Post by redonihunter in How is important copy protection?

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their games protected to maximise their revenue

I never heard of a game that sold better, because it had copy protection.

The thing is, drm only ever hurts legitimate buyers. The non buyers just download the hacked drm free version. While the legitimitate buyers have to deal with broken files, inaccessible drm servers, lower performance and whatnot.

Also, the protections that do protect a little are the ones that will hurt the user's systems the most. And that little is only a time window of a few weeks, till it is hacked. And for that, the publisher has to dish out a lot of money to license the copy protection.

So, if the goal is to maximize profit, I say, that calculation is wrong. They could save the license money for the drm and sell some more games to people that avoid certain drm out of principle.

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K Storm Studio6 days ago

I think DRM or any other copy protection method are implemented not to sell more copies. But to build trust to the developers and in case of the marketplace ... to give trust to it. I totally agreed that every system can be easily cracked, but I think that many developers prefer to have a kind of copy protection system rather than not.

Although Itch doesn't provide any and developers sell their games here as well. So many devs don't care so much about copy protection, I guess. Some DRM systems, in fact, can be invasive for gamers

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redonihunter6 days ago

I think DRM or any other copy protection method are implemented not to sell more copies.

I think a big studios want to have their games protected to maximise their revenue

And I think, those are mutually exclusive.

but I think that many developers prefer to have a kind of copy protection system rather than not

Some do. But I have doubts they know what they are doing. I have seen lots of threads of unknown developers trying to have drm. Amateurs. Wanting to "protect" something that most people would not play even if it were free. There is a ton of free games. Why play the drm infested one.

not to sell more copies. But to build trust to the developers and in case of the marketplace ... to give trust to it

I fail to understand how this builds trust. The reality is the opposite. You can read about examples where drm servers became unreachable and legitimate buyers had to resort to using hacked versions to play the thing they bought years ago.

Maybe you are mixing anti-cheat software with drm. Drm is stuff like having a server that checks if your offline game is installed more than once. And that server not being reachable, means, you cannot play your offline game.

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K Storm Studio5 days ago

or a system that checks if a player purchased that game, otherwise, it can't be played. What do you think about this solutions?

Of course, it requires that a user is connected to the server, to run the game,

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redonihunter4 days ago(+1)

or a system that checks if a player purchased that game

That's what drm is. But yeah, it changed a little when being online became widely spread, so they would verify at every game start, if you bought the game or not, making accessing games even more risky. Some internet outage or the company ceasing to exist will make the game unplayable or even brick it.

If we look at how often Itch was unavailable the last few months, that's just not a user friendly solution. As I said, it is the legitimate users suffering from drm. The non legitimate users do not care, as they are not using the normal game version.

The bestest Denuvo gives a game maybe a window of time of 2 months after release. After that, the game is available on shady sites without all that drm.

I think you might want to ask, if having copy protection will increase sales. I say, it lowers sales, because there are people that do not buy certain games on purpose, because those games have certain drm. Of course I might be wrong here, but sites like GoG seem to be doing fine. And of course, in the sector of Indie games the situation is a bit different. Why even bother with drm. For one that risk of the company disappearing and the drm server with it, is a lot higher. And the target audience is less likely to pirate the game or even give the developer money, after playing a pirated version.

What you might consider is offering added value. That does not even need added drm, but implicitly would only give the added value by having an account with a purchased version. Like cloud saves. Achievements. Online friends and multiplayer matching. It goes without saying that you would need an account and a purchased game to participate.

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K Storm Studio3 days ago

understand... listen, how GoG works? I mean, does that provide a DRM system? Do you need to download a desktop app (launcher) to play games?

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redonihunter3 days ago

Is this a translation issue?

drm free is what it says on the tin, or else it would be a lie.

And of course GoG has a launcher. Even Itch has one. And the same as Itch, you are not required to use the launcher.

You do not need to look so far away for drm free paid games, just look at Itch top sellers. https://itch.io/games/top-sellers/store

Problem is, those publisher are unlikely to share their experiences here. So you will get mostly answers from the usual people that post regularly in the community message boards.

Maybe you find interviews or something from some publishers about the topic. Or something like that. Some very few games on Itch even do have drm. It's not forbidden, there is just no plug and play solution to it.

My opinion is basically this: people with a budget are willing to pay for games and services, even for "free" games, like the pay what you want games on Itch. And people without a budget simply cannot pay for games. This whole notion of drm is just bad as a concept in general for many reasons. I think the better concept is to upsell by having additional services, like cloud save games. Who cares if there is drm in it or not*.

* People that cannot play their games, because yet another ddos attack or another incompetent or disappearing developer, that's the people who care.

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