Time for this week's rant and after much thought, i've settled on a topic i didn't want to rant about, but have to... Digital Rights Management, or as its better known DRM, and piracy.
Digital Rights Management is the system companies insert into a game to prevent piracy. As technology has advanced so too has the simplicity to back-up and copy games, music or any digital file, and thus DRM and Copy Protection became necessary to keep artists selling albums, publishers selling games and studios selling movies. The problem is that with technology progressing at an amazing rate, DRM has had to continue to evolve and is now at a point where it has become either completely ineffective or overly aggressive.
At one point or another in time, virtually any form of digital medium you can think of had DRM... TV, Movies, Music, Games, all of it. As of this point in time, most audio cd's are now completely DRM free after the major 4 companies decided the cost of DRM wasn't worth the results. The major problems with DRM have come from the gaming world though, where many forms of DRM have been used. Some worked and are still in place today, others didn't and have long since been abandoned. Some, like Ubisoft's current form, have caused widespread controversy in the gaming community.
Early games simply required input of a registration key and while this method isn't technically DRM, it is definitely an early attempt to prevent the copying and distribution of games. The problem with serial or registration keys is that it can be bothersome for the user who needs to enter the code and ensure it doesn't get lost. On top of that it soon became quite easy for people to create or steal keys that they could then use to run a pirated copy. Some companies took the serial keys a step further and required them to be activated online and even limited how many times a game could be activated. One of the most controversial forms of DRM is SecuROM, which installed files during installation that weren't removed when the game was uninstalled and could cause errors and conflicts with other software, even if it was legitimate.
One of the first major games to use SecuROM and have issues was Bioshock. Bioshock had a maximum of 2 activations (later raised to 5) but any further activations required the player ring 2K games to get the game activated. This quickly became a problem when the phone number was printed wrong, call centres were only available in U.S.A. and every user of the game, even on the same computer, had to activate it. 2K games later removed the activation limit but still requires an internet activation.
The next game to have problems while using the SecuROM system was Mass Effect which originally required players to re-verify the software every 10 days. While this was later removed, the game still only allows up to 3 activations and unlike Bioshock, uninstalling the game doesn't return an activation.
Finally, SecuROM was used on Spore, which would go on to become the most pirated game of 2008. With 1.7 million illegal downloads of the game in the first 3 months many people blamed its DRM system which allowed a maximum of 3 installs (later raised to 5) and only allowed one online account.
While most companies continued to use varied forms of DRM during 2008, Ubisoft kicked off a new way of thinking in 2009 by removing DRM from many of their new products as an experiment to see if piracy levels would drop, with many people claiming they pirated games to avoid the invasive DRM systems. EA shortly followed suit and games such as Prince of Persia, Avatar: The Game and The Sims 3 featured little to no DRM at all. While Ubisoft never made a public statement about the results of this experiment, They once again led the charge in 2010 when returning to DRM in a new system. The new system requires constant connection to Ubisoft's UPlay servers and quickly angered many gamers who suddenly found their games shutting down or refusing to start when they couldn't get a connection. The UPlay system was cracked about a month after release and has once again caused many gamers to state they would rather pirate the game to avoid the system. In March, about 5% of players were locked out of Silent Hunter 5 and Assassins Creed 2 when an unknown party launched a DDoS attack on the UPlay servers as a form of protest against the system and to show the system was flawed.
In my opinion DRM is a necessity, whether people like it or not, and regardless of your reasons, piracy is against the law. Before i start sounding like one of those ridiculous anti-piracy clips at the start of a dvd though, i will say that i don't think that the current form of DRM or method of preventing piracy is going about things the right way. It will always be impossible to prevent piracy using software in the long run. You may have a team of 100 men working to create a new DRM program, but the moment you release it you will have thousands of people working to break it.
While many people claim the invasive or inconvenient DRM as an excuse to pirate games, It doesn't make it any more legal. The DRM on Spore is blamed for making 1.7 million people download it illegally, but no-one can prove that the game wouldn't have still been downloaded just as many times if it was DRM free. For those people who insist that DRM is the reason for piracy then i direct you to the Humble Indie Bundle... A bundle of 8 games, which at full price would cost you $80US, provided DRM-free and at whatever price you chose to pay... any price at all. In the end, The average person payed $9.18US, but even then, a quarter of downloaders refused to pay at all, Pirating the games directly from the companies servers. That's not even counting file sharing via torrent or file sharing sites.
With more and more PC games taking on drastic forms of DRM or delaying release dates to try to curb piracy and increase sales, is there really any alternative? Most gaming platforms prevent piracy using a combination of specialised media and copy protection built into the hardware, but that isn't practical in a PC that could be made of a dozen different parts from different companies.
Personally, i think the only time companies are going to back off on DRM is if the reason FOR the DRM, the piracy, is minimised. The problem then becomes whose responsibility is it for reducing the piracy? Laws vary from country to country and no company really wants to be seen as the bad guy, so as far as i can see it, the only way piracy will be reduced is if the gamers themselves put a stop to it.
Don't like a games DRM system? Don't buy it, or buy it on another platform. I used to work in a retail store and the amount of times i had people (ranging from parents to preteens) coming and asking if we sold R4 cards was unbelievable. People need to realise that just because something isn't the way you want it, or costs too much, you DON'T have the right to take it. Piracy is piracy, regardless of why you're doing it.
If you disagree, If you agree, If you want to throw out a rant of your own, feel free to leave thoughts, comments, opinions and feedback in the comments below.
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