In my daily stumblings around the net, I discovered this little gem of an article. It purports to be a rational and researched examination of PC game piracy, DRM, and general hysteria surrounding the whole topic.
It provides an interestingly cool-headed counter to some other bloggers I could mention.
One thing about Shamus Young’s stance on DRM that bothers me is that he assumes that the consumer owns the game when they purchase it. Now, I don’t like it, but the actual way things work (and he should know this, being a professional programmer) is that end-users purchase a license to use the software, not the software itself. There are very few (if any) commercial software products that transfer ownership of the software (either in source, or in binary format) upon purchase. Just because you paid money for it, doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want.
And it’s never been that way. Looking back as far as I’ve been buying software, I can remember seeing license agreements in packages that were quite explicit about that. And it’s understandable: how else can the creator of the code enforce their ownership?
DRM is pretty evil, but I am (at least temporarily) swayed by the arguments in the article that piracy causes the escalation in protection of software, and that the only determinant of piracy is the popularity of the software. There is a vocal minority that might claim DRM causes piracy, but the numbers certainly seem against it.
I also liked the acknowledgement that no copyright protection system is fool-proof, but if it can prevent day-one piracy in order to help developers and publishers recoup their expenses, then that’s a good thing. Developers and publishers with cash in their pockets can continue to make games.
Don’t get me wrong. Poorly-implemented DRM (a la Bioshock) can make life a living hell, but the only way for us to reduce it is to put pressure on people who won’t put any money into a game developer’s pocket at all.