Pros and Cons of DRM-Free

[TheAwakeJake]

I'm considering to not put DRM on my game. What are some pros and cons to doing this?

 

[Nathanial]

Personal post, not the views of RMW:

Pros

None of the negative things that come with DRM. DRM can work against the user. I hate DRM, personally. I've seen countless games (made by friends, to AAA titles) have problems due to DRM. From license keys not working (when they should) to crashes... to games not even starting!

Doing it this way also allowed me to call bluff on some of Aldorlea's customers. Saying the license key didn't work, and that they wanted a refund. Nice try, there is no license key. 

Cons

I don't really need to say it, but piracy is easier. I didn't do DRM with my game. The first week everything was great. After a pirate release group bought it though, piracy was very rampant. I have a very funny trick that I did in preparation for that... but it caused some issues with legit customers. I purposely kept some smaller bugs (and one potentially game breaking) in the release until after the game started appearing illegally. Then I patched said bugs. The result: pirated copies of the game are buggy and easy to identify.

YMMV though. DRM software that you would likely apply is easy to crack/remove. Even easier with RM games, truth be told (silly easy, really)! It's also quite pricey.

Other thoughts

It's your choice, but me personally? For an indie game? Don't do it. They'll just remove it anyway, and you're potentially pissing away $200+ on "nice" DRM software.

Honestly? I think it's better to release a version of your game deliberately to the pirates that have bugs. Maybe allow the player to get halfway through the game, and then a boss can never be killed. This allows the pirates to experience a large portion of your game to see if they like it and maybe they'll buy it (for "those" kind of pirates). Then again that can be considered being an *******. So it's all up to you. Get creative. My point is that I never see DRM as helpful, only a thing that gets in the way of legit customers. The DRM will be broken/removed anyway, so why cause potential problems for your customers and pay big money on DRM software? 

 

[crimcrim]

the more DRM you put in your game the more tempted people will be to try and distribute your game

that's the basic rule to follow

 

[whitesphere]

Personally, if I were to distribute a game commercially, I wouldn't put DRM on it.  Why?  As a player, I've seen plenty of DRM which only serves to add headaches (see: Spore) to honest customers, while the pirates just remove it.  At most, "good" DRM may delay pirating your game for a few months.

The hope developers have is that DRM will convert enough "lost" sales (i.e. pirated copies) to actual sales to justify the cost of the DRM itself.

But, I believe very strongly, especially if, say the game costs $10 or so, you won't get any "lost" sales.  While there are people who want to pirate because they want to demo the game, I think a much larger percentage just don't believe they "should" pay for games and will justify this with whatever crap goes into their head ("Oh, it's an old-style game, it's too easy to make to pay for." for example).

The latter group won't buy the game because they believe on some level they're entitled to it.  The former group, well, you can release a demo version which goes through a portion of the game.

If I were to summarize, as you asked:

Pros of DRM-Free:

* Less hassle for the player (DRM can induce strange system behavior/rootkits/whatever)

* Less support costs for the developer, when the DRM software conflicts with something else already on the system

* Lower development costs, since there's no need to purchase, test or integrate the DRM software into your game

Cons of DRM-Free:

* Potential higher rate of pirating

Now, I understand using the default encryption and the likes, but that is to add reasonable protection to the game's resources.  But that's not DRM in the sense of "Try to make the game harder to steal"

 

[Clord]

Pros and cons of having DRM in your game.

Pros

- People might give you money if they find pirating your game bothersome.

- It can make one question his/her own morals if he/she can easily afford your game and tries to pirate it anyway.

Cons

- Extremely easy to remove.

- More work for you as you try to solve problems of customers that will quite likely blame you for them and not the company that offers the DRM.

Top of that, it is  questionable if DRM actually helps sales in the long run, some cases it has done opposite.

