they will not buy games with DRM, or for whatever reason.

Of course, on a micro scale what proves you wrong is for example Kickstarter. On KS it has become the norm that if you want funding to make a game, the developer will need to offer their official word that the game will be DRM-free, or at the least will have a DRM-free version. It didn't start out that way of course, it only became the norm after backers on pretty much every major project DEMANDED a DRM-free version, and the developer needing their money to make the game of course had no choice but to acquiesce.

The same logic can be applied to publishers, the money from gamers is what these publishers survive on, if no one purchased their games they would not exist. With that in mind, the concept that gamers can't exert pressure on publishers to end DRM practices is just wrong, it could easily happen. Most gamers are pretty inert and don't care too much/are fine with Steam, but the idea that it's impossible and DRM is ~eternal~ is absurd.