Things wrong with the comparison:

The game was released a week earlier for the other platforms, and is a console game by design.  The day one crowd wasn't waiting for the PC version.  PC ports rarely fare well to begin with.

Sales are not pirated copies.  If you sell a million copies of the game and a thousand people pirate it, that might look successful but the piracy rate is irrelevant.  Your goal as a provider of a product is to sell them, not keep people from getting them for free.

If, with no DRM, you'd have sold two million copies and had a hundred million people pirate it, which is the smarter choice?

The piracy rate is irrelevant, sales are the concern.

Not only does gaming history show that unprotected games simply lead to more piracy  recent history also demonstrates clearly that simply removing DRM is not the answer to piracy. As we saw in the Scale of Piracy section, many popular games which have no intrusive DRM, such as Assassin's Creed, Crysis, Call of Duty 4 and World of Goo, also have some of the highest piracy rates in 2008
 [/quote]

wtf are you trolling about?    You have no idea sunshine, 1) assassin's creed?  played pirate copy, s**t game, delete.  2) Crysis?  Played pirated copy, thought sp was too much of a tech demo that farcry 2 was already going to beat (industry mate), MP was too battlefield for me.  3) CoD4?  Played pirated copy, gameplay was solid, bought for £25 (60 bucks for us)  world of goo...   wtf?   I assume you mean world of warcraft?  unsure but i prefer eve myself, much less like wan**ng to levels.

You really miss the issue dont you?  Piracy is about money, plain and simple.  If devs come up with fantastic concepts that's great, it's the execution that matters!   I WILL NOT BUY GTA4 for one reason, and that is live.  There's no reason to limit a singleplayer game by need of internet connection, devs just need to concentrate on making a great game that people WANT to play multiplayer.  As previously stated, i had a pirate copy of sins that i played with friends....   was it the lack of patch updates for pirates?  was it the lack of multiplayer support?  was it lack of gameplay?  maybe it was your mom, but any way you look at it I payed my money out for a game that I thought was worth it, just as i do any other time i think "yeah, this game deserves my money."     You can b***h about piracy, but i think that all games should give at least 1/4 of a singleplayer experience before asking people to part with 1/8th of their income. 

All in all, pirates will always exist, it's just up to game developers to make games WORTH paying for.

/rant

You continually act as if the two are not related, which is absurd. It's equally likely removing DRM would result in 900k people buying it and 100 million people pirating it. Like in quantum mechanics, there is no way to observe an event without influencing it; the only way to test which of these would actually happen is to do it, and the game makers have too much money at risk to take that chance.

At best we have anecdotal evidence that ANY of the pirates would buy a legit copy if there was no DRM on it. You honestly expect game companies to change their policies based solely on the honesty of people who have already pirated their games? What a laugh.

I'll grant the different release dates probably made a substantial difference in piracy rate for PoP. Which is the only reason they did it that way, of course. OMG, they PLANNED it that way as a subtle form of DRM. Alert the lynch mob!

I'd argue that there's losing sales, but piracy is unchanged- as I think piracy and DRM are only weakly correlated.

That said, I do think there may be a correlation between sales and DRM, but this would be hard to prove statistically.

My guess is the strongest correlations for piracy would be

a) genre

popularity

c) Need for verification to enjoy experience fully (like Team Fortress 2, WoW)

can't edit my post now so double posting.

Not enough time for a full reply, but the article looks pretty good.

. . . except the part about ring 0 access and emulators. I think he's confusing emulators (which only need access to a turing complete instruction set) with virtualizers (which work with the hardware to create virtual machines). Virtual Machines need ring 0 access, but true emulators don't need it.

Other than that, good read so far.

Is it? How do you know that?

It's a question of statistics and correlation. If you have some statistics available that proves or disproves a correlation, I'd be interested in seeing those statistics.

Good article. Worth reading. All I can say is that game dev's should make demos to show player's about their game and not invest millions in hype. Because I learned hard way that hype is not to be trusted but if I could try demo I could see if game is worth buying.

Same goes with modern movies. Trailers kick ass and its is amazing but when you actually see the movie you notice that all best stuff WAS in trailer. So after 10 failed movie trips to theater its easyer to rip movie from torrent site and "try" to see if it is good. Its sad but true, id prefer movie theaters.

This year I bought Far Cry 2 (disappointment), Fallout 3 (disappointment), GTA4 (disappointment because when my Crysis runs fps 50 on max, GTA4 runs fps 20 on medium), and so on. Only reason why I wont sink so low to download games from torrent sites is because I am pc gamer and I dont wanna support piracy. If I had demo to try game out I would not be so disappointment at company who make/publish game, but when I spend my 50e on a game which is hyped to be GOTY and metacritic 100% but is actually crap, it make me distrust publisher and maker of the game. My list of publishers/makers is going shorter and shorter, right now only Obsidian Entertament, Ironclad, Stardock, ValvE and some smaller arcade game makers remain on list.

