DRM, How to Kill PC Gaming in 3 Easy Steps
There are many reasons why 95% of my gaming is now done on consoles, as opposed to the contrary about four years ago. Mostly it’s because there are very few games that I want to play on my PC, and the one’s that I do are often on Xbox 360 as well anyway, and the latter option gives me achievements so it’s a simple decision.
But there have been a few games in recent years that I have wanted to buy on PC, for whatever reason, but didn’t. It wasn’t because the 8800GT, 2 gigs of PC6400 and Core 2 Duo 6600 under the hood couldn’t handle it, It wasn’t because I didn’t feel like playing games at my desk and it wasn’t because keyboards scare me.
The reason I didn’t by the three games I have in mind is because they came with an added bonus, an absolutely free gift from the publisher, guaranteed to screw you over if you dared to install it too many times. I am of course ranting about digital rights management.
The three games I am thinking of are Spore, Mass Effect and Bioshock. Yes I could have bought Mass Effect and Bioshock on 360, but for various irrelevant reasons I didn’t. The three games had varying degrees of restrictions, mostly the case being you get a limited number of installs on your machine, then you have to buy the game again. It is more complicated than this, but ultimately you are being restricted on what you can do with your copy of the game and the licence you have to use it.
It’s understandable that certain games incorporate this kind of DRM to restrict illegal distribution, but Mass Effect and Bioshock are the kind of game, partly due to hardware requirements, that ‘enthusiasts’ would choose to play on PC. Being enthusiasts, they probably format their PC’s several times a year and so might become frustrated when their copy of Bioshock is now inoperable because they installed it 5 times already. (Though, uninstalling the game after each install ‘reverses’ the activation). Also, being enthusiasts, they probably know exactly how to get a copy for free, with no DRM restrictions, and often before an official release.
It is this blatant counter-productive, contradictory stance towards PC gaming that has lost publishers a lot of respect among PC gamers, who no longer want to buy their games because they’re getting screwed over at every possible turn. EA, I will not buy Spore when you are restricting how I use my computer, I will simply steal it because I have absolutely every reason to do so and no reason not to.
Now we reach the anomaly. Back in 2004, Valve utilised their Steam distribution platform to release Half Life 2, one of the most anticipated PC games of all time. Valve had established a system that was hard to bypass, that users were happy with, and that had very few restrictions on how you use the content. Install all your games on any machine you want any number of times, Valve had it sorted 4 years ago and it hasn’t changed since.
Digital distribution is a huge part of the future of gaming, and will grow the market considerably, but only when DRM is sorted out and people understand what the restrictions are. Until then we cannot hope for a healthy expansion in this direction if there are so many different standards across all platforms and publishers. Console based digital distribution will be easier due to uniformities that have already been outlined for the respective platforms, but PC will take a bit more of a combined effort from publishers. Either do it right, or simply don’t do it. If you’re aiming for the former, copy Valve, I’m sure they’ll be flattered.