Shadow Warrior 2 Developers Say DRM Is a Waste of Time (arstechnica.com) 99
zarmanto writes: Ars Technica reports that one particular game studio might finally get it, when it comes to DRM'ed game content. They're publishing their latest game, Shadow Warrior 2, with no DRM protection at all. From the article: "We don't support piracy, but currently there isn't a good way to stop it without hurting our customers," Flying Wild Hog developer Krzysztof "KriS" Narkowicz wrote on the game's Steam forum (in response to a question about trying to force potential pirates to purchase the game instead). "Denuvo means we would have to spend money for making a worse version for our legit customers. It's like the FBI warning screen on legit movies." Expanding on those thoughts in a recent intervew with Kotaku, Narkowicz explained why he felt the DRM value proposition wasn't worth it. "Any DRM we would have needs to be implemented and tested," he told Kotaku. "We prefer to spend resources on making our game the best possible in terms of quality, rather than spending time and money on putting some protection that will not work anyway." "The trade-off is clear," Flying Wild Hog colleagues Artur Maksara and Tadeusz Zielinksi added. "We might sell a little less, but hey, that's the way the cookie crumbles! We hope that our fans, who were always very supportive, will support us this time as well," Zielinski told Kotaku. "...In our imperfect world, the best anti-pirate protection is when the games are good, highly polished, easily accessible and inexpensive," Maksara added.
The Witcher 3 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Witcher 3 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: The Witcher 3 (Score:5, Insightful)
What is either a coincidence or perhaps a trend, both CDPROJEKT RED and Flying Wild Hog are Polish companies.
Piracy used to be rampant in Poland, partially because people were too poor to spend $60 on a game, but partially because some games were never published in Poland and thus unavailable legally. Publishers of localised versions were using most outrageous DRM solutions - as a result many games I bought 10-15 years ago are unplayable today.
Guys running game companies in Poland today suffered these issues when they were kids, which might explain their stance.
Re: (Score:1)
This news seems like it came from an alternate bizarre universe where a game developer/publisher has genuine best intrestest of the end user in mind. Also they aren't afraid to state publicly the facts which are obivious to long-time pc gamers.
No matter if the game isn't the most brilliant release of the year, this kind of mentality alone seems to be worth of voting with money!
(Though as a linux user i'd really like to have a product as well to justify the purchase)
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Yep, both Witcher 2 and 3 had no DRM.
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Witcher 2 had DRM for about 48hrs, and then the developers removed it because it was hurting legitimate customers.
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That's right, I forgot that's what happened.
Re:The Witcher 3 (Score:5, Informative)
Witcher 2 had DRM for about 48hrs, and then the developers removed it because it was hurting legitimate customers.
It was an awkward situation. CD Projeckt (a publisher, and the parent company of CD Projekt RED) distributed The Witcher 2 in Poland and internationally through GOG.com. But they needed the help of international publishers to sell retail in other parts of the world, so they signed up with Bandai Namco and Atari to publish the game elsewhere. (Apparently Polish laws make it nearly impossible for them to handle international distribution themselves, which is the main reason they registered their subsidiary, GOG.com, outside Poland)
Anyway, although CD Projekt is firmly anti-DRM, one or both of these other publishers decided to slap DRM onto the files that they distributed, more because of internal policy than any practical reason. The DRM broke the game and made CD Projekt look like hypocrites, so they quickly released a patch to repair all the files broken by the DRM, which inevitably disabled the DRM in the process. I believe the publishers who broke the game sued them for fixing it, but CDP won that case. Unfortunately Bandai Namco won another lawsuit forcing CDP to make the game more expensive for Australians instead of making it the same price everywhere.
If you bought The Witcher 2 from GOG it never had DRM in the first place, and no matter where you bought the game you could go to gog.com/witcher/backup [gog.com] to redeem a complimentary GOG version for yourself.
i don't even care about this game (Score:4, Insightful)
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No, it's just regular marketing. They're attempting to build goodwill and get a bit of free advertising through a press release that they're taking the apparently newsworthy step of not treating their customers like thieves. It'd be a scam if they took money and then never delivered a game or shipped a student's half-finished project or something
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I wonder if they have considered pay what you want (Score:1)
I buy lots of game bundles and a few games on sale once I think the price is good enough.
SW2 MSRP I think is â40 and maybe it's worth that but I know it will be much cheaper, normally 6-12 months later you can likely get a 75% discount and eventually this too will likely be bundled. As such I won't be buying it now but I assume I will buy it when the price is right. However if it was "pay what you want" possibly with some lower price like say $5 then I could maybe had gotten it right now.
