Exactly.
I'm specifically not saying that "all DRM is always bad hurf durf". I'm way past my teens and any infatuation with Che Guevara or whatever.
As far as I am concerned, Steam has given me a lot more benefits than hassles. Hell, I wouldn't have even been able to buy some games without it, considering I live in Brazil. It's my major IM system to talk to people in this forums, which are most of my gaming friends.
Steam has been consistently improving my PC gaming experience the last few years. And that's because Gabe Newell and his fellow Valve dudes understand gaming a hell lot better than the morons at Ubisoft.
Also, the numbers also aren't as hypothetical as people are claiming, since the various game markets on secure platforms provide an excellent control. The same people who pirate on PC are extremely willing to pay for console games, micro-transactions, MMOs, and pretty much anything else that isn't easily available through a torrent. All evidence suggests that the bulk of the PC market pirates when it's easy and pays when they have too.
I completely disagree. People don't pay for MMOs because they're hard to pirate, they pay because pirate servers suck. That's my point. You don't "beat" piracy by fucking with your paying customers, you do it by giving the paying customers a better experience than pirates would get.
I also completely fail to see how would you know that little "Gangsta HAX Joe" who hangs around pirate torrent trackers dully pays for his console games. How would someone establish that link is beyond me. There are no real metrics for that kind of shit.
One last time, and it's the last time for reals:
Sure, some pirates would buy the game if it was unpirateable, but the vast majority wouldn't, for several reasons already mentioned.
Losing sales with bad DRM to get those some pirates is fucking stupid and generates 1) bad press and 2) bad word of mouth. One satisfied customer talks about his good experience to X people. One dissatisfied customer talks to 3X people. That basic business administration shit there, folks, read your Kotler.
Exactly.
I'm specifically not saying that "all DRM is always bad hurf durf". I'm way past my teens and any infatuation with Che Guevara or whatever.
As far as I am concerned, Steam has given me a lot more benefits than hassles. Hell, I wouldn't have even been able to buy some games without it, considering I live in Brazil. It's my major IM system to talk to people in this forums, which are most of my gaming friends.
Steam has been consistently improving my PC gaming experience the last few years. And that's because Gabe Newell and his fellow Valve dudes understand gaming a hell lot better than the morons at Ubisoft.
Also, the numbers also aren't as hypothetical as people are claiming, since the various game markets on secure platforms provide an excellent control. The same people who pirate on PC are extremely willing to pay for console games, micro-transactions, MMOs, and pretty much anything else that isn't easily available through a torrent. All evidence suggests that the bulk of the PC market pirates when it's easy and pays when they have too.
I completely disagree. People don't pay for MMOs because they're hard to pirate, they pay because pirate servers suck. That's my point. You don't "beat" piracy by fucking with your paying customers, you do it by giving the paying customers a better experience than pirates would get.
I also completely fail to see how would you know that little "Gangsta HAX Joe" who hangs around pirate torrent trackers dully pays for his console games. How would someone establish that link is beyond me. There are no real metrics for that kind of shit.
One last time, and it's the last time for reals:
Sure, some pirates would buy the game if it was unpirateable, but the vast majority wouldn't, for several reasons already mentioned.
Losing sales with bad DRM to get those some pirates is fucking stupid and generates 1) bad press and 2) bad word of mouth. One satisfied customer talks about his good experience to X people. One dissatisfied customer talks to 3X people. That basic business administration shit there, folks, read your Kotler.
Funny thing on the whole unauthorised servers thing, a while back after I stopped playing WoW and after about a year of not playing I downloaded, compiled and setup one of those servers (arcemu) in a vm to have a look and there were all sorts of issues. It was sort of interesting in a sandboxy way giving yourself the ultimate mount, armour, gold etc. Or being able to fly in Azeroth without the need of a mount.
Ultimately I'd say a few things will prevent private servers from ever becoming popular, bugs (there are plenty), the lack of people (I was the only one on the server obviously since it was just on my home lan for a few days whilst I messed around, although on private servers i'm guessing they can't have that many people on) and the patience of the server admin keeping it running, updated etc.
Also, I obviously no longer play WoW.. I gave it up in 2008 and the only time I had a look after that was to mess on that private server in a vm for a few days.
By the way, best way to go cold turkey with a MMO.. go on holiday to Australia for a few weeks, it forces you to stop playing and then when you get back you can simply cancel your sub.
GrimReaper on
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I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
I never said that the loss caused by piracy is zero.
My point is that one should not sacrifice one's customer base chasing pirates. Trading the money your were gonna get for the money you maybe thought that perhaps you might get if the practically incalculable conversion rate is above X% is pretty fucking dumb.
That's as simple as I can put it.
And pardon me if I have zero respect for the knowledge of the big publisher executives. I'd rather side with the likes of Gabe Newell and the Stardock dude. I mentioned MY OWN "empiric and logical evidence" because there is no research about none of that shit, and I've been messing around with PC games for 20 years.
If your point is that the money lost to piracy is > zero, sure, I agree.
EDIT: yeah, I agree with Travathian. There is ZERO mathematical basis for making the risk calculation. It's an unknown variable.
You said you thought that 1 sale lost from DRM was worse than 10,000 lost from pirates. That seems to imply something quite outlandish about the piracy->lost sale rate and is the entire reason I'm arguing against you.
