We’ve been hearing from a lot of publishers that DRM is the only way to protect their games against piracy. Well, there have been a few developers that were critisizing that – Croteam and CD Projekt RED are two of them that actually think that a quality game will sell, no matter what – and here comes Paradox Interactive to state what we’ve been saying this entire time. DRM is not working, it costs money to developers and makes the life of those that purchased the ‘DRM-games’ a living hell.
That was revealed in GameSpy’s interview with Paradox Interactive’s CEO, Fred Wester. Fred admitted that the DRM does not work at all and that Paradox is itentionally not implementing any kind of DRM to their games. After all, Fred believes that those who purchase a game should have ‘just as easy a time as those who pirate the game, otherwise it’s a negative incentive to buy a legal copy‘. Damn straight right Fred.
Fred continued:
“And I know this for a fact, because we tried it eight years ago, and it never worked for us. Two major reasons: it costs money and it makes you lose money, and the other is that it’s so inconvenient to customers.”
Which is what we’ve been trying to say all this time. DRM does not work and all legal purchasers should not have trouble playing their games, especially when pirates can play them easier and without troubles. That is something that most publishers should take into consideration.
Fred concluded that the other publishing companies are using these DRM schemes because their CEOs want to cover their backs:
“If you’re a CEO, you need to cover your back. And the people who ask, the board, know nothing about games. They’re there because they’re some investment company or something, and they ask “So what are you doing to protect our game from pirates?” And then they can reply “We’re buying this solution from Sony.” So I think it’s been a way to cover your back.”
Publishers should trust PC gamers. If you want to maximize your earnings, you need to provide an experience that is at least similar to the pirated version of your games.Or better. In addition, some clever anti-piracy measures like Bohemia’s blurry effects and Croteam’s immortal scorpion are welcomed and if you want to protect your games from early leaks, use Steamworks. There are solutions our dear publishers and you should start taking advantage of them.
The age of putting draconian DRMs and then blaming piracy for your low sales is over!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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