Now we’ve come to Part two of my grudge list, Digital Rights Management.
DRM is a general term used for the methods used by publishers to try and protect their intellectual property from unauthorised use or reproduction, though there is possibly room for ulterior motives. For this reason part two and part three, piracy, are very closely related.
Once again, I’m not trying to say DRM is evil. People and businesses have every right to try to protect their intellectual property the same way everyone has a right to put a lock on their door to try and protect their physical property. Where it starts to negatively affect gaming is when it worsens or degrades the consumers experience.
There are many different forms of DRM, most with their own disadvantages to consumers, but I’ve decided to concentrate on the latest from, always online DRM, as its becoming increasingly popular and has protection to be the cause the most damage.
Time for an anecdote!
I personally loved Bioware’s Dragon Age: Origins. I thought it was a fantastic game in dearly every respect. There were, however, a few things that nearly ruined the experience. The first thing that caused me grief was the way they chose to advertise their DLC. They did so in a way that was like taking my suspension of disbelief, placing it on a rock and then hitting it with a sledge hammer. We’ve already discussed why I don’t like this kind of thing. However, when I discovered that the version of the game I’d bought already included this DLC I soon learnt just to ignore the walking billboard.
My second major gripe was with the first time I’d noticed always online DRM. Now Dragon Age: origins entirely single player game so there is no need to have to be connected to the internet to access any part of the game unless the developers/publishers decided to make it so. I soon discovered that whenever I launched the game it would try to connect to Bioware via the internet to verify my copy of the game and any DLC.
This in itself wasn’t much of an issue for me as, although I don’t have the most stable internet connection, you could still play if it was offline. There was, however, a catch. They disabled any access DLC you’d unlocked if you weren’t connected to the internet. Worse yet, if you were audacious enough to try load a game before the program had finished connecting to Bioware it would automatically assume you were blocking it from the internet and thus must be a filthy pirate, disabling your DLC accordingly. The only way to resolve this seemed to be to completely quit out of the programme and start over again.
This wasn’t the end of the world, merely a temporary inconvenience. Bioware even did a very good smoke and mirrors job to hide the DRM by integrating it with an achievement tracking and social system. Yet in the back of my mind I felt angry at them for treating me as though I’m trying to cheat them whilst also knowing that if I had pirated the game I wouldn’t be having this issue.
So here we have a practice supposedly to prevent piracy that decreases the enjoyment for paying customers and yet has so little affect on pirates that they are actually receiving the superior product.
As a further example, I bought Ubisoft’s Might and magic: heroes VI on sale at the start of this year. At the time I was unaware that this also had a version of always online DRM that prevents you from using any of the games most powerful items and characters when not actively connected to their servers – even when on single player.
When I’d downloaded and installed the game, I was unfortunate enough to discover that Ubisofts Heroes server was offline. This meant that, through no fault of my own, I was unable to obtain full access to the game I’d just paid for. Somewhat annoyed I decided to play anyway, figuring I wouldn’t get the powerful items until much later in the game. I put several hours into the game before I decided to save and call it a day.
A few days later when I decided to fire up the game again the servers were back on line. “Hooray!” thought I, “I can continue my saves with the powerful items!” Yet my excitement was soon extinguished when I discovered that Ubisofts cloud save service had proceeded to erase all my saved games as it didn’t match their records showing I had no saves at all (probably a problem with poorly implemented cloud saves then with DRM directly).
I’m sure that by this point I was doing a very good impersonation of rageface.jpg but, having a lot of brand loyalty to Heroes, I decided I’d just start from scratch. Then, a few days later, I find the servers back down again. I don’t even bother trying to play this time. In fact, since I first installed the game, whenever I’ve attempted to play, their servers have been down more often than not. If I happened to be mid game when I lost connection to servers I would be kicked the main menu without so much as stopping to save. After a few weeks I gave up entirely.
I now have no intention of any intention of ever buying another Heroes of might and magic game ever again, and I’m certainly very wary of any Ubisoft titles. I also do a lot more research before buying any game to check if it has always online DRM so I know not to buy it. I pity anyone who’s bought any title with always online DRM that doesn’t allow for any form of play in offline mode.
