I think DRM is a waste of time, personally.

There's ALWAYS a crack out for games whatever they come up with, the only people annoyed are the legit customers.

Did you miss the part of the article where various game developers state that delaying piracy by even a few days is worthwhile? Or how about the benefit of suppressing the secondary market, which from the developer's perspective is effectively the same as piracy? The developer gets just as much from a used game sale as they do from a pirated copy (that is, nothing), so knocking back the used market is a valid purpose of DRM on its own.

The delay of a crack is such an incredibly small impact that I cannot possibly fathom why anyone would care enough to go buy it, if they intended to pirate it to begin with. While it rings true for the truly fanboyesque ("I -must- have this game TODAY!"), the same people also tend to be the ones that make it a point to buy said developer's games.

The vast majority of people don't even keep track of releases, and wheter they have the game 24 hours after release, or 48, matters very little. (Alright, so there's been cases where it's taken over 48 hours, but they're in the minority. The vast minority).

This is probably true for the simple DRM types (such as CD checks).  But what about the DRM used on spore?  That's way above and beyond what's necessary to keep honest people honest.  In fact, there's a small percentage that are driven to piracy because they couldn't get their legal copy to work.

Do you have statistics proving it is?  If I am to be deemed guilty by the industry without proof, why is it then my burden to prove I'm not?  

I have never seen a proven correlation between so called casual piracy and lost sales.  As far as I know, such a study has never been done.  If it has, the industry that sponsored it apparently didn't like the results or they'd have been hammering us with it in congressional hearings.

What I have seen are small scale studies done by individual publishers that say nothing of any kind.  The Ricochet guy that checked pirated copies in use against sales numbers as he was disabling various methods of using them probably gave us the most useful information.  He was only getting around one sale for a thousand copies.  Would you feel safe betting that of those thousand pirated copies, less than one person bought the game after pirating it?  I don't know enough pirates to have my own statistical base to work off, but of the ones I do know, one for a thousand is somewhere between low and preposterously low.

Guys like that asshat from Crytek are just spouting nonsense.  OMG!!!  We only sold a million copies and a million people pirated it!  We should have sold eight million!!!  Damn that piracy, I'm not selling PC games anymore!  Waahhh....  You can't compare pirated copies to legal copies and pull a conclusion out of your ass like that.  It's like saying trees grow because the moon has a gravitational effect on the earth.  The two do happen to coincide with each other, but that doesn't make them a causal relationship.

This is exactly the mentality that is getting them in so much trouble.  We don't know jack shit, but since they can't prove otherwise we'll keep pretending that piracy is killing our sales despite their continual increase.  They've never even attempted to offer proof, it's all pure conjecture.  They don't even bother trying to survey their customers on it.  How many times have you seen one of them stupid surveys on what made you purchase the product, was piracy ever listed?  I even bother to fill the stupid fuckers out when they're not from a company that has pissed me off one too many times, I've never seen piracy listed.

Honesty shouldn't be forced, it should come naturally from those that want to protect the community they are a part of.

We need a society where honest people can teach honesty through example. We need to continously and conciously change how people percieve the world and act in their local habitats. Call it fascism if you want, but morals are useless without a higher instance of guidance (be it god, religion, overreaching philosophy, or the goverment(s).

Wrong, I refuted a claim.  With no proof, or at least no disclosed proof of anything even resembling their claims, certain developers and producers have stated quite clearly that those pirated copies are lost sales, either in whole or to a substantial degree far beyond what evidence they've given.  They make the claims.  As you regularly post in these threads, you've already seen them.

Very good article with the many facets aborded. Still some guys are pretentious enough (psychoak) to assume they know more than the companies together ("They just don't understand their market") that hold all sorts of data and have researchers and more extensive knowledgement of game industry. Couldn't you see the basic research the article writer did about PC's and Consoles capable of playing the last games? Nvidia and ATI are not in bad shapes.

Some just can't admit when they had wrong thoughts before, or just envy the fact that they couldn't write a good article like that one. Many of the aborded issues are certainly close to the truth.

