How Gamers and Publishers can end the DRM issue

From DAMNLAG.com:

"Digital Rights Management and piracy are touchy subjects in the PC gaming community. On one side you have the consumers, who defend their right to do whatever they want to with a product after it’s purchased. On the other you have game developers and publishers, who feel pressure to add DRM restrictions to games to combat the loss of sales, sales which anti-DRM gamers say is nonexistent."

[giantchicken]

We just need to get rid of all these damn pirates.

[ER-AM]

The problem isn't just pirates, it's also the DRM schemes that make piracy so attractive. There will always be people who will steal just because they can, for whatever reason they use to justify it. However, the more draconian the DRM, the greater the number of pirates for that game. When DRM punishes legal purchasers, it drives people to pirate. Which, in turn, drives more draconian DRM schemes. It's a vicious cycle and services like Steam do really seem to be the only way to effectively combat piracy without punishing people who legally buy the game.

[Xanatos2000]

I've had times where I could have bought a game and haven't because pirating is faster, so it's definetly a loss of sales.

[boogeyman999]

Yeah, it needs to be stopped IMO.

[Proxy]

That's a pretty pathetic reason IMO. I've turned down games because they have DRM, but I don't resort to piracy.

[hazelamy]

i agree, spore looked like a great game to me, but i still haven't played it because of the drm.
i'm not going to buy it, and i won't resort to piracy either, if that means i don''t get to play the game, well, that's a price i'm willing to pay to make my stand against drm.

[Sarick]

So why does my copy protected dragon age on ps3 have drm that doesn't allow me to backup saves?

I own the game, I own the dl content and I purchased the game then the drm should be enough to stop access to the extra content. If the drm stops 3rd party users from sharing saves that's perfect because they can't use the dl content or earn trophies unless I am the original user.

[Zinc]

They have changed the wording the agreements now. You don't actually own the game itself anymore and haven't for years. You own the case/box it came in and everything that physically was in it, but the game code is actually being licensed by you from the publisher. This allows them to get away with a lot more than they could before.

I personally don't like that concept and it would be nice if we could fight it. I think there should be a consumer advocacy group for the games industry that focuses on these issues. It might not do a whole lot, but at least we could try, instead of sitting around complaining and not doing anything.

Most people don't even get it, nor do they really even understand the situation or care, they are just happy to play their games.

[Dukeoffl]

Cool beans.

[Mastersnake10]

The best way to end the DRM issue is for developers to get their head of their asses and stop using archaic forumulas.

[GamingForever]

Good ideas!

[DarkPrince]

I agree with this article!

[MechaZain]

People get too caught up in defending piracy as a whole. Like the article says, music piracy can make sense. With video game you're just freeloading.

[ElementX]

What a cliché pic.

[jashmister]

a way to stop piracy? make all game discs come with steam and a special steam archive that installs the game so you don't have to dl it. probably will work for a while.
Piracy cant be stopped only delayed, delaying it with completely useless DRM's is stupid, steam works good enough.

[ER-AM]

Did you not read the article or are you being sarcastic?

[Lykon]

I tend to buy one game every month or two which is well within my budget, but i have been tempted to use pirated versions which are drm free depending on how bad the drm is on the official version. I haven't yet resorted to this, but it has meant that I have avoided games based on amazon reviews which highlight drm issues. the last pirated game i played was the great giana sisters, which was only available as a pirate version on the amiga 500. it was a much better version of mario, but very similar design so it was banned.

[tenmohican]

does not help the drm problem. They need to make it more of a quality game economy. If a game is good they should be able to charge more, if it is bad then ppl pay what they think its worth. They could even make it somewhat reasonable with alternate pay options, such as pay-as-you-use for ppl that get sick of a game after 2 days.. make it $1/day unlimited play uptu 6 hrs or w/e

[hazelamy]

anybody who says piracy isn't a problem is either woefully misinformed or just stupid, but drm is absolutely not the answer.
1: it does not work, piracy has never been stopped with drm for more than a few weeks at best, and usually only for a couple of days.
2: it is counterproductive, any security measure that means law abiding users have a worse experience than the criminals is an abysmal failure, one because at best it will put off potential buyers, and at worst push them towards piracy, that's when you truly get sales lost to piracy, people who would have bought the game but instead decided to pirate.
3: you alienate your customers, keep doing that and they wont be your customers for long, and these publishers need us much more than we need them, if nobody buys their games, people might miss out on a few games, they'll live, however these companies will not survive if nobody buys their games, they'll go out of business.