Gundato: Does anyone here care to back up the assertions that DRM doesn't work and is evil? :P
We are all arguing opinions.
Indeed we are. Hence why I've tried to word most of my statements to show that I'm putting forth little more than assertions and speculation. You may want to also throw in some qualifiers to your future statements, as currently it comes across like you're trying to claim you definitively
know many of the assertions you're throwing out.
Gundato: "idiots" are the people who don't know how to find a crack that isn't a virus and who can't use a torrent. And all it takes is to have non-tech savvy family or to know someone in tech support to realize they are out there. And before you say that those people aren't interested in video games: Go read the community-run tech support forum for pretty much any major PC game :p.
Again, you're pretty much dealing with the mother of all sample biases there. That's not to say that such people aren't out there, but the demographic you're focusing on is the overlap of people who are ignorant enough of computers to not know about bittorrent, who are interested in some non-trivial number of PC games, who would try to track down a friend or acquaintance to burn a copy of a game before going to buy it, and then who would actually buy the game if they weren't able to burn a copy due to DRM. Are you going to tell me you honestly believe that this demographic is anything more than utterly insignificant when compared to the entire demographic of PC gamers?
Gundato: Hell, do we have any good statistics on how many people actually don't buy games because of the DRM model? I know we have a lot of loud-mouths and what not, but I just cite the L4D2 boycott (or the MW2 boycott :p) as proof that people are full of crap. People are very loud about what they don't like, then they try it and realize they don't care. I know I have avoided a few games due to DRM, but I also know that I hopped the fence almost immediately with MEPC :p.
I wish we did have some solid statistics on the matter, but unfortunately we'll have to make due with speculation for the time being. First off, the people making lots of noise are not the ones you need to be thinking about, most of them are all flash and no photo. The people who are of concern are those who don't find it worth their time to rant about how they're not going to buy a game because of the DRM, but instead just quietly pass on the game and buy some other game. That said, I'm also of the opinion that this is a pretty damn small group of people when compared to the full demographic of PC gamers. However, there are also people who don't fully know what DRM is, who also aren't set on one particular game, but will just read through a few customer reviews to pick between a couple of games they're potentially interested in, and if they see a couple of reviews stating the people had trouble even playing the game because of DRM problems, well guess what game they probably won't be choosing? Now, I think this group is probably larger than the first group I mentioned, but still very small when compared to all PC gamers. But it's not all PC gamers that these two groups combined needs to be compared to. They need to be compared to the number of people who were deterred from piracy by the DRM for a game, and as a result actually went and bought the game. I wish I had some kind of solid information on how these groups compare, but just based on anecdotal evidence and some understanding of people's behavioral patterns, I'm personally of the opinion that the groups are either comparable in size, or that the group deterred from buying by DRM is a bit larger than the group prompted to buy due to DRM.
Gundato: Do the costs of DRM and the benefits of DRM balance out? Honestly, I don't think they do with things like limited activation models, but I do when it comes to simple (and complex) disc checks.
I actually agree on this, provided that the disc check doesn't cause any problems and doesn't get in the way of people actually using the game. For instance, the implementation of the Securom disc check in Fallout 3 seemed to be pretty terrible and caused quite a few people problems, and I personally had an issue with the disc check for HOMM5 failing for some reason (although in a delicious bit of irony a NoCD crack fixed them problem quite nicely).
Gundato: I also think that models like Steam/Impulse and the new crap EA is trying with emphasis on DLC are the way to go. They provide an incentive to keep legal while providing minimal hassle to the user (and if you are going to complain about internet connections, just go to a different website :p).
While Steam and Impulse seem to be doing quite well, I think developers will end up losing out on quite a few sales for games that are Steam/Impulse exclusives. This is not necessarily due to DRM, but rather simply due to sales being limited to people who are aware of and use those particular distribution channels. Generally, when selling a product, you want it available through as much distribution channels as is economical. An exception can be when exclusivity can drive sales through brand image (e.g. Apple), but that doesn't apply to most games. Additionally, while heavily hyped games can draw people to a distribution channel they otherwise wouldn't have used, the rest of the games will often get a "meh, not worth it" response if the customer is being asked to go out of their way to buy it.
As for the DLC approach, I'm still waiting to see how it plays out for DA:O, but I think it will ultimately be a method that can work for heavily hyped AAA titles, but which will fall flat for the rest of games available. I also think it will become much less effective if more companies start picking it up, simply due to consumers becoming overwhelmed by the amount of DLC being offered and ultimately just tuning it out (similar to how most people learn to tune out shovelware).
Gundato: But I am not an economist, and I am also not privy to sales figures, surveys, and the like. If you guys who so definitively know that DRM is "bad" and "not good" and the like can point me to these studies, please do so. Until then, I am going to have to assume that the people who are making money have reasons.
For the record, for FY 2009 EA lost $1.1 billion, so don't be too quick to assume the big players are raking in money without first consulting their actual earnings reports (also for the record, Activision-Blizzard reported $4 billion in revenue but I couldn't find their net income, Ubisoft reported a net gain of €109.8 million, Take-Two reported a net gain of $97.1 million, and THQ reported a net loss of $431.1 million). It's also important to recognize that just because folks may be in charge of a large company it doesn't mean they are making good decisions or informed decisions (I thought the fiasco with the banks would have taught everyone that).
Now, I actually have a little story to tell, although it also serves as a decent analogy to DRM. Shoplifting has always been a problem for brick-and-mortar retailers, even more so than piracy for purveyors of digital goods, since when something is physically stolen the shop owner actually loses money on it regardless of whether the person stealing it would have bought it. So naturally there's quite a bit of motivation to figure out effective methods for loss prevention in retail. One fad that some large chains implemented over the past decade was to stop people at the door when leaving the store, insist that they produce a receipt, then look through their bags to make sure that the contents matched the receipt. Thing is, this method cost quite a bit (for paying the staff standing at the doors), and also did a wonderful job alienating customers (shocker, that one). Two chains I particularly remember engaging in this practice were CompUSA and Circuit City... guess where those two chains are now? (In case you aren't aware, CompUSA underwent a massive liquidation from 2007-2008 going from 140+ stores to under 30, and was then sold off, while Circuit City went into chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2008 and was then sold off in 2009). Now, was this because of checking people's bags at the door? Ha! It was due to a series of poor management decisions, of which customer-alienating practices was only one. However, in these cases you had highly paid professionals, who had all the numbers, and still made a bunch of very poor decisions. Hopefully this at least illustrates the folly in thinking that the folks in charge, having access to more information than us, must have a good idea what they're doing. Never cease to question the decisions being made, using whatever information is available, and coming to your own conclusions, even if those who
should have better information come to different conclusions. If those other folks think they're right, then let them explain themselves.
Gundato: I also love how anyone who isn't vehemently opposed to DRM must be a security freak who touches themselves to the thought of having their "liberteez" taken away :p.
I'm probably more of a "security freak" than you or most folks here, in that I find security quite interesting and regularly read theory, commentary, and case studies regarding security as it applies to numerous situations. Something that results from this is learning to differentiate between
actual security practices (which is often invisible to most people) and the
appearance of security, which despite announcing itself loudly (of by inconveniencing people) does very little to make anything more secure. One also comes to realize that security is always about trade-offs, and as a result you have to keep in mind what your ultimate goal actually is (security, or something else that security only contributes to) and consider whether the trade-offs being made for the sake of security work against your goal more than the security you gain works towards your goal.