 

[Alexander Amnell]

Drm are pretty much useless most of the time. I don't have a good internet signal so most modern drm will not function as intended for me. 95% of the time drm causes a game I would consider buying to lose a sale instantly, the rest of the time I'll remove the drm after purchase because, again most of the drm pretty much function under the assumption that the customer has access to an internet signal capable of linking up to a server for it to do some sort of verification with; I do not. I'm also by no means a computer hacker or pirate, so the fact I can get around a aaa games professional drm fairly easily causes me to seriously doubt that drm really prevent piracy to begin with.

 

[EternalShadow]

I've heard stories of some games havng so much DRM that pirates actually distributed DRM-free copies of the game just so that the players could play offline, or not have to log in to online services, etc...

Personally, I don't even bother with DRM, it's more hassle than it's worth. If people want to pirate the game, either they'd never have bought it in the first place, or something is so wrong with the DRM that it makes people want to pirate it. There is a third camp that uses piracy to actually test the game, but that could easily be solved by offering a time-limited demo... (And if they pirate to get past this time limit... They're not exactly a paying customer, are they?)

I suppose even if the game is pirated, it's publicity.

There's lots of thngs to consider, but my general view is no. Back when games were disc-based, piracy was never really an issue. Electronic distribution however, makes it easier than ever to pirate and break the DRM.

But then I could go into a spiel about the rising costs of the game dev industry and the impact that piracy is causing, thereby requiring DRM...

Might write an essay on this someday lol

 

[Sharm]

Back when games were disc-based, piracy was never really an issue.

That's completely untrue. Piracy is what destroyed Atari.

 

[Clord]

Blizzard is one of few companies that has actually a strong DRM solution in place, known as "server side" implementation or whatever you want to call it.

Diablo 3 and Hearthstone at least are completely useless without server and the stuff like values for monsters etc are server side.

But then again, they get away with it because they are Blizzard.

Even stronger DRM is cloud based gaming like Onlive and Playstation Now service by Sony but that would mean only to release game via through those services.

 

[amaranth]

I use DRM, but not to defeat piracy (good luck w/any solution... if hackers like your game, it will be cracked w/in a week). DRM is great if you don't want to maintain a demo version and full version. I use it so that I don't have to guess how long I should make a demo, nor have to fix bugs in both demo and full-version. DRM works well if you're not using it to defeat piracy, but to make it easier for people to demo and buy your game.

 

[Tsukihime]

I use DRM, but not to defeat piracy (good luck w/any solution... if hackers like your game, it will be cracked w/in a week). DRM is great if you don't want to maintain a demo version and full version. I use it so that I don't have to guess how long I should make a demo, nor have to fix bugs in both demo and full-version. DRM works well if you're not using it to defeat piracy, but to make it easier for people to demo and buy your game.

Do you mean that you would determine where the demo cuts off using DRM and players that wish to continue playing will either have to purchase the full version (or figure out how to get past it)?

 

[EternalShadow]

Blizzard's DRM isn't intrusive though, I barely even notice it in Hearthstone.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

@Clord - I think it's not really a DRM per se, it just happens to somehow also serve as one. The bad thing about that though, IMO, is that internet connection speed plays more importantly here than on normal online games where all the files reside on the client's computer instead of in the server.


Personally, I don't like putting DRM that I would need to buy which most of the times just restrict the good players.. I added my own "protections" to some of my games, but they're not really to protect from pirates since my games are free anyway. It's more of file protection due to the way that I'm handling the resource files in my game.

 

[phoenix_rossy]

 I purposely kept some smaller bugs (and one potentially game breaking) in the release until after the game started appearing illegally. Then I patched said bugs. The result: pirated copies of the game are buggy and easy to identify.

You sir, are a GENIUS.

It irked me to find pirated copies of my game. But in my own opinion, not only does that mean the game is WORTH pirating (a big compliment in my opinion) but a good proportion of gamers understand that if they don't support us indie devs, we're going to disappear - nobody wants that.

