DRM, It Is A Fantasy

“Unless we apply DRM measures, we won’t be able to prevent piracy.”

It sounds true... just joking, it doesn’t.

DRM (or Digital Rights Management, if you have the patience to use it long) was always a part of gamers’ lives. Copy protection, in one way or another, was always a “problematic solution” for developers to fight against piracy. I acknowledge the reality of piracy. Yes, piracy is very much real. OK?

There is a fine line, however, in between the idea of trying to protect your creation and trying to protect a three-piece suit guy’s bank account. There is this strange ethics displayed by gamers; if you are into gaming, you can see that the gamers who actually download  (or buy – weird eh?) pirate copies support a successful game. How come a non-DRM protected indie game without any marketing budget can sell two million copies otherwise? The dark picture that the big companies draw is perhaps not as dire as they claim.

Answer is between the lines. I won’t talk about how DRM hurts the gamers who buy the original games; I’ll rant about it in a later post perhaps. This time, I want to talk a bit about the industry. DRM was just an excuse to talk about it.

The current headings that suround the gaming industry looks rather similar to the “downfall” of the music industry in late 90s and early 2000s. Don’t let the screaming media’s claims like “internet killed the business!” deceive you. The reality is somewhat different.

In late 90s the biggest record labels, also known as the “Big Four”, were pumping low-quality “productions” into the market. Lots of “one hit wonder” artists were being marketed as the next best thing. It was an era of huge investments and farming. The necessity of “finese” was gone - it was all post-production. People who weren’t even able to sing were becoming popstars with hits, with the help of ProTools’ auto-tune features. It was all smoke and mirrors; nothing substantial was going on under the parade we were seeing.

Then the balloon popped. And people lost their interest in music. Moreover, they lost their belief in the quality of music. The perceived value of music dropped down in their eyes, and this led to the fall of the main market. Some of those “Big Four” guys lost their jobs and some of those companies lost their assets, even their names. Internet didn’t kill the music; it merely changed the game. It was a great thing to blame, so everyone blamed it.

Let us turn back to the DRM issue and how these two things are connected...

Today’s gaming is roughly seperated into two fields: Massive AAA productions and indie or low-budget small team productions, like XBLA games or indie titles.

It is undeniable that there are some previously untouchable AAA games that are now turning out as financial disasters. We are starting to read news about companies announcing millions of losses in their fiscal reports. There are even studios closing down due to monetary issues.

Is this a sign that history is ready to repeat itself in our generation’s flavour-of-the-month industry?  Does this mean the passion - the value of creating a game, which is an art - is gone? It is more about a tendency towards the “make me rich” attitude sometimes displayed by a board of directors. DRM is there to “assure” these guys that their income is secure so that they can buy themselves new yachts.

Do you think that the millions of dollars earned from some of the most prolific games always enter the pockets of artists who worked for 16 hours a day to meet harsh deadlines? No; like in every other layer of life, there can be a pyramid system here, seeing the directors earning more than their fair share. That pyramid hurts the business. We know the harsh truth by now; business can be such a dirty word at times...

People’s natural skepticism has grown and this creates a tendency for us to hate big companies and love small ones. This is why we see some independent games sell quite well. Small studios eventually turn into successes while we see big titles with lots of media pumping fail. Why?

They create something without being forced to think about some rich guy’s assets and are able to really focus on their passion. The passion is totally evident in the outcome and the pricing is not artificially inflated by brand markups.

GOG.com is a great example of a passionate company with an indie core. Development companies screamed out for years about how abandonware (old games that are no longer being sold) are hurting them. GOG.com started an abandonware marketplace and they are now past the six million sales mark. Those free abandonware sites are still online; people could have gone there to get the games they wanted for free. But no, they paid.

If you spend a Hollywood budget on a computer game, recouping money would be your first priority for sure. We won’t slay the corporations for this logical assumption. You would try to cover your backend with all kinds of safety measures, but should you really sacrifice the consumers’ interests or transparency in order to secure wealth? DRMs, paid reviews and altered critic scores are the dark side of profit protection that consumers are rebelling against.

I am not saying that all AAA titles are total disasters, but this year the biggest surprises came from those studios with passion rather than with budget. Their sales figures were positive and their games were DRM free. Some even announced that they hate DRM. You probably know about whom I am referring to. I support their cause and I will buy their games no matter how much I like it, unless they change their attitude.

You see, I am not one; I am one of many. The problem is not about internet, or piracy, or downloading. Piracy was always there. In the 90s, you were able to go to the shops and buy copied games on CD, imported from Bulgaria or Thailand or Russia. Those were very easy to find and are just an earlier version of the same thing we see online.

There are many reasons why people illegally download a game, though money is a large factor. Consumers being unwilling to pay for a game is not simply about economics, though; it also reflects the lower product value that corporations have created in those gamers’ eyes. Gamers are devoted fans. They act like any sort of fan would act; don’t overprice it, don’t overproduce it, don’t underestimate the reaction of gamers. Otherwise, you will always battle with a crowd against your DRMs, ERMs, ZRMs etc. Remember, if there is a copy protection, there is a crack, and fans will not tolerate corporate values overtaking their needs forever.

As it is said over the net;

"You are doing it wrong".

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