Also, "your own" empiric and logical evidence is no such thing. That's just another way of saying "take my word for it."
Finally, just because you don't know the exact number for a variable doesn't mean you should assume it's 0. Assuming it's 0 is a more egregious error than attempting a sane estimate of the range.
I just forgot about that cost, I didn't assume it didn't exist. Anyway my main point stands: it's still a tradeoff.
Right, it is a tradeoff of paying actual money up front for potential money in the future. Given how quickly DRM schemes are broken it sounds like a shitty investment to me. Especially considering the bs that DRM creators spread about the preventing 'lost sales' aspect of their product. I think your 10% conversion rate of pirates into real customer is very, very high. There is rampant piracy in SE Asia, you think DRM suddenly makes all these people fork over full price for a game instead of pennies on the dollar from a counterfeiter? Bzzzt, no.
Again, you are trading money in hand right now, for a potential gain in the future, based on incredibly suspect data. This isn't like investing in the stock market where you can pull SEC statements and read research on these companies. We're talking about a huge population with various reasons for pirating games, some of which absolutely will never turn to legitimate game sales. Every dollar a game company spends on DRM is money they could be spending making their product more attractive to actual game buyers.
You are failing to get the point. You can take piracy in Asia into account when you make your estimate of money gained. And you're doing more handwaving about pirates. Some will never turn to legitimate game sales? Is that number 90%? You think the conversion rate is below 10%? If this rate is unknowable, how are you so sure of that? Also, did you consider that even a conversion rate of 5% in many cases justifies an extraordinary effort towards making DRM? Are you absolutely certain that in all cases, the costs from DRM must outweigh the benefits? You are asserting that companies are making bad choices because they don't conform to your handwaving estimates.
And say you're in a market where for every copy you sell, 4 copies are pirated and your development costs are several million. Does it make more sense to throw a few thousand about converting some of your pirates, or just completely ignore it and throw that little bit back on general development? Do you know about the concept of diminishing returns?
RandomEngy on
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You are failing to get the point. You can take piracy in Asia into account when you make your estimate of money gained. And you're doing more handwaving about pirates. Some will never turn to legitimate game sales? Is that number 90%? You think the conversion rate is below 10%? If this rate is unknowable, how are you so sure of that? Also, did you consider that even a conversion rate of 5% in many cases justifies an extraordinary effort towards making DRM? Are you absolutely certain that in all cases, the costs from DRM must outweigh the benefits? You are asserting that companies are making bad choices because they don't conform to your handwaving estimates.
And say you're in a market where for every copy you sell, 4 copies are pirated and your development costs are several million. Does it make more sense to throw a few thousand about converting some of your pirates, or just completely ignore it and throw that little bit back on general development? Do you know about the concept of diminishing returns?
The point is that we don't know anything. It could be 10%, it could be .1%, it could be infinitesimal. That's the point. They are sacrificing actual values for completely unknown ones, and that is generally considered a bad idea.
You are failing to get the point. You can take piracy in Asia into account when you make your estimate of money gained. And you're doing more handwaving about pirates. Some will never turn to legitimate game sales? Is that number 90%? You think the conversion rate is below 10%? If this rate is unknowable, how are you so sure of that? Also, did you consider that even a conversion rate of 5% in many cases justifies an extraordinary effort towards making DRM? Are you absolutely certain that in all cases, the costs from DRM must outweigh the benefits? You are asserting that companies are making bad choices because they don't conform to your handwaving estimates.
And say you're in a market where for every copy you sell, 4 copies are pirated and your development costs are several million. Does it make more sense to throw a few thousand about converting some of your pirates, or just completely ignore it and throw that little bit back on general development? Do you know about the concept of diminishing returns?
The point is that we don't know anything. It could be 10%, it could be .1%, it could be infinitesimal. That's the point. They are sacrificing actual values for completely unknown ones, and that is generally considered a bad idea.
I think he's just arguing for the sake of arguing. The fact that business work with risk does not mean that they take any fucking risk without any numbers whatsoever.
Sure, the rate could theoretically be 99%, but I know about pirates and piracy, I know how a lot of them think and act, and my INTUITION tells me it's pretty fucking low.
I don't even know what's he trying to prove anymore... That Ubisoft's new DRM scheme was a master strike of genius? That having a system that goes offline so damn easily, thus stopping all your PC customers from playing your fucking game is a great idea? That turning the pirated game a better version than the legit one is something to be praised?
They are not completely unknown. 10%, and heck, 25% are more probable than 100, 0 or .1%. AGAIN, just because you are faced with uncertainty doesn't mean that any risk you decide to take is a bad choice.
To illustrate: Say I walked up to you and gave you a proposition: You give me $50 and I will give you $100 for every piano tuner that lives in the Seattle area. You aren't allowed to do any research beforehand. How many piano tuners are there? You don't even know. You don't know any piano tuners personally and don't own a piano. But you can probably guess that in a city that large, there's probably a lot of people that own pianos and may need them tuned. And there's probably enough to cover your bet. You didn't know for sure the numbers involved, but you had enough information to make a decision.
Sure, the rate could theoretically be 99%, but I know about pirates and piracy, I know how a lot of them think and act, and my INTUITION tells me it's pretty fucking low.