 

[paralistalon]

I've never used the presence of DRM as an excuse not to buy a game that I really wanted, but yeah, some of the DRM I've come across has been highly annoying (like FarCry3).  I don't pirate games myself, so I can't speak from their perspective, but I'm sure if a game is reasonably priced, then it's a lot easier to just pay the $5 or $10 than steal it.  You could also rely on the mindset that people have less guilt about pirating from EA or some million-dollar company... but I remember the lesson from World of Goo, a great indie game made by a two person team that had no DRM, yet they reported 90% piracy rate.  That's enough to make anyone lose faith in the ethics of the anonymous internet gamer.  I guess the question is, is it worth it to you to risk having your game pirated?  It might not be a bad thing if it means you get a ton of exposure and get noticed as a developer; then you can put fort knox on your next game.  But that means you're making multiple awesome games before you get paid, so it makes the prospect of turning your hobby into a paycheck even more daunting. 

Nathanial, I would have been so annoyed with that, lol.  I guess I can see the point, but even now I'm making a mental note not to buy any of your games until they've been out for at least a month or two!  Here are some other funny ways in which companies have tried to get back at pirates (I love the hentai one, lol): 

http://www.cracked.com/article_19162_6-hilarious-ways-game-designers-are-screwing-with-pirates.html

Coincidentally, I've recently been trying to restore all my Sony SonicStage music files to my computer post-system restore and running into the issue that it can't authenticate me so it won't let me import my backed up files.  Ugh.  To make matters worse, Sony's portable music software has been discontinued for a couple years now, ever since Apple destroyed it in sales, so I'm left here with a useless pile of copy-protected files that aren't supported anymore.  So for all these games that require online validation to run, ask yourself how long they will keep those services running before they figure it's not worth it anymore and don't care if you can play the game or not. 

 

[whitesphere]

I didn't know that about World of Goo --- a 90% piracy rate? 

I guess the Internet acts like a more powerful Ring of Ganges ---- a hypothetical ring which makes people invisible.  I say more powerful because on the Internet, you don't typically see the person you're talking to or affecting.  Even real life pickpockets and thieves certainly see who they're stealing from at least.  The question then becomes this:  If someone could do whatever they wanted without fear of retribution or detection, what would they do?

In other words, how many people truly have a personal sense of ethics, which does not require external enforcement, and how many do not -- only driven by fear of punishment? 

I'd hope most people have personal ethics and, well, honor, but it appears many do not. :-(

Here's to the hope that we all have good people in our lives who wouldn't fail that particular test.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

I think the cost doesn't really matter to the pirates, as there will always be people who would want to get the games for free.

 

[Matombo]

Read a lot of artikle about it most have 1 i common:

Most sales of a game happens in the 1 month it's out,

also most priating

so what the big publishers actually what to archive with there drm is that it isn't cracked (or at least not full fuctionaly) within that period

Because there is no software you cant hack if you have endless time.

(there are also a lot of games where the drm was later removed with a patch because that hot selling period was over anyway)

 

[phoenix_rossy]

I didn't know that about World of Goo --- a 90% piracy rate? 

I suppose that the 'ethical gamer's' standpoint would be somewhere along the lines of "they've probably made tons of money already" and therefore feel less guilty. As paralistalon said, most people don't feel guilty about pirating from large 'faceless' corporations. And something we DO have to remember; not everyone has expendable income that they can spend on games/music/media. So a considerable amount of those pirating the game probably wouldn't have bought it anyway.

I'll be the first to admit that I've pirated in the past (never indie stuff though) simply because I didn't have the money to buy the product. And I justified it as so- "I couldn't afford to buy the product in the first place, so they're not missing a potential sale by me pirating it."

That, and back when the web was still teething pirating was just so damn easy.

 

[Indinera]

Most sales of a game happens in the 1 month it's out,

Nope, not from my experience (granted, it's limited to RM games, but then again this is what this board is about)