Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Publishers Overcome by FUD over DRM-Free
Okay - say you are a publisher. You've got a twelve-year-old game out there that was originally written for DOS and Windows 95. The copy protection was broken on it three days after its original release, stores haven't carried it for almost a decade, and the only reason it is hard to pirate is because nobody actually has a feed of it anymore. It hasn't made you a penny in years, and even the original developers have all gone off to greener pastures. It is just sitting on your back-list, with maybe a few forgotten copies sitting in a corner of the supply room that you don't know what to do with.
Someone comes to you with an offer to sell this game to a new generation of gamers, at a very cheap price. Perhaps thousands of new copies will be sold, generating not much income but perhaps at least enough to pay for the open bar at next years' office Christmas party. It'll be distributed digitally, so there's no need to worry about duplication, inventory, or distribution. Your break-even cost for your time is at something like ten copies. Sound good?
Oh - and they'll be released without any kind of DRM.
Would this last detail be a deal-killer to you?
Apparently, it is for many game publishers. They are so steeped in the copy-protection & digital rights management "FUD" (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) that they are afraid to release games that are not even generating any more revenue for sale out of fear of piracy.
News Flash: Your game that was in the bargain bin already when the Playstation 2 was released? Already been pirated, folks.
If 5 bajillion copies of that game get pirated, how much will that hurt your current profit of$0? Okay, actually, that's a real problem, because it could go negative due to customer support calls for a no-longer supported game. So I'll give 'em one point there. And maybe publishers are already planning their own DRM-encumbered distribution of their back-catalog of games.
But frankly, using this as a reason to turn down Good Old Games (GOG.COM), if it really is the true rationale and not just a polite excuse, strikes me as being unbelievably silly and foolish. All I can figure is that the marketing campaigns for DRM & copy protection providers have gone too well, and they've managed to brainwash a bunch of corporate executives into believing that their measures work FOREVER and that the world will end without them, no exceptions.
Hat tip to GamePolitics.com for this tidbit of games industry gossip.
Labels: Biz
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:49 AM (Permalink)
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This makes even less sense when you realize that since there's no place to buy a new copy many people will pirate it anyways since it's so hard to find.
And if the game's no longer supported doesn't that mean they don't need to deal with support calls?
And if the game's no longer supported doesn't that mean they don't need to deal with support calls?
It might not be about making sense but about maintaining the pretense for having to use DRM. Maybe the publishers worry about people pointing at the DRM-free budget games and noting that they seem to sell just fine without it. Or maybe they worry about people starting to demand other games to be playable without a CD in the drive as well.
So better for the publishers to just play it safe and try to maintain the notion that proper legit commercial games are inseparably tied to DRM?
So better for the publishers to just play it safe and try to maintain the notion that proper legit commercial games are inseparably tied to DRM?
# posted by 
: September 23, 2008 9:03 AM
: September 23, 2008 9:03 AM
Califer: True on both counts. But people will STILL call customer support for a game that is no longer supported, however.
risto: Ooooh, good thinking! I wouldn't be surprised if that is the case for at least a couple of publishers *cough*EA*cough*. If so, I hope those rebel publishers that buck the trend end up being the ones who set precedent.
risto: Ooooh, good thinking! I wouldn't be surprised if that is the case for at least a couple of publishers *cough*EA*cough*. If so, I hope those rebel publishers that buck the trend end up being the ones who set precedent.
If the mainstream publishers are so set in their ways that they can't even do the basic math of "some sales+piracy risk > no sales+completely pirated*," then there's really no hope for them. Except, perhaps, a basic mathematics class. (Or, one fantasizes, a 2x4...)
Also, I had a DVD-RW drive destroyed by DRM. The publishers who cling to DRM have no sympathy from me.
_
*Used copies might be floating around in greater or lesser qualities, but the amount of money that goes into their pockets is still $0.
Also, I had a DVD-RW drive destroyed by DRM. The publishers who cling to DRM have no sympathy from me.
_
*Used copies might be floating around in greater or lesser qualities, but the amount of money that goes into their pockets is still $0.
# posted by : September 23, 2008 12:27 PM
: September 23, 2008 12:27 PM
If risto is right, then that means coyote is right, and things are going to get very dirty, as EA will probably pull out all the stops on making sure this precedent is not set.
Oh, finally had a chance to sign up and check it out. WOW, I love it. Freespace is the game demo I got with my first computer, after having a good 11 years to evaluate it, I think I'm gonna put the money down and buy it. :)
Oh, finally had a chance to sign up and check it out. WOW, I love it. Freespace is the game demo I got with my first computer, after having a good 11 years to evaluate it, I think I'm gonna put the money down and buy it. :)
Perhaps they are just using it as an excuse. People remember games from their past with rose-tinted glasses. Maybe the graphics will be so dated or things aren't quite as great as they remembered and this will hurt hypothetical future sales of a sequel they have no current plans of releasing.
I'd assume that they'd need to give CDProjeckt some of their source code (which they may no longer have) to remove the DRM and make the thing run ok on Vista/XP. Or find their DRM-free version somewhere in the back of a cupboard.
However, I think the previous commenters are correct. Similar kinds of obstacles were put in the way of companies wanting to sell MP3s of deleted back catalogue albums and B-sides over DRM.
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I'd assume that they'd need to give CDProjeckt some of their source code (which they may no longer have) to remove the DRM and make the thing run ok on Vista/XP. Or find their DRM-free version somewhere in the back of a cupboard.
However, I think the previous commenters are correct. Similar kinds of obstacles were put in the way of companies wanting to sell MP3s of deleted back catalogue albums and B-sides over DRM.
# posted by : September 24, 2008 5:25 AM
: September 24, 2008 5:25 AMLinks to this post:
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