As I’d stated in part one, business want to make money. Why would they continue a practice that seems to encourage piracy? My reasoning is that there is a combination of two reasons. It’s possible that the only thing more important to a CEO in his relationship with shareholders then to be making money is to appear to be making money. Shareholders don’t necessarily have an in-depth knowledge of the games industry so when they hear that piracy is killing the industry they will demand to know what the CEO is doing about it. DRM is something the CEO can point to and say “look, this is what I’ve done, it will save all your money!”
The second reason is simply that Piracy is quite probably not the only motive behind DRM and may well only be a convenient excuse marketing can use to justify including it. DRM can also be used to try and prevent people from lending or trading games, a practice which is much harder for publishers to villainies then piracy. Online DRM can be used to monitor customers playing habits in order to calculate how best to drain money out of the masses in the future, big brother always looking over your shoulder. But what scares me the most is that DRM can be used to stop you playing!
This is the biggest reason I dislike always online DRM. When the company decides that they no longer want to support servers for a game then it becomes impossible for anyone ever to prove they haven’t pirated the game and so said game will forever treat them as though they have. This means that DRM is giving companies the power to disable part or all of the game you’ve paid good money for and try to force you to buy their new game instead.
Earlier I compared DRM to like having a lock on your door. Well to make another physical world comparison the above scenario would be like the guy at the furniture shop saying that if you buy from him have people keep an eye on your house to make sure everything’s OK. Seems like a good idea but if when you look into it you find this means that he’ll send his boys around to your house every day whether you like it or not. The moment you stop paying your protection money they’ll break all your stuff. Think of it that way and suddenly the company that was trying to portray itself as the hard done by little guy suddenly become gangsters and bullies.
It’s not a perfect analogy but it serves the persons of highlighting the point that we should not be letting companies have this kind of power over us. One of the most common counter arguments I get when discussing this with friends tends to be “they wouldn’t do that” especially when I’ve been using Activison-Blizzard’s Diablo 3 as an example. Blizzard has a unique talent for building games in such a way that they simply have to sit back and relax as their giant pile of money grows underneath them.
I don’t have a problem with this directly. I like money. If anyone reading this doesn’t then I’ll be happy to take any they come across of their hands. Blizzard have managed to engineer their DRM in such a way that it’s in their best interest to keep the servers running for as long as possible, especially when combined with their usual development cycle making the next game in the series likely to be the better part of a decade away.
Yet even they have managed to make their DRM cost the consumer. Was there any reason they couldn’t have included and offline/LAN only mode? Does guaranteeing higher prices in the auction house really benefit the average consumer in any way? But my real problem with always online DRM across the industry as a whole. It might and probably won’t be abused by Blizzard but if the power is out there it will be abused. If we let the first companies get away with this abuse then the practice will only spread.
If we as consumers don’t resist the implementation of draconian DRM what is to stop companies from simply disabling an old game the moment a newer one comes out? If there is anything that has the potential to make me find a new hobby to spend my free time and money on it’s DRM.
How do we fight against this when companies are so very good at hiding DRM, distracting us from it or justifying its inclusion?
The way most likely to be effective is the say as fighting DLC. Pay attention to what DRM is in games you are considering buying. Try not to buy games with DRM likely to take away from your experience. I would advocate ever further measures. Customers should demand that when companies include always online DRM they should also promise that, when they decide to no longer support the DRM authentication servers, they will release a patch to remove the requirement from the game and allow access as though you had verified your copy. If they break these promises they should be held accountable through any legal means.
DRM is bad for gaming, it does a poor job of its stated purpose, preventing piracy, and there are far more unclear, often amoral motives, that don’t get stated. As with DLC our best hope is to vote with our wallets but I feel the nature of this issue is so serious that legal action should be consider where appropriate for such things as anti-competitive practices, false advertising or selling a product that doesn’t meet reasonable consumer expectations.
gorzillastory 