Anonymous game developer comments on DRM, Piracy, and EA issues

An anonymous game developer went on reddit.com and explained to the community on why the gaming industry is the way-it-is in a surprising multi-paragraph statement that explains DRM, piracy, and the current EA boycott in the developer's eyes. Find out everything he said after the break!

[Shackdaddy836]

Why don't you guys do something useful like attack lulzsec instead of writing an essay about something everyone knows about.

[Easterishere]

I actually prefer this article. The last thing we need is another one about lulzsec.

[LoVeRSaMa]

DRM does not work for piracy, its just annoying for people who do not pirate, the pirates can remove DRM like removing an outdated floppy disc from an outdated floppy drive.

DLC should be an after market additional product, it should not be eating up production time of the games initial release, DLC isnt always the important, and Map packs are not even that hard for them to make normally, we should make a stand to show the industry not to try and squeeze us for every dollar.

[Nitrowolf2]

wow you do know this guy has NOTHING to do with the hacking group? He is supposedly a game developer.

Just because it has Anonymous is the title/name doesn't mean its from the hackers.

[BakedGoods]

lol, you failed to read the article. C'mon man.

[Shackdaddy836]

Ya. That was a big fail by me. First comment too :/

[gamingdroid]

LOL! At least you owned up to it.

[Eamon]

lol it's rare to find people who own up.

[Warprincess116]

“DRM exists because people pirate games…that’s the way it is“

I hope you PC fanboys read this because im tired of you guys whining about DRM.

[gamingdroid]

Yes, but what about the people that paid for the game?

People that legitimately bought the game is getting shafted, while at any moment in time (and may I say with less hassle than going to the store), I can download the game.

Did it stop pirates? Did it stop legitimate paying customers from playing the PURCHASED game?

http://playnoevil.com/seren...

Frankly, given the choice I will just pirate it myself. However, I'm a console gamer so it for the most part doesn't affect me nor do I condone piracy, but I sympathize with PC gamers.

[RememberThe357]

So DRM should only be for people who pirate games? DRM sucks because it hasn't worked very well so far. But the reason it's there is because publishers and developers have to protect their product. And since people can share information freely over the internet they have to do something.

DRM is a result of piracy you can try to argue it and talk about how it doesn't work but the cause and effect or there.

If you had 20 million dollars and years of work invested in a project, you'd do what you could to protect it too. Gamers are worried about being inconvenienced but developers are worried about how they're going to pay their staff. The developers complaints seem to hold more weight.

[BlackTar187]

Bravo 357 great post

[gamingdroid]

I don't disagree with your post, but DRM is also used to limit access to legally purchased games. An example is limits on how many times you can install the game.

I think basic DRM to prevent casual copying is fine, but you really should question who the publisher is putting the burden on, their paying customers or the freeloaders?

There's got to be a balance, and personally if I were forced to live with the draconian DRM, I would just pirate the damn thing and say fekk you!

The way it is right now, you are rewarding pirates and punishing legal owners.

Case in point, digital music is the easiest and fastest to pirate, yet the likes of iTunes are having record sales. NO DRM NEEDED!

The other side of the coin is also the fact that pirates can be potentially converted to customers. After all, if they use your product they like it.

[Eamon]

The truth behind DRM is that it was made to stop used game buyers. Most DRM games get hacked by people on the net who release the crack afterwards.

I know a lot of legitimate PC gamers who buy the game then download the crack to save the headache of online DRM.

I think game companies are well aware that these methods never stop the hacker. Meaning these were made to stop people from buying the game second hand.

[BeastlyRig]

no platfrom is perfect..

This is caused by consoles.

"…Most DLC is created before the game is finished. More often than not, we are approached 50-60 percent into the development cycle of a game and asked how we want to handle content post production." - article.

you guys pay more for a lesser experience!
& I know ur a cod/360 fanboy so you pay for online like a dumby!

[Kon]

You know...DRM exists in consoles too, you may want to do some research.

[BlackKnight]

Here we go, warprincess out to dis anything that is PC/Xbox related.

Seriously, go play you PS3 like the ridiculous fanboy/girl you are.

You are a JOKE.

[ATiElite]

STFU! you know ZERO!

DRM started because music and movie companies wanted to stop the digital copying of music and movies. Back in the mid 1996 DRM was being used to scramble DVD's

DRM at that point and time had ZERO to do with PC titles. Then when DRM finally came to PC Games it was to enforce limited game installations and not pirating.

Obviously that was bypassed as PC Gamers began upgrading Mobos every 3 months (New Mobo = New PC to software) so therefore they would have to reinstall games.

Now even more Medievil DRM started being attached to PC Games like that Nazi made Starforce which would kill your PC so after that Bullshite software did it's damage PC Gamers said the hell with DRM and thus the Piracy Wars began.

Sony BMG and Starforce using Nazi made DRM software that would crash your PC is the reason Piracy took off. Cracks lowered Piracy but shitty console ports raised Piracy back. (No PC Gamer in their right mind is gonna pay $60 for a console port).