I don't even know what's he trying to prove anymore... That Ubisoft's new DRM scheme was a master strike of genius? That having a system that goes offline so damn easily, thus stopping all your PC customers from playing your fucking game is a great idea? That turning the pirated game a better version than the legit one is something to be praised?
This has all along been about the mistaken attitude that including DRM is always a bad business decision.
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They are not completely unknown. 10%, and heck, 25% are more probable than 100, 0 or .1%. AGAIN, just because you are faced with uncertainty doesn't mean that any risk you decide to take is a bad choice.
We have never had any study worth anything that has come up with reliable figures of this sort. If I'm mistaken, and you have actual figures, I'd like to see them.
They are not completely unknown. 10%, and heck, 25% are more probable than 100, 0 or .1%. AGAIN, just because you are faced with uncertainty doesn't mean that any risk you decide to take is a bad choice.
We have never had any study worth anything that has come up with reliable figures of this sort. If I'm mistaken, and you have actual figures, I'd like to see them.
Please, point out where I said I had reliable figures. Or where any of what I've been arguing relies on them.
RandomEngy on
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If you cannot establish any reliability in terms of sources, then you cannot give a probability estimate worth anything. Seriously this is statistics (and common sense) 101.
I don't know why you'd bring up Gabe Newell since he's in charge of the largest online DRM service available.
Also, the numbers also aren't as hypothetical as people are claiming, since the various game markets on secure platforms provide an excellent control. The same people who pirate on PC are extremely willing to pay for console games, micro-transactions, MMOs, and pretty much anything else that isn't easily available through a torrent. All evidence suggests that the bulk of the PC market pirates when it's easy and pays when they have too.
Watch Gabe Newell's speech on "Gaming as a service".
Valve's design philosophy is to provide a superior product than the pirated product, and he flatly says "we aren't quite there yet".
His belief is that if you make a paying customer have access to things a non paying customer doesn't, piracy will reduce - you won't eliminate it because there are a fuckton of people who will just never pay for games ever, but you gain customers, which Gabe believes should be the focus rather than stopping pirates.
DRM is a necessity, but for every one ounce of "FFFUUUUUUUUUUU" you give your customer via DRM, you should give them a pound of "this is pretty sweet"
In addition he pretty bluntly accuses publishers of overpricing a great number of products. Some things just won't sell for $50. He then demonstrated that online specials, free weekends, and whatnot can create more revenue (not sales, but revenue) than a game does when it launches at retail. They had a free weekend/50% off sale or something for Left 4 Dead and showed the data that it generated significantly more in terms of actual dollars than it did during its launch week.
This has all along been about the mistaken attitude that including DRM is always a bad business decision.
Then I have no fucking idea why are you so intent on disagreeing with me, because I said several times that "normal", unintrusive DRM like cdkeys and simple disk checks (not fucking Starforce) are fine.
I think in 2010 online activation is fine too, as long as you don't need 24/7 internet access to play it.
Not requiring the disc if you are connected to the internet on startup is even better.
edit: actually for incredibly high profile games online activation can be problematic because often companies don't have sufficient server load to handle it
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
edited April 2010
Online activation is fine, but needing a constant internet connection, or regularly 'reactivating' is not. If it checks once, and it's legal, that should be enough. My legally purchased copy is not going to become less legal overnight.
I honestly like Bad Company 2's method, and I hope EA sticks with that system and not the system in CnC 4. You install, and get asked if you would like to activate online, which happens once, after which the game disc is not needed, or leave it as a disc check. So people who can't activate online can do the old disc in tray check, and for people who can, they can put the disc away once it's installed and play away. You don't even need to be online after installation, it'll never need the disc in the tray.
Online activation is fine, but needing a constant internet connection, or regularly 'reactivating' is not. If it checks once, and it's legal, that should be enough. My legally purchased copy is not going to become less legal overnight.
I honestly like Bad Company 2's method, and I hope EA sticks with that system and not the system in CnC 4. You install, and get asked if you would like to activate online, which happens once, after which the game disc is not needed, or leave it as a disc check. So people who can't activate online can do the old disc in tray check, and for people who can, they can put the disc away once it's installed and play away. You don't even need to be online after installation, it'll never need the disc in the tray.
No, fuck any DRM with limited activations, including BC2.
Online activation is fine, but needing a constant internet connection, or regularly 'reactivating' is not. If it checks once, and it's legal, that should be enough. My legally purchased copy is not going to become less legal overnight.
I honestly like Bad Company 2's method, and I hope EA sticks with that system and not the system in CnC 4. You install, and get asked if you would like to activate online, which happens once, after which the game disc is not needed, or leave it as a disc check. So people who can't activate online can do the old disc in tray check, and for people who can, they can put the disc away once it's installed and play away. You don't even need to be online after installation, it'll never need the disc in the tray.
No, fuck any DRM with limited activations, including BC2.
Which is why it's strictly optional in BC2. You can opt for plain disc checks if you wanted, no activations required. EA also removed SecuROM from the Steam version.
Believe me, they're actually being pretty progressive with that game.
I think in 2010 online activation is fine too, as long as you don't need 24/7 internet access to play it.
Not requiring the disc if you are connected to the internet on startup is even better.
edit: actually for incredibly high profile games online activation can be problematic because often companies don't have sufficient server load to handle it
As someone who lives in the sticks, I will say that online activations can be extremely problematic. Lots of folks out there don't have internet connections. Soldiers deployed overseas etc...
