Is DRM Killing PC Gaming?
The hoopla about Spore is, on the face of it, looking like big deal - there's a massive backlash against the DRM restrictions, particularly in the negative user reviews (many of whom have not even played the game) on Amazon.com. Well, that, and a lot of hardcore gamers are finding that after all the hype and expectation around it for the last three years, it's not really knocking their socks off.

But the arguments are raging around the DRM. Now, as far as I know, except for what basically amounts to online picketing at Amazon.com, the real effect is nothing. Sales may be going just fine. A thousand angry protesters (myself included - I've refused to buy a few PC games now because of DRM issues) may not amount to a hill of beans with hundreds of thousands - if not a million - others buy the game. Or if just a thousand and one would-be-pirates find themselves actually going legit because of the DRM. As far as I know, 99.99% of the gamer public doesn't give a crap about installing a DRMed game - unless it doesn't work.

There has been some impassioned defenses of DRM from people I respect - including articles at Bruce On Games and at GameDevBlog. And of course, there has been some vehement opposition - including contentions that DRM leads to piracy.

I tend to lean in the latter direction, myself. I think it's only a matter of time. If consumers (I say that instead of "customers" - implying that they are and remain potential customers) can get both a superior product and a superior price elsewhere, with the only real downside being an aching conscience... well, it's only a matter of time before we as a society learn to supress that last bit.

People faced a lot more risk and downside acquiring alcohol during Prohibition in the U.S., and we all know how well that worked out. Once our society has adopted filesharing services as part of the information culture as much as email and YouTube, DRM and traditional copy protection as we know it will fail as anything more than a speedbump to piracy.

Therefore, PC gaming, as we know it, is doomed. The pirates will win that battle. However, I feel the future is bright for PC gaming - and I'm not talking about it becoming a ghetto of MMOs, either.

I started getting serious about investing at the beginning of the year. One of the things that has stood out to me about successful investors and entrepreneurs I've talked to and read is that they do not try to impose their will upon the market. That's a losing battle. Instead, they let the markets move them. The successful ones I've met know how to make money when their market is going up, going down, or going sideways. Anticipating the change ahead of time can be rough, but there's a mantra that "the trend is your friend." Fighting it is a loser's game.

And I think we have a clear trend appearing here. Trying to fight it - which is exactly what DRM does - is doomed to failure, and is just a black hole of investment for a business and a pain in the butt for consumers. At best, it has been a mediocre stopgap to deal with the change in times. But we need to look past that.

The key to overcoming the madness is that the version of games available on the torrents and pirate sites are - as I said - a "superior product." I remember, many years ago, when I found myself forced to download a crack for Wing Commander when I couldn't find my documentation one day. I had to go to a shady BBS site (yes, we were using BBS and FTP sites back then - the World Wide Web was still in its infancy. Hard to believe, huh?) and download a crack. And then... gaming bliss! I'd never realized what a pain in the butt the documentation look-up was until I didn't have to do it anymore.

Fortunately, even DRM (when it WORKS) isn't as onerous as document lookup or those awful code-wheels we had to put up with back in the day. But it was at that moment that I realized that the pirates were enjoying a superior product to the one I had purchased in the store - one that allowed them to jump right in and enjoy their game, every time.

It was an ugly revelation. And it remains true today.

I believe that the answer is providing a superior product. And I think it can be done with some of the same technology used to fuel modern DRM schemes. It's not the technology - it's the philosophy.

I think we need a lot less stick and a lot more carrot.

Sure - whatever updates you make to your game, and whatever freebies you provide to your customers that does NOT require them to be logged onto some online server in order to use them WILL be pirated. But - can you, as a game developer, make it far more convenient and easier to get a superior product through legitimate means than through hunting through dangerous warez downloads? Can you make it worth the player's while to actually go through what amounts to a seamless DRM validation check to get an improved experience, without holding a gun to their head and treating them like a criminal? Could you give your customers back the right to resell their game at a later date? Can you let them play their game without getting your permission each time?

Can you treat them as customers, and treat them like you really care about them being your customer?

Stardock is taking that approach, and it has worked out famously for them, with over 500,000 copies of Sins of a Solar Empire sold... what SHOULD have been a a "niche game" that "won't sell" on a "dead platform" that would never have been green-lit by a modern publisher. Oh, and it was DRM-free. But they make it worth your time to be a customer.

Now, I don't know if other publishers can repeat Stardock's exact approach with the same success. Their approach is actually part of their marketing. The "We're different!" rallying cry doesn't work so well when it is merely, "We're different, too, just like those other guys!" But I think Stardock's bold approach - and subsequent success - helps disprove the contention that "hard" DRM is necessary for PC gaming to survive.

In fact, I feel that it is partly to blame for stagnating its growth.

Labels: Biz

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:30 AM (Permalink)