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DRM Encourages Piracy by ACDragon
I just bought three games on sale on Steam. Because these games are made by Ubisoft, they have the infamous "UPlay" DRM program as a requirement on top of Steam also being required to play. While I am grateful that I was able to keep my saves after having to reinstall my operating system, I can't play the various DLC for these games, which I purchased with my money legitimately, because Uplay won't allow me to copy/paste my CD keys from Steam into UPlay... because yanno, DRM is supposed to be so uber paranoid that it stops people from pirating games.
So I went online and looked for ways to fix the problem that was CAUSED by this so-called "Anti-Piracy Measure," and I happened upon a statement by an Ubisoft employee, that said that the "key to stopping piracy" was to include things that couldn't be accessed by pirates, such as Multiplayer mode. So... not punishing paying customers for the oh, so horrible crime of BUYING THEIR PRODUCT is somehow not the key to stopping piracy...
My God, these people are so damned arrogant!
After all these years of being treated like dogshit by the gaming community, by suffering multiple years of financial loss, and all during the times in which their DRM policies were so stringent that you couldn't even play one of their titles without having to be logged into UPlay AND Steam at the same time, you would think these corporate dipshits would understand that the key to stopping piracy would be to STOP PUNISHING YOUR PAYING CUSTOMERS! But nope! It's all about adding multiplayer to a game, hurrrrr durrrr. Because after all, pirates can't play multiplayer games, hurrrrrr... except of course that they actually can and have and still do play multiplayer in pirated games.
But that doesn't fucking matter! Nooooo, what matters is that the money-hungry dipshits whose own paranoia and draconian policies have caused their woes never be required to acknowledge that it was their own actions and their own business model that screwed their bottom line all to hell. Better to just keep blaming pirates and punishing paying customers than to actually take responsibility for their own bullshit, after all.
So, because I can't access my DLC's, I'm going to have to actually pirate the entire game that I just paid my money for. Thanks a lot Ubisoft. I really appreciate having to BREAK THE LAW just to play a game I paid for legitimately.
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Piracy doesn't encourage DRM, actually. I did some reading and found out exactly why DRM exists. Piracy has little, if anything, to do with it. Here's the article I found about it:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2007/01/8616/
Turns out that DRM is intended as a control mechanism to milk as much money from paying customers as possible. It's a similar tactic to the "Built-in Obsolescence" folly that American automakers adhered to back in the 60's and 70's, where they made every car with inferior quality so that when the cars broke their customers would bring their cars in for service at repair shops run by the dealerships. DRM works in a similar way to Built-in Obsolescence, in that it restricts what a user can do with the product they paid for, and if they want to remain legit they have to jump through extra hoops and possibly pay even more money to fix the problems, which were created by the corporations that sold the product in the first place as a means of generating extra revenue.
In other words, piracy is a convenient scapegoat. The real reason DRM exists is pure, unmitigated greed.
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Piracy of games encourages game DRM. The linked article is about movie DRM, which (while related and equally dumb) is a whole 'nother beast. xD
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No, it doesn't. And no, movie DRM is not a whole 'nother beast, either. The reason that devs use DRM is exactly the same as the reason that the MPAA uses DRM, therefore it's exactly the same beast. In both cases, DRM is about controlling supply and demand, not stopping piracy.
Please remember that the bittorrent protocol, the most widely-used method of pirating in this day and age, was created by the very same people who now condemn its use: the entertainment industry. They created it, it came back to bite them in the ass, and now they condemn it as if they had nothing to do with its creation. If they truly were interested in fighting piracy as they claim that they are, they would never have created Peer-To-Peer software in the first place.
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honestly drm encourages people to not buy their products, I haven't bought a ubisoft game since rayman back in 2001. and I uninstalled origin and lost the sims (big loss there modern sims are glitchy as hell) meanwhile one of my favorite games sins of a solar empire initially came out with no drm and it was a commercial smash hit (recently they switched to steam distribution but if they could turn of steam's inherent drm I get the impression they would)
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I've only just noticed this journal entry just now. >_o I really oughta visit Weasyl more often.
Unfortunately, as much as both the game and movie industry try to deny it, DRM really does encourage piracy. In fact, it does absolutely nothing to stop the pirates from pirating their games. What it does is causing such major hindrance to the legitimate customers who actually paid for their games. No wonder lots of gamers are boycotting Ubisoft.
I do have some games from Ubisoft, and yeah, UPlay is a bitch. It's an unnecessary additional layer of DRM on top of the existing Steam DRM, with its own Achievements system separate from Steam. I haven't encountered the problems you've faced, but now that you've mentioned it, yeah, that just sucks. >_<
I rephrase what TotalBiscuit said in his "Deus Ex Pre-order Bollocks" video, quoting Gabe Newell's words: the best way to combat piracy is by providing a better service than the pirates do. Putting your games behind DRM is definitely not the way to combat piracy.
Link
Irbis
DRM encourages piracy.
Piracy encourages DRM.
Complimentary schizmogenesis.