His belief is that if you make a paying customer have access to things a non paying customer doesn't, piracy will reduce
And the industry agrees. That's why Ubisoft's DRM effectively allowed paying customers to play the game a month earlier than pirates - several months if they bought the game on a console.
I submit that playing the game earlier is an incentive.
His belief is that if you make a paying customer have access to things a non paying customer doesn't, piracy will reduce
And the industry agrees. That's why Ubisoft's DRM effectively allowed paying customers to play the game a month earlier than pirates - several months if they bought the game on a console.
I submit that playing the game earlier is an incentive.
Which is a whole other point. Games always get released months ahead of time on consoles and then the companies wonder why people aren't biting as much when they finally get around to putting out the PC version? Must be piracy, I guess.
To be fair, even a release like L4D2, which was simultanuous and favors PC demographics and is arguably the "superior version" (Moddability and all that), still sold as much, if not more, on 360 as PC (I couldn't find precise numbers, but when it sold 2.5m copies, they also published "over 1m people played on Live").
The overall stats say console market:PC market ~ 12:1 at the moment. (In US$, in the US, by ESA 08 figures). (Brick & Mortar sales, no MMO subscription fees, but still). I'm not a doomsayer about the PC market, but it's a relatively small market, and what comes out on it, is mostly directed by that fact.
His belief is that if you make a paying customer have access to things a non paying customer doesn't, piracy will reduce
And the industry agrees. That's why Ubisoft's DRM effectively allowed paying customers to play the game a month earlier than pirates - several months if they bought the game on a console.
I submit that playing the game earlier is an incentive.
I'm pretty sure that for most DRM it only works for one game. After that it's kind of a free-for-all.
To be fair, even a release like L4D2, which was simultanuous and favors PC demographics and is arguably the "superior version" (Moddability and all that), still sold as much, if not more, on 360 as PC (I couldn't find precise numbers, but when it sold 2.5m copies, they also published "over 1m people played on Live").
The overall stats say console market:PC market ~ 12:1 at the moment. (In US$, in the US, by ESA 08 figures). (Brick & Mortar sales, no MMO subscription fees, but still). I'm not a doomsayer about the PC market, but it's a relatively small market, and what comes out on it, is mostly directed by that fact.
Look, I'm not going to argue that the console market is vastly larger than the PC one, but those are some pretty hefty qualifiers you have there.
1) PC games cost less at the most basic level, because they don't have to pay the fixed fee to console manufacturers. A PC game costs £30 at retail here, a console one anywhere between £40 and £50. Only the manufacturers see this extra profit - publishers receive the same amount for either version.
2) The US, whilst the biggest market in the world, is not the only market. PC gaming is massive in Asia and Europe, and in some parts (notably the Eastern Bloc and China) greatly outnumbers console sales.
3) Who buys 'bricks and mortar' anymore? At least in the UK, that equates on average to an extra 33% spent on every game relative to buying it on Amazon and the like, postage included. Digital distribution isn't nearly as big, but still represents a decent chunk of games buying. To discount around half of all sales made isn't really sensible. Whilst GAME, Gamestop and the like are huge, they've grown fat off the backs of second hand sales which generate exactly nil profit for publishers.
4) No MMO subscription fees? I'm no fan, but you have to look at the numbers involved in Warcraft, Farmville, and any numbers of crappy Korean MMOs and be a little impressed. In some parts of the world, these fees represent the only form of legitimate income the games industry can generate!
I'm not saying there isn's a massive disparity between market size - merely that those stats seem filtered to paint as unfavourable a picture as possible.
His belief is that if you make a paying customer have access to things a non paying customer doesn't, piracy will reduce
And the industry agrees. That's why Ubisoft's DRM effectively allowed paying customers to play the game a month earlier than pirates - several months if they bought the game on a console.
I submit that playing the game earlier is an incentive.
Ahahaha, no.
Is today opposite day? Did you even read anything about that piece of shit DRM? Are you making a joke?
I think in 2010 online activation is fine too, as long as you don't need 24/7 internet access to play it.
Not requiring the disc if you are connected to the internet on startup is even better.
edit: actually for incredibly high profile games online activation can be problematic because often companies don't have sufficient server load to handle it
As someone who lives in the sticks, I will say that online activations can be extremely problematic. Lots of folks out there don't have internet connections. Soldiers deployed overseas etc...
Heck yes.
I have a connection, but my bandwidth is limited enough that I turn off my wireless switch while reading individual pages in a thread just to stop the internet gremlins from talking with one another.
No way I'm going to leave the net connected just to play a game. With this system I can understand the peg-leggers.
His belief is that if you make a paying customer have access to things a non paying customer doesn't, piracy will reduce
And the industry agrees. That's why Ubisoft's DRM effectively allowed paying customers to play the game a month earlier than pirates - several months if they bought the game on a console.
I submit that playing the game earlier is an incentive.
Which is a whole other point. Games always get released months ahead of time on consoles and then the companies wonder why people aren't biting as much when they finally get around to putting out the PC version? Must be piracy, I guess.