They would los
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The original game was nothing special IMO. Sure, it was fun, but it lacked behind others of it's era. The Remake, however, was on another level. Some brilliant script writing, an engaging story and more humour than the original. It truly was something spectacular. I vividly recall the bitterly sad ending and hoping there would be a cutscene to save me from the misery of the constant loop around the finale. I mean, how often do you sit there, through 20 minutes of scrolling credits, just hoping something wil
Re: insincere marketing scam detected (Score:1)
you are missing the point. I share some stuff because together we can make something better we all can use.
I don't share other stuff because I can handle it on my own and want to do it in my own way.
I can make money from both. Closed source pays per copy sold but open source produces free source code I can use to sell services.
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Hey people, I found the UbiSoft shill!
Or was it EA?
You no mess (Score:1)
with Lo Wang.
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with Lo Wang.
only after his balls dropped!
Kerbal Space Progam (Score:1)
KSP came with no DRM and while I used their demo, I wanted to try out the real thing(since I am on Linux) and it was pretty decent so I then went and bought it. They didn't have to twist my arm, I just wanted to support a company that got that DRM sucks. I've probably brought them 10+ customers from that fact alone.
classic sample sell (Score:1)
It never has been effective (Score:2)
I remember copying 5.25" floppies with a simple copy protection removal program in the 80s. DRM and it's ilk have never been effective and never will be effective. If you build something good, people that can afford it will pay for it. People that can't afford it will get a pirated version. If you build something expensive but mediocre, the scales will tip towards "pirated".
Build good games and your payed to pirated ratio will be excellent. Build shitty games and encumber them with DRM and, yeah, every
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Or if you make the DRM obnoxious for legit users it will tip towards piracy or just lower sales.
DVD's and Blu-Rays have been obnoxious for years. If I have access to it on Netflix or similar I watch it that way with somewhat inferior quality just to avoid the couple minutes of button mashing and increased blood pressure to get past the previews and menu sequences to be able to actually play the damn movie. I no longer look forward to buying and opening a new movie, as who knows how awful the crap is at th
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Amen to that. I've never bought any movies solely because of the forced messages at the start.
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Slashdotters are 2%ers, don't pay. DRM don't work (Score:3)
> If you build something good, people that can afford it will pay for it. ...
> I remember copying 5.25" floppies with a simple copy protection removal program in the 80s.
You had $5,000 to spend on a home computer, yet you pirated/stole the software. Most Slashdot readers are in the top 2% richest people in the world. They are "people that can afford it", and most of them do not pay for it.
> DRM and it's ilk have never been effective and never will be effective.
This is certainly true. It didn't
Re:Slashdotters are 2%ers, don't pay. DRM don't wo (Score:5, Insightful)
"You had $5,000 to spend on a home computer, yet you pirated/stole the software."
Yes.. because they *had* 5000$. They *have* no more money. It's really not that difficult to understand.
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"You had $5,000 to spend on a home computer, yet you pirated/stole the software."
Yes.. because they *had* 5000$. They *have* no more money. It's really not that difficult to understand.
My current PC was close to free (Phenom X4 9850, HD 6950, mobo, RAM, monitor = free.)
I am getting close and closer to $5000 spent on bundles though .. And I don't even use the content :/
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Well $5000 buys you a pretty good computer capable of playing modern games and should last for a few years before it becomes obsolete and unusable for gaming.
If you spent half of that money on games instead, $2500 would buy a significantly inferior computer.
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Well the amounts are arbitrary as everyone has different resources available to them...
At least when i was a kid, i could afford a half decent computer and some pirated games *or* an older computer and a bunch of old games to play on it. Many people are worse off than i was, and ended up with old hardware and a selection of used (often being thrown out) or pirated games.
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We may no longer be kids having to scrounge around for hardware, but there are still plenty of kids out there today in the same boat that we were.
For many working people especially those in reasonably jobs, we have more money to spend on games than we do time to play them.
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I buy my games, don't worry. But I, and only I decide what games are worth my money. You insert always-online DRM into your games? Or anything else that I do not agree with? Then I will have to do without your game and you will have to do without my money.
It is that simple.
That's strange for Slashdot. You over 30? (Score:1)
> Then I will have to do without your game and you will have to do without my money.
> It is that simple.
What an unsual comment to see on Slashdot. If you decide you don't want it (won't buy it), you're deciding you don't want it (won't have it). It seems the more common sentiment on Slashdot is "I don't want it (won't pay for it) and I must have it (so I'll rip off the creators and take it ilegally."
Your idea that you won't take something without paying for it, won't rip people off, seems rather old-
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A bit, yes...
Could you write a bit bigger, by the way?
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Unfortunately Denuvo is pretty effective (for a couple months at least), and I imagine that's the time most publishers care about.