My thoughts on Steam is same like on Impulse. I have em both and both are great in their own way. Steam as older brother got much bigger community and is more advanced in way like community+friends system and looks like it is selling a lot of games. Impulse as younger brother... (maybe Stardock Central is older than Steam I dunno but I am talking about Impulse now ) ...is growing and updateing, it also have "not a game" software redistribution. Impulse starts faster and update games faster than Steam. I also like Impulse design and logo over Steam. So in future as a pc gamer I prefer buying games from Impulse and Steam and have them as my "DRM" and not 3 activation limit on box copy what EA is doing right now.

I just bought galciv:Expanded Universe.

It was the best 30 euros i've ever spent.

It 's obvious how much effort love and dedication has been put into the game.

Thanks Stardock!

the only issues i see with drm is certain problems like the internet authetication if said server is down or company went out of bussiness,second one is the rootkit drm which a rootkit is iiligeal classified type as a virus if you have a good anti virus it would quarntine or delete your game namely one kaspersky internet security 2009 with all its boot scan sequences deep core herustics analyizers and rootkit detection,plus the already relevent problem with drm is some drm based games will not run or install if used on another pc or run if put into certain drives such as dedicated dvdrw and cdrw burning disc drives

S_o_L agreas and hands over a fire-proof suit

ure giving a good example as of why drm hurts its customers rather then the pirates, i consider cracking every game i get,   and search alot on the web b4  i instal games,  it happend b4 that my pc conviently crashed after installing Bioshock,   i returned it and traded it for some lego-game for lil sis,  who knows,  was it the game that made me crash :/?    im not gonan try it again

I 'pirate' stuff regularly.

I test out the material, either via a demo or a pirated copy, and then I purchase it - IF I LIKE IT. I own several hundred vinyl albums, 500 dvd films, several hundred CD's and 50-100 games.

I cannot afford to waste my low income (I'm a student, currently) on material I do not want. Hence, I test before I buy.
If I didn't have the option of playing a demo or getting a pirated copy, I'd never have discovered sins of a solar empire, nor purchased it. Nor would I have pre-paid for the upcoming expansion.

I think game developers, artists and the media conglomorate in general need to realize that there is not an infinite amount of cash to be had from their customers. The vast majority are like me, relatively low-wage income and we have to pay for the hardware to run their software, hardware to play the cd's and dvd's, televisions to display their programming. Then we've got rent, electrical, heating, clothing, food and what have you.

At the end of the day, there's only so much one can spend a month on entertainment, and if you want a trip in the cinema, there goes a cd album or a game you might have bought.

I am by no means defending people who exclusively pirate material in any form, without ever buying anything.
Obviously people who just rape the industry, and never ever buy anything should be hanged by the neck like the pirates of old.

Just think about it, how many games come out each year you'd like to play? How many of those can you actually afford to purchase, only to find out you don't like them? Same goes for CD's, movies and other content.

I am quite surprised at the number of people who have the gall to call up tech support, while not owning a legitimate copy of the game, as described in the article. That's just cruel in so many ways. I cannot fathom how those people can justify such an act, and feel good about themselves.

Oh well. Feel free to call the coppers on me

I have to agree with this. Give us a demo. Give us something we can use to decide if we like a game enough to keep playing it.

I'm not saying piracy, even casual piracy, is right by any means. But there does seem to be an element of concern about determining the quality of a product we have never tested.

Unfortunately, games are somewhat subjective, and depend highly on the tastes of the player. What one player finds "grand scale" and "epic" another player may find "boring" and "long." Conversely, what one player finds "fast paced" and "furious" another player may find "pointless" and "repetitive."

Me? I like the large stuff, I like a good puzzle, a good strategy. I own the entire Myst series, and have completed nearly all fo them. I play GalCiv 2 and Sins. My machine is pretty much filled with strategy games.

My brother? He plays for hours on a Counterstrike map where everybody stsrts at virtually point blank range save for a few ice blocks to hide behind.

The sad truth is, you can't satisfy everybody. So IMHO it's vital that the player get an accurate representation of the game before buying it. Which usually means a demo or a trial. In addition, I'd like to add screenshots and descriptions on the website as well. I want to see what I'll be playing before I buy it.

I'm more of an all-round gamer..

I play counter-strike, the witcher, baldurs gate, icewind dale, basically everything released by westwood.. the list goes on and on and on.

I like combat things, such as the new Fallout 3, which is a really solid game - and I enjoy it a lot. Hence, it's purchased. The witcher I bought twice. (one special edition.)