Which is a huge issue and part of the problem. Companies like Ubisoft literally and deliberately hold back the PC release of games now out of nebulous fears that PC releases will collapse console market sales (Look up Endwar sometime, Ubisoft pretty explicitly state that as the reason), sometimes for months, and then complain when it doesn't get nearly the reception they were expecting. That's ridiculous, I don't make any reservation to saying that. Games have their most CRUCIAL sales period within the first few weeks of release, up to maybe a couple of months. That's where the vast majority of the sales comes from. So then you go ahead and delay the PC release of the game past the main release date, past the hype, past the gigantic marketing campaign (and for big budget titles today, marketing literally comes to as much or more than the development cost now. A marketing campaign all focussed down to one event: The release period), past the point where anyone cares about the game and into a sales period where it's competing against other huge AAA titles being released targeting that platform.
And THEN you expect your magnificent sales?
Meanwhile you get companies like Bethesda and Bioware doing simultaneous releases, and even going so far as to say that they managed to do well on the PC because they tried to cater to the PC market in those ways. You'll note that aside from the interface differences between PC and console versions of Dragon Age and amongst other things, they sim-shipped, and that the PC version also had very unrestrictive DRM (just a disc check) coupled with some DLC addons to encourage original purchases (as opposed to piracy or second-hand). This is also the approach they adopted with Mass Effect. And most important to keep in mind, this is following Mass Effect 1 which had a more restrictive DRM scheme that included install limits, and came out six months after the console release.
So yeah, Bioware tried that, and surprisingly, opted for a different route this time. I'm not even going to try and claim that those games didn't suffer piracy either. But clearly they opted on a different approach for a reason. So either they are spectacularly thick for rejecting the previous model, or they felt the current one works better.
It's a question of which approach nets you the greater profit, that is the end line that they really need to be looking at.
I know the numbers I picked may seem to be picked to make the PC look unfavorable, but it's more a case of "the only numbers I could find." The report I looked at contained sales in "units shipped", and it did favor the PC more (Going to about 10:1) but I felt that those may be steered to much by bargain bin games (Which can be $5 or less and really distort the figure, while barely affecting the $ figure, and I think bargain bin sales are not a focus of any big devevloper/publisher).
There is very little information I know off about how much games are sold by internet shops (for which I doubt there is a large gap between PC games and Console games, all the same reasons to go digital apply to both) / digital distrubition (which is big on the PC, but may have a significant presence via XBL and PSN on consoles too). Interestingly, That DA article does talk about a $150m quarter for EA's digital distribution. That seems very high, I wonder if it counts MMO subs...
Their concerns were well founded of course. Endwar did poorly on release from what I understand, and the only reasonable explanation I can think of as to how that could have happened is piracy from the PC version several months later.
EDIT: I mean seriously, if you're going to go to the point of actively hamstringing your own releases on the platform, why even bother? Surely by the logic given you'd actually be better off not releasing a PC version at all?
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FiggyFighter of the night manChampion of the sunRegistered Userregular
I think in 2010 online activation is fine too, as long as you don't need 24/7 internet access to play it.
Not requiring the disc if you are connected to the internet on startup is even better.
edit: actually for incredibly high profile games online activation can be problematic because often companies don't have sufficient server load to handle it
As someone who lives in the sticks, I will say that online activations can be extremely problematic. Lots of folks out there don't have internet connections. Soldiers deployed overseas etc...
Heck yes.
I have a connection, but my bandwidth is limited enough that I turn off my wireless switch while reading individual pages in a thread just to stop the internet gremlins from talking with one another.
No way I'm going to leave the net connected just to play a game. With this system I can understand the peg-leggers.
He is talking about one-time activation, not having to stay connected in order to play.
I think in 2010 online activation is fine too, as long as you don't need 24/7 internet access to play it.
Not requiring the disc if you are connected to the internet on startup is even better.
edit: actually for incredibly high profile games online activation can be problematic because often companies don't have sufficient server load to handle it
As someone who lives in the sticks, I will say that online activations can be extremely problematic. Lots of folks out there don't have internet connections. Soldiers deployed overseas etc...
Heck yes.
I have a connection, but my bandwidth is limited enough that I turn off my wireless switch while reading individual pages in a thread just to stop the internet gremlins from talking with one another.
No way I'm going to leave the net connected just to play a game. With this system I can understand the peg-leggers.
He is talking about one-time activation, not having to stay connected in order to play.
True, but both are problematic for a good number of people in the U.S. My parents have "high speed internet" at their home, but it is easily the worst DSL connection I have ever used. "Moar liek 56kSL" is actually damn accurate in their case.
But yea, as I said I'm in the sticks of Vermont. We're lucky... we have a cable connection that is fast as hell. Only 100' down the road, though, no internet connections aside from dial-up or (ick) satellite.
I know the numbers I picked may seem to be picked to make the PC look unfavorable, but it's more a case of "the only numbers I could find." The report I looked at contained sales in "units shipped", and it did favor the PC more (Going to about 10:1) but I felt that those may be steered to much by bargain bin games (Which can be $5 or less and really distort the figure, while barely affecting the $ figure, and I think bargain bin sales are not a focus of any big devevloper/publisher).
There is very little information I know off about how much games are sold by internet shops (for which I doubt there is a large gap between PC games and Console games, all the same reasons to go digital apply to both) / digital distrubition (which is big on the PC, but may have a significant presence via XBL and PSN on consoles too). Interestingly, That DA article does talk about a $150m quarter for EA's digital distribution. That seems very high, I wonder if it counts MMO subs...