Like he suggested at the end, the biggest issue I see with DRM, is when companies wouldn't explicit show what would be installed and that it could corrupt such programs has emulators or DVD burners. They have the right to do that, but only when it's cleary informed and also any collateral risks even if that mean lost sales. Support to it and remotion tools too.

Also true that many of the gamers that begin to shout against DRM are hardcore pirates that want to protect their 'interests' and create the angry sentiment and use it has an excuse for themselves for what they do and usually always did. Like he said, not to say DRM was perfect. It is bad and so it is the loss due to game piracy(financial and motivational), but it should be discussed in more peaceful manner to balance it out, because it's important for everybody to reduce it. DRM usage and potential effects it may cause, should be cleary informed to customers in all cases, if companies want it to be valid or seem with better eyes.

Has he pointed too, many would just cry at a company because of the protection it uses and induce others to not buy it, and not complain at all when someone is bragging to be a pirate. Like say anything to that person or report him. Game Pirates are causing much more of a complex problem than a DRM do, not to mention they are the ones that made of it a necessity. Games, companies and their services (indie companies to come to form too) and the PC plataform would be evolving faster if there wasn't for so much piracy of their games and even yet the piracy sentiment created in the buzzyness. Also very important to mention, it's just not about now but companies do must envision the future before it comes, any avarage company must think of the future of their buzzyness ahead, and piracy in mass like its ocurring most on PC, shows not a good one to motivate them to invest has they could or invest at all if there are alternatives.

What about the decision to make a game today for the PC that takes 5 years to finish? How much to invest? Without any break to the PC piracy has it is now, how will it be by then? Shouldn't they begin to make themselves a name on consoles instead and move their knowledments to make games that adapt to consoles? PC gamming will not die, but lost and is loosing.

Some people are stupid enough to think companies will wait a threat, like piracy is right now (big, popular and easy), till they get bankrupt or very low profits to make necessary changes. Customers should be trying to get with the companies (much especially the ones that can be comprehensive and not abusive) for a good solution, not be asking for no protection and saying that "loves them for the lack of protection". Thats egoism, some don't have any because there isn't a very effective model (especially that wouldn't cause any harazzment to the cry out loud mass that formed regarding the issue) but they are still loosing profits for their products and feeding a non-contributive party that is significative.

Comppanies have tried that, the problem is that it gets false positives, and f's up the game for legitimate users. It has also other ill effcts, see Titan Quest for example, people who downloaded the pirate version reported a whole lot of bugs and poor performance (due to the DRM) which lowered the interest of the game among people who might have bought it othervise. The sales bunked, and the developer, Iron Lore, went bankcrupt (IIRC). They blamed it on piracy, which isn't all BS.

There was also a lengthy NES RPG (NES was FamiCom in the other side of the pond, i think) that erased all save games and crashed at the beginning of the final boss fight, if it thought the cartridge was an illegal copy. I saw a YouTube video on that but can't remeber the games name unfortunately.

But realistically: if there was no piracy, there would be no DRM.

But i have no money nor a gun! What do i do!?!

Seriously, DRM was created to combat piracy, money was not created to combat poverty (it was created to make transactions easier), and death was not created to combat life (it exists because nothing is eternal)

This is what i tried, and apparently failed, to imply.

I disagree with the supposition that "many of the gamers which began to shout against DRM are hardcore pirates". As many of the people on this forum already know I'm one of the biggest shouters about DRM and I can easily spend hundreds of dollars every month on titles if so motivated. There are also other hardcore complainers like myself that could do the same that I know of on different forums. Moreover most if not all hardcore pirates could care less about DRM. It is the casual none technical oriented ones that complain and they are simply not real customers as far as I'm concerned.

Whereas people like me are and good ones at that and DRM is stepping on our rights and we will not accept it like a sheep lead to the slaughter. If developers and publishers want to use a stick on me for wanting to give them money then I will use a stick on them and protest when and wherever possible. After all turnabout is fair play - yes?