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DRM is worse than mere copy protection. If the servers go down then you lose your game, movie, music, etc. If course many producers like that idea, it means more sales!
These days with games however the primary purpose of DRM is not to prevent piracy (producers would have to be morons to think it would do that) but instead to prevent resales. Ie, if you buy the game they want to forbid you from ever selling the game, giving away the game, lending it for a few months, etc. That cuts into their sales and s
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The way things are going people consider a DRM-free copy less "worth" though so it still beats it.
If Shadow warrior is DRM-free (maybe not on a disc but online) then people will think that why should they "buy" your copy which is just a copy they could make themselves / fetch anyway? If they are going to pay for it at all to get a "legit" copy they want that money to reach the developers. If all they get is a copy with no money (at that transaction at-least) going to the developers they could just as-well p
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Or simply consider pirating it has its own issues. Because piracy is so popular, a common tactic for many is to bundle malware with it. Toss in some latest variant of cryptolocker, etc, or other thing and there you go.
Its bad enough that pirating the software is really just an invitation to let all sorts of viruses and trojans and other things in as well. A popular tactic is to use keygens and cracks to actually transport the payload - the original executable can be signed and if you patch that, or wrap it,
Denuvo is the reason DooM doesn't run on Wine (Score:1)
The DooM beta ran on Wine, but the final version had Denuvo as well as the DRM Steam provides, and consequently doesn't run on Wine. Linux gamers need to reboot into Windows, which costs over a hundred dollars, as well as your time on its constant updates and reboots, as well as your data with the current spyware editions.
DRM is probably the biggest single factor keeping Windows afloat as a platform. Windows has no interesting Windows-exclusive APIs.
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Linux gamers need to reboot into Windows
No they don't.
Linux users who want to play Windows games may have to do that.
But not all Linux gamers would have to do that.
Games are a luxury article (Score:4, Informative)
While brain-dead publishers act as if they are a necessity, and apparently make decisions as if they were, they clearly are not. Hence the only thing a degraded quality (in the form of DRM and a higher price) gets you is less profit. Economics 101, but it seems that is already too difficult for some people.
Re:Games are a luxury article (Score:5, Insightful)
They treat games like necessities because there is a set of gamers that treat it that way. They'll jump through all sorts of hoops to get access to the games, signing up for special accounts on the publisher's web site or even paying for that right, and then end up playing the game for a week at which point there's another must-have game around the corner. Game publishers are generally not aiming at the discerning consumer market segment, they're too busy raking in the profits from this year's Assassin's Quest #27.
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Good point. Do you think these are enough to change the nature of the thing though? Or maybe this strongly affects some games and other not much. That would fit.
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Economics 101 should be that people
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Big ego _and_ no clue. Nice.
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I can only assume you run in some smart circles and some sense has rubbed off on you, but not any actual critical thinking ability.
Indie developer here (Score:1)
Knew this about 15 years ago, have never bothered with DRM and used to feel sad for those developers that spent their time hunting out pirate copies too.. Just a clear waste of time, the AAA only have DRM because of the publishers greed, they corrupt art for profit.
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I bought Future80s2 bundle on Groupees:
https://groupees.com/future80s... [groupees.com]
One could pre-order before the bundle was announced for $2 and there was some pictures posted with some other of their albums which I googled for and at-least some was around on YouTube so I listened to them and it sounded cool so I bought it (even though the music was on YouTube, but whatever, price was fair and it made me smile / got me something new to listen too.)
However I hadn't bought the old bundle because I don't check Groupees
Vote with your Wallet! (Score:3)
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There are a lot of DRM free games on GOG. Games designed from day one to be DRM free. And not just older games recycled through the time machine, but brand new releases. Witcher 3, Wasteland 2, Pillars of Eternity, etc. And there's plenty of pre-order activity on GOG.com, and quite a few are designed up front to be for pc, mac, and linux.
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These guys may not be exactly unique in eschewing DRM, but it's great that we see more people talking about it, and that a lack of DRM is a positive marketing bullet point. Indie game developers like me can simply make an executive decision about releasing multiplatform and without DRM since we have fewer strings attached. It would be great, though, if larger companies and publishers were to join the party as well, not that I'm holding my breath.
It's certainly true that you'll always have a piece of your
Steam is DRM. (Score:2)
It also provides convenience and discounts and the slowly growing only alternative PC gaming platform to Windows.
I have an old account with a lot of games but I can't help pointing out the irony of tooting your DRM free horn on Steam forums.
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A company chooses to use Steam's DRM, it isn't mandatory.
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Requiring a 3rd party account and software to access your purchased game is in fact DRM.
It's also probably the biggest distributor of PC games so pretty much a necessity for anyone trying to make money.
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You still need an account to get games from GOG.