Yes - I wasn't saying that you were hand-picking information to support a point, rather that the information out there is so incomplete as to make any assumptions potentially dangerous. We all know Steam's big, but outside of weekend sales and like how many copies is it really selling? Amazon.co.uk's contract with the Royal Mail is sufficiently large as to completely destabilise the latter if they lost it, but what percentage of their revenue comes from games, and for that matter PC games vs consoles?
Since most of the companies involved have no reason to give a detailed breakdown of figures, it's an issue that'll persist - I was really just trying to say that the PC is far from irrelevant, and that whilst it might not be the focus of a AAA multiplatform launch nowadays the average publisher is still going to feel the pinch of lost sales if they alienate their userbase.
No they didn't. The fine print on the Steam version still says 10 activations. Unless they changed that after launch.
Yeah, but disc checks is unlimited, as far as I can tell. So there's effectively no limits.
Which is only an option if I actually had a disc version.
But Loki mentioned they removed it from Steam so that's fine. Seriously, anything on Steam should not have any other DRM on it.
I'm sure Valve probably agrees with you, but that ball just isn't in their court. Not if they actually want to do business with other publishers and developers anyway.
No they didn't. The fine print on the Steam version still says 10 activations. Unless they changed that after launch.
Yeah, but disc checks is unlimited, as far as I can tell. So there's effectively no limits.
Which is only an option if I actually had a disc version.
But Loki mentioned they removed it from Steam so that's fine. Seriously, anything on Steam should not have any other DRM on it.
I'm sure Valve probably agrees with you, but that ball just isn't in their court. Not if they actually want to do business with other publishers and developers anyway.
some developers complain that Steam's DRM check is weak and easily cracked
Posts
...Because Steam is DRM that people willingly use.
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Offline Mode + Download the game anytime.
Steam is the most acceptable DRM.
And a storefront and community and in-game overlay and chat.
Its the most feature rich useful DRM ever.
I'm specifically not saying that "all DRM is always bad hurf durf". I'm way past my teens and any infatuation with Che Guevara or whatever.
As far as I am concerned, Steam has given me a lot more benefits than hassles. Hell, I wouldn't have even been able to buy some games without it, considering I live in Brazil. It's my major IM system to talk to people in this forums, which are most of my gaming friends.
Steam has been consistently improving my PC gaming experience the last few years. And that's because Gabe Newell and his fellow Valve dudes understand gaming a hell lot better than the morons at Ubisoft.
I completely disagree. People don't pay for MMOs because they're hard to pirate, they pay because pirate servers suck. That's my point. You don't "beat" piracy by fucking with your paying customers, you do it by giving the paying customers a better experience than pirates would get.
I also completely fail to see how would you know that little "Gangsta HAX Joe" who hangs around pirate torrent trackers dully pays for his console games. How would someone establish that link is beyond me. There are no real metrics for that kind of shit.
One last time, and it's the last time for reals:
Sure, some pirates would buy the game if it was unpirateable, but the vast majority wouldn't, for several reasons already mentioned.
Losing sales with bad DRM to get those some pirates is fucking stupid and generates 1) bad press and 2) bad word of mouth. One satisfied customer talks about his good experience to X people. One dissatisfied customer talks to 3X people. That basic business administration shit there, folks, read your Kotler.
Funny thing on the whole unauthorised servers thing, a while back after I stopped playing WoW and after about a year of not playing I downloaded, compiled and setup one of those servers (arcemu) in a vm to have a look and there were all sorts of issues. It was sort of interesting in a sandboxy way giving yourself the ultimate mount, armour, gold etc. Or being able to fly in Azeroth without the need of a mount.
Ultimately I'd say a few things will prevent private servers from ever becoming popular, bugs (there are plenty), the lack of people (I was the only one on the server obviously since it was just on my home lan for a few days whilst I messed around, although on private servers i'm guessing they can't have that many people on) and the patience of the server admin keeping it running, updated etc.
Also, I obviously no longer play WoW.. I gave it up in 2008 and the only time I had a look after that was to mess on that private server in a vm for a few days.
By the way, best way to go cold turkey with a MMO.. go on holiday to Australia for a few weeks, it forces you to stop playing and then when you get back you can simply cancel your sub.
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I've got a spare copy of Portal, if anyone wants it message me.
You said you thought that 1 sale lost from DRM was worse than 10,000 lost from pirates. That seems to imply something quite outlandish about the piracy->lost sale rate and is the entire reason I'm arguing against you.
Also, "your own" empiric and logical evidence is no such thing. That's just another way of saying "take my word for it."
Finally, just because you don't know the exact number for a variable doesn't mean you should assume it's 0. Assuming it's 0 is a more egregious error than attempting a sane estimate of the range.
You are failing to get the point. You can take piracy in Asia into account when you make your estimate of money gained. And you're doing more handwaving about pirates. Some will never turn to legitimate game sales? Is that number 90%? You think the conversion rate is below 10%? If this rate is unknowable, how are you so sure of that? Also, did you consider that even a conversion rate of 5% in many cases justifies an extraordinary effort towards making DRM? Are you absolutely certain that in all cases, the costs from DRM must outweigh the benefits? You are asserting that companies are making bad choices because they don't conform to your handwaving estimates.
