I’ve personally never had any problems with SecuROM. If I ever did have a problem with it when trying to play a game I purchased legally, however, I wouldn’t hesitate to download an illegal, pirated copy of the game. I’m sure I’m not the only one that feels this way.
An important issue that articles on this subject usually don’t mention is the simple fact that DRM like SecuROM does a miserable job of preventing piracy. According to a P2P research firm, Spore has been downloaded illegally more than 170,000 times already. When was the last time you heard a pirate complaining about restrictive DRM? You don’t, because pirated copies of the games simply strip out the DRM.
So, the DRM doesn’t hurt the pirates. What does the DRM do, then? Well, near as I can tell, it mostly just hurts consumers.
EA has stated proudly that so far only about 1% of Spore owners are complaining about the 3 install limit imposed on them. What you should remember when seeing that statistic is that Spore has only been out for a little over a week. What is the number going to be like in a few months, or a few years? Could you provide proof of purchase for games you bought five years ago? Do you think you’ll be able to for Spore five years from now?
Basically, DRM doesn’t do its job and mainly affects consumers who legally purchased the game. Who do we blame for this problem? Game companies and DRM providers would like you to blame the pirates, but that’s like an oppressive government telling you to blame the violent criminals of society for forcing the government to take away everyone’s freedom.
As much as I’d like to blame EA, I don’t think it’s entirely their fault. At least some of the blame must be placed on us, the consumers. I can’t ask that you refuse to buy games with DRM (I do… Bioshock was an amazing game, worth buying no matter what it does to your HD), but if we invest in companies that sell DRM-free games we can provide game companies with an incentive to sell their games without these limitations. Anything from Stardock is a good start. I’m also looking forward to the opening of Good Old Games, which plans to sell old games (such as Fallout 2, one of the best games ever made) completely free of DRM.
Fallout 2, one of the best games ever made…
Agreed.
In terms of the DRM stuff I also agree, but I would like to see the PC market look into better alternatives (such as the proprietary anti-piracy hardware of consoles). It’s not that I want to see more restrictions, but the PC gaming market has really gotten out of hand, and if companies can’t figure out a way to curb piracy, everything’s just going to move to consoles anyway (even though I’m a console gamer, I think that would be a sad loss).
This is a terrible story for 2 parties – legitimate users who simply wanted to play Spore and couldn’t because the activation servers went down and EA because Spore was cracked even before it was released.
Often developers walk a tightrope with the tradeoff between protection strength and the degree of impact on legitimate users but this was a failure on both dimensions! Is this really what the publisher wants to ‘accomplish’? Why not use a solution which is friendly to honest users, has no impact on development time and the strongest available protection against crackers – see the whitepaper “Is Anti-Piracy/DRM the Cure or the Disease for PC Games?” which can be downloaded here http://www.byteshield.net/byteshield_whitepaper_0005.pdf
Not only does DRM impede legitimate users without being at all effective in preventing piracy, the situation is even worse. Most DRM systems are not developed by the company which writes the software, but instead are licensed from another company. The costs of licensing the DRM system is then passed on to the consumer, increasing the cost of the product – and thus increasing the number of consumers who will consider the software too expensive and will end up pirating it instead of paying for it, or else eating into the profits of the company that produces it.