I agree with you that tastes are subjective though, for example, though I enjoy a good first person shooter, a poorly designed combat system will easily destroy it for me.
What ruined mass-effect for me, in the end, even though I bought it because my inintial response to it was promising, was the constant repetitiveness of planets, everything looked the same, you had to do the same stuff, it wasn't really much of an RPG; in my opinion. Sure they had their dialogue, but with very limited options.

As such I've beaten it, but I don't expect to sit down and give it another go anytime soon. Maybe after a few expansion packs or a mod perhaps.

As for your brother, I know of the map you're referring to, and it can be a great diversiton for a little while. What has made me play Counter-Strike 1.6 for the past almost 9 years, is the fact it's a great team game. I am currently the Clan Leader of one of the oldest counter-strike clans in my country, and we are constantly playing and evolving. What's even better is, not one of us is under 18 years old. Just makes for better gameplay. And yes, it's still challenging. Particularly now that I've reached an age where my reflexes are slowing, and I have to rely more on tactics and experience.

And it is very important a player can try out a game before buying it, if not, you're going in blind, and very few people are willing to do that. Particularly with rumors of certain review sites being biased towards certain developers for cash under the table.

Yeah, you can only be young once. A lot of the new casual games look like fun, but I often ended up more frustrated than entertained. There's only so many times I care to restart and retry a level.

I hear that. Particularly when I know what makes a good combat engine, if it's flawed I immediately discard it. Because I can't afford to waste my time on something that's an annoyance.

Piracy and the Cracker/Hacker scene will always exists as long as software exists be it they are for games, commercial/government/military softwares, network security hacks/compromises.  People do it for the challenge of it, but the sad thing is, it was not meant to be at today's level after the release of Bit Torrent.

You can find tutorials on reverse engineering, computer virus writing, writing buffer overflow, etc.  I guess it is too late to put the genie back in the bottle.  The secrets are out.  So like Frogboy said, as a company, SD cares about those customers who pays not those who pirates.  piracy is a fact of life, i think it is more productive that game companies concentrate on making quality products and developing loyal customer bases instead of these silly DRM schemes that they put into their games.

Edit:  I don't know if this is relevant, i do remember that for sites that provide cracks for software like www.gamecopyworld.com, i have seen that if there is a game release without DRM protection, it will explicitly state on the site that there will not be any cracks provided, because there are no copy protection, this would probably further discouraged pirates from getting their hands on the game and trying to crack it in the first place and then releasing it to the public as a result of their actions.

It would be interesting if video games took the same route as some artists in the music industry - shifting their profit generation towards live performances. It would a sad day if only a limited number of people could pay to attend gaming events to have exclusive access to high-end games. 

I wonder if it really is correct that most people buy games the first couple of days, and if DRM therefore is succesful if it lasts just a little while?

I personally never bought and never will buy a game on day one. I either pre-order it, buy it at a discount later or sometimes wait a couple of weeks for the first patches to come out. Do pre-orders count as "first-day-sold"? If so then the statistics used to say that DRM helps early sales is skewed. What does count as a copy sold the first day, exactly?

All of these options rule out DRM as effective for preventing me from pirating games, since I either already paid for the game or wait a while, meaning a cracked version will be out.

Hope I managed to get my message across. I'm having quite a hang-over and my brain doesn't think as coherently as I would like

now that wouldnt be all to profitable would it now :/?

+ piracy would probably take over the gaming market if that happens (not that i dont find that an atractive idea...)

Generally.

Since everybody decided to ignore how much I hate this article, let me re-iterate that it's full of shit.

I did walk away from it thinking the guy is a sort of a shill for the "just say no to DRM" (aka anti-DRM) movement however.

Article was pretty good, horewer it lacked one of the most important things about Pirating and its Economical effect. Lets state these few facts to make all understand:  Prime directive of Game developers is making money (artistic value and such are always less important). Most of the games are unique and gaming experience can rarely be simulated by other game => there is not much of a concurency in gaming industry (There are exceptions, like MMORPGs, which take so much time to play them that you can play only one at a time ) => without piracy, developers have monopoly on their product (ouch!) of course they could not get price too high for the games not to sell, but they could make it higher.

Ever wondered why Console games cost more? Its because piracy  on console games is harder and developers CAN (important! they do it because they CAN) get more money from games and still, sales on consoles are higher than sales of cheaper pc games. (they dont have much of a choice)

So if there were no piracy, games would not get cheaper. Piracy is mostly the only concurent the developer has... Lets all be happy that piracy exist and that its pushing the game quality up and pushing the cost down. There of course is a victim, the developer, but there is more people buying than those developing so its you know, for the greater good. Currently industry kinda works with pirating, as long as there is pirate and customer, all will be happy. Except for devs.