And say you're in a market where for every copy you sell, 4 copies are pirated and your development costs are several million. Does it make more sense to throw a few thousand about converting some of your pirates, or just completely ignore it and throw that little bit back on general development? Do you know about the concept of diminishing returns?
The point is that we don't know anything. It could be 10%, it could be .1%, it could be infinitesimal. That's the point. They are sacrificing actual values for completely unknown ones, and that is generally considered a bad idea.
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I think he's just arguing for the sake of arguing. The fact that business work with risk does not mean that they take any fucking risk without any numbers whatsoever.
Sure, the rate could theoretically be 99%, but I know about pirates and piracy, I know how a lot of them think and act, and my INTUITION tells me it's pretty fucking low.
I don't even know what's he trying to prove anymore... That Ubisoft's new DRM scheme was a master strike of genius? That having a system that goes offline so damn easily, thus stopping all your PC customers from playing your fucking game is a great idea? That turning the pirated game a better version than the legit one is something to be praised?
To illustrate: Say I walked up to you and gave you a proposition: You give me $50 and I will give you $100 for every piano tuner that lives in the Seattle area. You aren't allowed to do any research beforehand. How many piano tuners are there? You don't even know. You don't know any piano tuners personally and don't own a piano. But you can probably guess that in a city that large, there's probably a lot of people that own pianos and may need them tuned. And there's probably enough to cover your bet. You didn't know for sure the numbers involved, but you had enough information to make a decision.
This has all along been about the mistaken attitude that including DRM is always a bad business decision.
We have never had any study worth anything that has come up with reliable figures of this sort. If I'm mistaken, and you have actual figures, I'd like to see them.
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Please, point out where I said I had reliable figures. Or where any of what I've been arguing relies on them.
Platinum FC: 2880 3245 5111
Watch Gabe Newell's speech on "Gaming as a service".
Valve's design philosophy is to provide a superior product than the pirated product, and he flatly says "we aren't quite there yet".
His belief is that if you make a paying customer have access to things a non paying customer doesn't, piracy will reduce - you won't eliminate it because there are a fuckton of people who will just never pay for games ever, but you gain customers, which Gabe believes should be the focus rather than stopping pirates.
DRM is a necessity, but for every one ounce of "FFFUUUUUUUUUUU" you give your customer via DRM, you should give them a pound of "this is pretty sweet"
In addition he pretty bluntly accuses publishers of overpricing a great number of products. Some things just won't sell for $50. He then demonstrated that online specials, free weekends, and whatnot can create more revenue (not sales, but revenue) than a game does when it launches at retail. They had a free weekend/50% off sale or something for Left 4 Dead and showed the data that it generated significantly more in terms of actual dollars than it did during its launch week.
Then I have no fucking idea why are you so intent on disagreeing with me, because I said several times that "normal", unintrusive DRM like cdkeys and simple disk checks (not fucking Starforce) are fine.
EDIT: Oh LOL...
Not requiring the disc if you are connected to the internet on startup is even better.
edit: actually for incredibly high profile games online activation can be problematic because often companies don't have sufficient server load to handle it
I honestly like Bad Company 2's method, and I hope EA sticks with that system and not the system in CnC 4. You install, and get asked if you would like to activate online, which happens once, after which the game disc is not needed, or leave it as a disc check. So people who can't activate online can do the old disc in tray check, and for people who can, they can put the disc away once it's installed and play away. You don't even need to be online after installation, it'll never need the disc in the tray.
No, fuck any DRM with limited activations, including BC2.
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Which is why it's strictly optional in BC2. You can opt for plain disc checks if you wanted, no activations required. EA also removed SecuROM from the Steam version.
Believe me, they're actually being pretty progressive with that game.
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Yeah, but disc checks is unlimited, as far as I can tell. So there's effectively no limits.
Cite.
As someone who lives in the sticks, I will say that online activations can be extremely problematic. Lots of folks out there don't have internet connections. Soldiers deployed overseas etc...
And the industry agrees. That's why Ubisoft's DRM effectively allowed paying customers to play the game a month earlier than pirates - several months if they bought the game on a console.
I submit that playing the game earlier is an incentive.
Which is a whole other point. Games always get released months ahead of time on consoles and then the companies wonder why people aren't biting as much when they finally get around to putting out the PC version? Must be piracy, I guess.
The overall stats say console market:PC market ~ 12:1 at the moment. (In US$, in the US, by ESA 08 figures). (Brick & Mortar sales, no MMO subscription fees, but still). I'm not a doomsayer about the PC market, but it's a relatively small market, and what comes out on it, is mostly directed by that fact.
I'm pretty sure that for most DRM it only works for one game. After that it's kind of a free-for-all.
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Look, I'm not going to argue that the console market is vastly larger than the PC one, but those are some pretty hefty qualifiers you have there.
1) PC games cost less at the most basic level, because they don't have to pay the fixed fee to console manufacturers. A PC game costs £30 at retail here, a console one anywhere between £40 and £50. Only the manufacturers see this extra profit - publishers receive the same amount for either version.
2) The US, whilst the biggest market in the world, is not the only market. PC gaming is massive in Asia and Europe, and in some parts (notably the Eastern Bloc and China) greatly outnumbers console sales.