Last but not least countries like Brazil where game prices are totally outrageous have the highest pirates. The U.S. actually is not even in the top 5.

Italy, Brazil, China, Spain, and France

Lower the prices of games in these countries and Pirating will go down. I wouldn't pay $200 for a video game and you wouldn't either.

[-X-]

you sir get bubz!!!!!! BUBZZZZ!!!!!!
BUUUUUUUUUUUUUBZZZZZZZZ!!!! Its comments like yours that actually make me read comments!

[thisguywithhair]

DRM exists because if it didn't shareholders would lose confidence in their investments. DLC exists to assure the shareholders that the developers are doing everything they can in order to maximize sales, if they didn't the shareholder would lose confidence in the developers.

Before any of you bash and criticize something at least try to imagine why it exists from a business standpoint.

[Tapioca Cold]

So Anonymous are developing games now. I've about had it with these guys!

[BeOneWithTheGun]

I hope you are being sarcastic because the article has nothing to do with Anonymous the crackers, rather an anonymous game developer explaining DRM.

[Thecraft1989]

I think this guy speaks crap.

DRM is fine as long as it dose not require constant internet access and I'm not limit to so many installs.

Now Cloud base gaming will not happen for a very along time if ever. The internet has not evolved enough. A lot of PC gamers that pride themselves in making amazing machine might not have bandwidth to play there games at max settings 1080p+. It would also demolish nivdia and ATI market and that I doubt they would let it go.

I will stick to building for as long as can and would probably stop PC gaming if it came to cloud gaming as the chances of cable ever appearing in my area is extremely low.

[EagleBurn]

I'm just saying. I don't think game developers/publishers care about the ATI and Nivdia market.

[Awesome-Xanto]

"Digitally Download your games. The sooner retail stores are mostly out of the equation, the sooner some of these aspects of the industry might dissipate."

SCREW THAT!!!

Until ISP's start supporting rural America & small towns, and lets be honest here... a majority of America is made up of rural area & small towns, this will never happen. As digital downloading gets more popular, bandwidth limits are getting worse. Don't believe me, look at Comcast... one of the top ISP's in the US, and as of 2008 it has a 250GB limit per month when it use to have NONE. ISP's are not going to allow there customers to burn up bandwidth by watching movies and downloading games or streaming games (stupid Onlive) as much as you want.

When iTunes came out, everyone said music CD's would no longer be sold and movies as-well. Then when Netflix came out everyone said movies would no longer be bought then too. But I can still find every new music CD and new movie at retail, so it's rather obvious people still buy retail.

There will always be a market for retail while this issues are still present... not to mention the human mentality of actually owning something.

[ATiElite]

DRM started because music and movie companies wanted to stop the digital copying of music and movies. Back in the mid 1996 DRM was being used to scramble DVD's

DRM at that point and time had ZERO to do with PC titles. Then when DRM finally came to PC Games it was to enforce limited game installations and not pirating.

Obviously that was bypassed as PC Gamers began upgrading Mobos every 3 months (New Mobo = New PC to software) so therefore they would have to reinstall games.

Now even more Medievil DRM started being attached to PC Games like that Nazi made Starforce which would kill your PC so after that Bullshite software did it's damage PC Gamers said the hell with DRM and thus the Piracy Wars began.

Sony BMG and Starforce using Nazi made DRM software that would crash your PC is the reason Piracy took off. Cracks lowered Piracy but shitty console ports raised Piracy back. (No PC Gamer in their right mind is gonna pay $60 for a console port).

Last but not least countries like Brazil where game prices are totally outrageous have the highest pirates. The U.S. actually is not even in the top 5.

Italy, Brazil, China, Spain, and France

Lower the prices of games in these countries and Pirating will go down. I wouldn't pay $200 for a video game and you wouldn't either.

[maddfoxx]

The Reason developers get away with DLC is because people are stupid enough to pay for them. I admit some DLC is worth the price, but its wrong for developers to expect of to pay for stuff that was cut from the final product. DLC is popular, because people are willing to spend $7+ on content such as custom character colors for Blazblu. The only DLC I bought and felt like it was worth it was the DLC for warhawk. Even after its popularity died down on PSN, warhawk developers were working on DLC well after the games initial release.

Sorry for any grammar mistakes. I'm too tired to edit this.

[camargo2012]

im a hardcore PC gamer, and let me tell you, DRM only brings lots of problems, one of them for example happened to me:

i bought GTA IV from amazon.com and i couldntt get it to work, Securom gives me an error everytime i open the game, i contacted Rockstar games, and they told me my C++ distributables, were damaged, so what did i do? i reinstalled windows, installed GTA IV again and i still get the same securom error!
my only option was to download a .exe crack which kills securom(DRM) and i finally got GTA IV to work perfectly!! i had this issues with some games, and this is the only way i could get them fixed!