I will admit you can download the games from gog.com, unlike steam where you need to use their download manager.
Once you've downloaded the game from Steam you don't need Steam unless the game incorporates Steam's DRM.
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GOG.com provides convenience and disconts as well, without DRM.
They tooted the horn on Steam because that was where the question was asked.
steam makes it easy to fine and install mods (Score:2)
steam makes it easy to fine and install mods
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It also provides convenience and discounts and the slowly growing only alternative PC gaming platform to Windows.
I have an old account with a lot of games but I can't help pointing out the irony of tooting your DRM free horn on Steam forums.
On the other hand, one could credit Valve/Steam for creating a very popular, legal market that makes it much easier for game publishers to choose to go non-DRM.
Who wants some Wang? (Score:2)
The only thing I remember about the original...
Re:security makes something difficult (Score:5, Insightful)
> This developer doesn't get DRM
Actually you're the one who doesn't get it. The developers only have a _fixed_ amount of time.> That means they can spend their time:
* Making the game better (which benefits everyone)
* Waste their time on shitty DRM which will be "kracked" on day zero -- DRM only hinders honest people -- it doesn't stop the pirates.
You're right that DRM only stops people who don't know. But it isn't that hard to google a krack for your favorite game. Back in the day gamecopyworld was THE place to find the .exe without the crappy copy protection.
> and I don't understand why people dislike it.
You're probably too young to remember that when games used to come on CD-ROMS that there was always problems of compatibility. One CD-ROM drive could read the game, another couldn't. I had one game that copy protection prevented the cut-scenes from playing!? WTF. I downloaded an .exe with the copy protection remove and I could watch the cut-scenes. Go figure.
Also, games should NOT be installing a kernel driver -- who is going to verify that it -still- works with the next version of Windows??
DRM is just more crap that could wrong.
DRM wastes developer time when they could be making the game better.
DRM causes future compatibility problems.
> Maybe everyone complaining about it uses Linux?
Maybe you're assuming.
I've shipped enough professional games to know that DRM causes problems for legitimate customers. Conversely, not having means zero problems.
Any developer relying on DRM for sales has a shitty game. Make a better game and you'll get those sales.
--
redditard, noun, Anyone who down-votes something they disagree with regardless of how informative/interesting it is.
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Making the game better (which benefits everyone)
I'm not a game developer but I am a software developer and most things these days are easily integrated. I imagine that Unity and Unreal both have a plethora of off the shelf modules for doing DRM. Maybe I'm wrong about that but considering how many games have DRM it would be pretty absurd for this not to be the case. What's your experience with integrating DRM with your games in recent years? How long does it take?
Waste their time on shitty DRM which will be "kracked" on day zero -- DRM only hinders honest people -- it doesn't stop the pirates.
I don't think you understood my point. I used to be a pirate, back in the days when CDROM was
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> I imagine that Unity and Unreal both have a plethora of off the shelf modules for doing DRM.
Nope [unity3d.com] and nope [unrealengine.com]. They don't waste their time when:
a) Other people already provide solutions (e.g. Denuvo [wikipedia.org], etc.)
b) they could be working on improving their toolset instead.
> What's your experience with integrating DRM with your games in recent years? How long does it take?
Depends on which platform. On consoles you (usually) don't have to do anything.
On PC: Anywhere from minutes (Steam [steamgames.com]) to days.
Also, DRM cause
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I don't think you understood my point. I used to be a pirate, back in the days when CDROM was all the rage and it took time to find the correct pirated copy of the game and sometimes I got viruses that required reformatting my gaming pc.
This is what I have to do with DRM. DRM ruins my machines. I just play old games that I own with no DRM. I got annoyed by Mechwarrior4 not working in any CD-ROM drive I owned (like GP mentioned).
SecuRom (Score:1)
One CD-ROM drive could read the game, another couldn't.
I believe that was related to SecuRom [wikipedia.org]. Not only could it f*** up the game in question, but it often also broke other stuff on the system such as burning etc because it was twisted so deeply into the guts of the OS (IIRC, including optical device drivers etc)
Good for them (Score:4, Insightful)
This means that if I want the DRM-free game, I can buy it from the developers instead of having to get it from TPB.
Latest DRM works. (Score:2)
Haven't recent games released this year come with DRM that is yet to be cracked? It seems strange to make the statement that it doesn't work while for the first time since forever there is a solution for developers which actually does.
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Haven't recent games released this year come with DRM that is yet to be cracked? It seems strange to make the statement that it doesn't work while for the first time since forever there is a solution for developers which actually does.
It took some time for the first title, but it seems the gates are cracked and slowly opening [torrentfreak.com].
Finally a game I feel safe buying. (Score:2)
pffff.. (Score:2)