3) Who buys 'bricks and mortar' anymore? At least in the UK, that equates on average to an extra 33% spent on every game relative to buying it on Amazon and the like, postage included. Digital distribution isn't nearly as big, but still represents a decent chunk of games buying. To discount around half of all sales made isn't really sensible. Whilst GAME, Gamestop and the like are huge, they've grown fat off the backs of second hand sales which generate exactly nil profit for publishers.
4) No MMO subscription fees? I'm no fan, but you have to look at the numbers involved in Warcraft, Farmville, and any numbers of crappy Korean MMOs and be a little impressed. In some parts of the world, these fees represent the only form of legitimate income the games industry can generate!
I'm not saying there isn's a massive disparity between market size - merely that those stats seem filtered to paint as unfavourable a picture as possible.
Ahahaha, no.
Is today opposite day? Did you even read anything about that piece of shit DRM? Are you making a joke?
Heck yes.
I have a connection, but my bandwidth is limited enough that I turn off my wireless switch while reading individual pages in a thread just to stop the internet gremlins from talking with one another.
No way I'm going to leave the net connected just to play a game. With this system I can understand the peg-leggers.
PSN - sumowot
Which is a huge issue and part of the problem. Companies like Ubisoft literally and deliberately hold back the PC release of games now out of nebulous fears that PC releases will collapse console market sales (Look up Endwar sometime, Ubisoft pretty explicitly state that as the reason), sometimes for months, and then complain when it doesn't get nearly the reception they were expecting. That's ridiculous, I don't make any reservation to saying that. Games have their most CRUCIAL sales period within the first few weeks of release, up to maybe a couple of months. That's where the vast majority of the sales comes from. So then you go ahead and delay the PC release of the game past the main release date, past the hype, past the gigantic marketing campaign (and for big budget titles today, marketing literally comes to as much or more than the development cost now. A marketing campaign all focussed down to one event: The release period), past the point where anyone cares about the game and into a sales period where it's competing against other huge AAA titles being released targeting that platform.
And THEN you expect your magnificent sales?
Meanwhile you get companies like Bethesda and Bioware doing simultaneous releases, and even going so far as to say that they managed to do well on the PC because they tried to cater to the PC market in those ways. You'll note that aside from the interface differences between PC and console versions of Dragon Age and amongst other things, they sim-shipped, and that the PC version also had very unrestrictive DRM (just a disc check) coupled with some DLC addons to encourage original purchases (as opposed to piracy or second-hand). This is also the approach they adopted with Mass Effect. And most important to keep in mind, this is following Mass Effect 1 which had a more restrictive DRM scheme that included install limits, and came out six months after the console release.
So yeah, Bioware tried that, and surprisingly, opted for a different route this time. I'm not even going to try and claim that those games didn't suffer piracy either. But clearly they opted on a different approach for a reason. So either they are spectacularly thick for rejecting the previous model, or they felt the current one works better.
It's a question of which approach nets you the greater profit, that is the end line that they really need to be looking at.
There is very little information I know off about how much games are sold by internet shops (for which I doubt there is a large gap between PC games and Console games, all the same reasons to go digital apply to both) / digital distrubition (which is big on the PC, but may have a significant presence via XBL and PSN on consoles too). Interestingly, That DA article does talk about a $150m quarter for EA's digital distribution. That seems very high, I wonder if it counts MMO subs...
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/10/08/endwar-delayed-because-piracys-killing-pc/
Their concerns were well founded of course. Endwar did poorly on release from what I understand, and the only reasonable explanation I can think of as to how that could have happened is piracy from the PC version several months later.
EDIT: I mean seriously, if you're going to go to the point of actively hamstringing your own releases on the platform, why even bother? Surely by the logic given you'd actually be better off not releasing a PC version at all?
He is talking about one-time activation, not having to stay connected in order to play.
True, but both are problematic for a good number of people in the U.S. My parents have "high speed internet" at their home, but it is easily the worst DSL connection I have ever used. "Moar liek 56kSL" is actually damn accurate in their case.
But yea, as I said I'm in the sticks of Vermont. We're lucky... we have a cable connection that is fast as hell. Only 100' down the road, though, no internet connections aside from dial-up or (ick) satellite.
Yes - I wasn't saying that you were hand-picking information to support a point, rather that the information out there is so incomplete as to make any assumptions potentially dangerous. We all know Steam's big, but outside of weekend sales and like how many copies is it really selling? Amazon.co.uk's contract with the Royal Mail is sufficiently large as to completely destabilise the latter if they lost it, but what percentage of their revenue comes from games, and for that matter PC games vs consoles?
Since most of the companies involved have no reason to give a detailed breakdown of figures, it's an issue that'll persist - I was really just trying to say that the PC is far from irrelevant, and that whilst it might not be the focus of a AAA multiplatform launch nowadays the average publisher is still going to feel the pinch of lost sales if they alienate their userbase.
Which is only an option if I actually had a disc version.
But Loki mentioned they removed it from Steam so that's fine. Seriously, anything on Steam should not have any other DRM on it.
Switch: US 1651-2551-4335 JP 6310-4664-2624
MH3U Monster Cheat Sheet / MH3U Veggie Elder Ticket Guide
I'm sure Valve probably agrees with you, but that ball just isn't in their court. Not if they actually want to do business with other publishers and developers anyway.
some developers complain that Steam's DRM check is weak and easily cracked
which, well, it is