adrix89 wrote:DRM is a user authorization it doesn't have anything to do with source code, source usually gets compiled which means it hides it.
If decompiling was easy then DRM would be meaningless.
There are many definitions of what constitutes as DRM, companies generally suit the definition to best fit their image, see recent denuvo and it's claims that it is not in fact DRM. I take it for what it's called: managing your digital rights, including reverse engineering your digital product.
Personally I'm not going to waste time fighting a boogeyman when all it does in the end is negatively affect users.
Azhukar wrote:Unless you implement some DRM, I don't see how having obfuscated code will prevent someone taking your game and selling it as his own.
And even when you do implement DRM, how will that stop someone from taking the cracked version and selling it as his own?
Why is this a black-and-white, all-or-nothing issue? So many people seem to act like just because it possible to break through DRM that any method of it is a waste of time. Personally I think it deters a lot of people who are otherwise too lazy to to crack/hack/circumvent DRM in games. DRM doesn’t have to prevent one-hundred percent of users from trading cracked versions; it only needs to be tedious enough to cause ninety percent of people to not want to put forth the effort.
ejmr wrote:Why is this a black-and-white, all-or-nothing issue?
It isn't, it's a costs/benefits situation where the costs far outweigh the benefits for any amount of effort you put in DRM except zero (assuming indie game devs).
ejmr wrote:Why is this a black-and-white, all-or-nothing issue?
It isn't, it's a costs/benefits situation where the costs far outweigh the benefits for any amount of effort you put in DRM except zero (assuming indie game devs).
This is what I meant by it being all-or-nothing. Forgive if I’m misunderstanding your post, but it reads as if you’re saying that costs of implementin DRM is both a waist of financies and/or effort. Ideally I would love it if DRM didn’t exist, but not everyone shares that opinion and I can understand why. And it irritates me that the most common response I see to this issue is, “Well there’s always a way around DRM so why bother.” Game designers and developers deserve to make a living off their work, which requires ensuring as best that can that will people will purchase their product. Right now DRM has proven to be one of the best means for bringing in profit
Remember when ‘Diablo 3’ came out and everyone raged over the DRM? And the sold over three million copies the day its release. If everyone who after played D3 after that circumvented the DRM then Blizzard will have stil money from thre million sales. Because of examples like that, I cannot agree you with “the costs far outweight the benefits….”
Sorry, I am start to just rant at this point and on the verge of going further off topic from the original discussion. Let’s just agree to politely disagree with each other on this issue.
ejmr wrote:Right now DRM has proven to be one of the best means for bringing in profit
Unless you have some charts to prove correlation between DRM and sales, there's no argument to be had.
ejmr wrote:Remember when ‘Diablo 3’ came out and everyone raged over the DRM? And the sold over three million copies the day its release. If everyone who after played D3 after that circumvented the DRM then Blizzard will have stil money from thre million sales. Because of examples like that, I cannot agree you with “the costs far outweight the benefits….”
Diablo 3 is an MMO without any semblance of offline play, using an MMO as an example of successful DRM in relation to this conversation is ignorant at best.
ejmr wrote:Sorry, I am start to just rant at this point and on the verge of going further off topic from the original discussion. Let’s just agree to politely disagree with each other on this issue.
It's hard to hold a degree of agreement over what is essentially uninformed drivel.
ejmr wrote:Right now DRM has proven to be one of the best means for bringing in profit
Unless you have some charts to prove correlation between DRM and sales, there's no argument to be had.
I will admit I don’t have supporing numbers, but if DRM wasn’t responsible for some profit then we wouldn’t see it anymore.
Azhukar wrote:Diablo 3 is an MMO without any semblance of offline play, using an MMO as an example of successful DRM in relation to this conversation is ignorant at best.
MMOs that use DRM are irrelevant to a conversion about DRM? What's your opinion on why?
Azhukar wrote:It's hard to hold a degree of agreement over what is essentially uninformed drivel.
ejmr wrote:I will admit I don’t have supporing numbers, but if DRM wasn’t responsible for some profit then we wouldn’t see it anymore.
That is circular logic and not an argument.
ejmr wrote:MMOs that use DRM are irrelevant to a conversion about DRM? What's your opinion on why?
MMOs being unplayable on clients without a server is an inherent property of the genre and an effect rather than intent. The intent to produce an MMO instead of some other genre for this effect may be there, however an MMO is designed from the ground up with a server-client separation in mind for the product, the server part not being sold. It is akin to comparing DRM to a web server feeding browsers html, and about as much related.
ejmr wrote:I will admit I don\u2019t have supporing numbers, but if DRM wasn\u2019t responsible for some profit then we wouldn\u2019t see it anymore.
That is circular logic and not an argument.
Call it whatever you like, but I would ask you why do you believes so many studios and publishers use DRM? Do you think it’s not because they’ve decided it’s in their best financial interest? Or do you think they do to troll all of the games who they must know get angry about DRM in the first place. Personally I think the first scenario sounds like the one most likely to be true.
Azhukar wrote:
ejmr wrote:MMOs that use DRM are irrelevant to a conversion about DRM? What's your opinion on why?
MMOs being unplayable on clients without a server is an inherent property of the genre and an effect rather than intent. The intent to produce an MMO instead of some other genre for this effect may be there, however an MMO is designed from the ground up with a server-client separation in mind for the product, the server part not being sold. It is akin to comparing DRM to a web server feeding browsers html, and about as much related.
I agree it’s inherent property of the genre, as you point out quite well. But that’s still DRM. The server is managing my rights with regard to digital content I paidf for—it literally fits the definiton of DRM.
ejmr wrote:Call it whatever you like, but I would ask you why do you believes so many studios and publishers use DRM?
Trial and error development. The games industry is very young and many more mistakes will be made.
ejmr wrote:Do you think it’s not because they’ve decided it’s in their best financial interest?
On the contrary, I fully believe they decided to do it because of it. What I'm saying is that there is no evidence of it actually having the desired effect. It all comes down to equating pirated copies to lost sales, which is a faulty premise.
ejmr wrote:But that’s still DRM.
I'm sure it's possible to stretch the term to apply to any digital security measure, even network protocol. I just hope you realize how meaningless the term becomes afterwards.
Azhukar wrote:Trial and error development. The games industry is very young and many more mistakes will be made.
I have no doubt that there’ll be more mistakes. But at the same time it’s hard for me to consider DRM an error, if only because vocal gamers rallying against DRM are more-often-than-not puchasing that game with the DRM they hate from that publish that’s run by the Devil, etc. I think the industry will move away from DRM evenutally and into some unforseen problems.
Azhukar wrote:What I'm saying is that there is no evidence of it actually having the desired effect. It all comes down to equating pirated copies to lost sales, which is a faulty premise.
I disagree, because I believe the fact that so many major publishers use DRM is proof itself that it’s having some desired effect. Having statistical evidence would be ideal of course, but in that absence of that we can draw ideas and assumptions from these companies based on their behavior.
Azhukar wrote:
ejmr wrote:But that' still DRM.
I'm sure it's possible to stretch the term to apply to any digital security measure, even network protocol. I just hope you realize how meaningless the term becomes afterwards.
I’m saying ‘Diablo 3’ has DRM, not that UDP has it or TCP/IP, et al. Nearly everything out there written about ‘Diablo 3’ talks about its DRM. I am not stretching terms to make them meaningless. Instead I am using the terminology everyone else minus you has used with that game.
