Hello everyone,
I just wanna ask how is important for you to protect your game from being copied? I mean, Steam provides protection and if you buy a game you can only play it via Steam desktop app. Itch doesn't do that adn I see that everyone published games here.
I think a big studios want to have their games protected to maximise their revenue, while small studios or solo devs don't care very much about that.
What about you? What do you think?
Of course I don’t want people pirating my games; I just don’t think DRM is worth the benefits.
If tech like SGX existed 20 years ago, it’s relevant hardware self-contained to a small chunk and not the entire board, and if it didn’t require a remote server to run 24/7 for eternity, then maybe I would’ve went for it. For multiplayer games only.
Almost all developers consider it important to prevent illegal copies of their games. The problem is that there are no real solutions.
DRM, or rather, Steam integration, can be broken with a script in seconds. To have better protection with DRM, you usually have to use invasive DRM, and these are often seen more as a punishment for legitimate buyers than as a valid security measure, so you're going to lose part of your community.
Implementing DRM is something you should do very carefully, thoroughly evaluating the costs versus benefits, and keeping in mind that many people who buy and support truly independent games don't want to buy a game with DRM.
I already sell a DRM-free game within Itch.
https://hechelion.itch.io/evorales
I also sell the same game on Steam, and it's integrated in such a way that you can't play it without an account, but I integrated it to take advantage of what Steam offers, like achievements, and not as DRM.
That protection is not considered invasive; what is considered invasive is what other applications, such as Denuvo, do.
yes that's what I'm saying, just having a non-invasive protection to avoid illegal copies by checking if a player owns the game. So basically having a DLL or similar that double-checks if a game ID coming from the game (previously implemented by dev) matches the same game in the player account.
how does sounds like?
The problem is that this isn't real protection; it's very easy to hack. But depending on what you want to implement, it might be enough..
On Steam, everyone uses the Steam launcher to play, but on Itch, using the Itch launcher is optional. So you can't always verify the account of someone playing on Itch, and that's a problem if you want to sell your game here.
Yes a launcher it is harder to hack and it might be a good solution. Like Steam for instance. Although this requires implementing a piece of code by the developer at the beginning of their games, like in the case of a Steam game. This changes engine by engine, and it can be a little bit tricky sometimes... but I think it's the only solution.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Are you familiar with GOG? It's a site that has this whole gimmick of selling only DRM-free games. Judging by their extensive game catalogue, a lot of developers and publishers are okay with releasing a DRM-free version of their game. I wouldn't say it has hurt their sales in the slightest. On the contrary, a lot of people (me included) prefer to buy DRM-free whenever possible, because DRM is just scummy.
Just look at companies who implement heavy DRM (blizzard and EA come to mind). Generally their reputation among gamers is not really great. I wonder if the two are related.
Yes, that's right. As far as I know you can also do that with most itch games as well, since they also don't have any form of DRM.
It's this kind of trust that has actually prompted me to buy more games without DRM (even though I could just as easily pirate them), since you can download offline installers that will work without 3rd party servers that may or may not exist in the future. Almost as if you actually own what you bought. I want to support that mindset.
Don't worry about it and just make & post your game(s). Not much you can do about it as it is.
Most of my games got pirated one way or another, the eShop/Switch ones were uploaded to ROM sites, the Steam ones made their way to other d/l sites, and the itch/patreon one got uploaded to f95zone. Got a lot of support from that place, interestingly enough.
