DRM is killing the games industry by trying to protect it

My current topic of discussion is DRM, and how I believe it's killing the very industry it's intended to protect.

If your not sure what DRM is or involves I recommend reading this article on Wikipedia.

"Digital rights management (DRM) is a term that refers to access control technologies used by hardware manufacturers, publishers and copyright holders to limit usage of digital media or devices" - Wikipedia.

DRM is intended to restrict an end users right to use a product that is legally licensed to them, adding extra restrictions to them, beyond those enforced by intellectual property law. These restrictions can include access limits, installation limits or copying restrictions.

DRM technologies are the actual software (or even hardware) used to enforce these restrictions.

Ok, so how exactly is this killing the games industry? Well, I'll explain with an example. Lets say you have a choice.

Firstly you could purchase the game 'legally':

An avid gamer from way back, you wander into your local EB Games store and spot a great looking new game - Spore. You decide $80 is a fair price for a game, so you buy it. When you get home the first thing you do is fire up your PC and start installing Spore.

Little do you know, a second program "SecuROM" is also being installed, you are not asked to accept anything, it simply installs itself quietly. What's worse, this software is being installed into your computers kernel (the core of your operating system). This allows SecuROM full access to your ENTIRE computer, without restrictions. It will monitor your activities and you will never even know it is there.

Months later, after a virus has raped your computer again, you must format. How many times is that now? Lets see, the drive that broke, and you upgraded to a new computer after that, that's two, plus that time you got a bigger hard drive... hmm i guess this will be your sixth install of Sopre. To your horror you find Spore installation is refused, because you have reached your 'Activation Limit'. You try calling customer support, but fail to convince them you purchased the game legit - it's your word against theirs. Well bugger, guess you just paid $80 for three months of Spore.

Next you try to uninstall Spore, it all seems to go smoothly and the game is gone, but SecuROM is not, it remains on your computer, hidden, and very difficult to remove.

Secondly you could get the game 'illegally':

Your thumbing around on your favorite torrent site, when you notice Spore has been cracked (all DRM has been removed). You download the entire game over a couple of days and install it. No activation, no restrictions, nothing. All you have to do is play Spore.

Now, ask yourself, would you prefer to get Spore for free with absolutely no restrictions or pay $80 for a 5 install limit on only one computer at a time? Be honest, don't give me the "I would buy it because I'm legit and believe the developers deserve their income" bullshit, you know you would download it, even if you wouldn't 500,000 people downloaded it from torrent sites in it's first week of release making it the most pirated game in 2008 - because of its restrictive DRM.

Most mainstream games are being released with ever more restrictive DRM, take Bioshock, Mass Effect and Crysis just to name a few. DRM is an annoyance gamers in general would rather live without, so they download. This is very effectively driving customers away from legitimate purchases and toward DRM-free illegal downloads.

That is my argument, that when faced with the choice a gamer will never buy into the restrictive DRM schemes game developers are resorting to.

In my next post I'll discuss a concept I've been thinking about for a while now - 'The gamers bill of rights'. It will be, at the very least, the rules I will live by for the rest of my life and will outline what the end users rights should be as I see them. I would like to see growing support for the bill and it would be a dream come true if it was ever legally enforced. Stay tuned for a draft.

Caboose out.