Protecting your work with DRM

Plus, making a habit of pirating creates a paradox towards the game creators : the more a pirate downloads stuff, the more he considers it like something necessary to his habits. Because basically, a habit is empirical, the more you are entrenched in a habit, the more you want to extend it.
We all know that piracy is more than an action, it's a whole way of life : favorite servers, piracy news checking, community sharing, underground reviewing, security adaptation, etc.
There are a lot of different ways to extend piracy habits, and a lot of temptations to remain a pirate.

In short, the more game makers release cool appealing games, the more pirates will build their piracy habit around it, and the less they will want to pay for it.
(Occasions where piracy users would buy a game that they could have for free are very, very, very rare)

 

So the pirate is just addicted to getting/hacking free stuff, the kudos he gets from supplying others with the stuff and addicting them to his supply!

So why not just release your game as freemium, he still get's his fix, and kudos from friends when he finds a cool game, and he's no longer a criminal, win win!

So help the pirates break their dirty habits and go freemium, they need our help and support especially in these tough times!

 

Yes, to the eyes of a lot of publishers, freemium is the best balance, but it does have many flaws that I personally don't like as a gamer :
- the impression of getting something unfinished until I pay
- the bad ethic of saying something is free, "but wait not totally"
- the huge imbalance paid stuff cause to free users (in most cases, unless they are insignifiant features, but then why bother paying)
- the fragmentation of content over time (the game is never in a finished state as business revolves around adding more and more paid stuff)

 

EA did this with a few of their games(most notably Assassin's Creed 2)

Within about 2 weeks, a crack for AC2 was released. They simply emulated the server to get around it.Legitimate customers(me) were inconvenienced way, way more than pirates.

A lot of popular online games also eventually get emulators for the servers aswell. If you've played a popular MMO, there's a good chance that it has free emulated servers. A lot of emulators emulate it at 100%, too.

Really, the way I see it is that multimillion dollar companies with money hungry publishers can't stop piracy - why should I bother? I'd rather put that time elsewhere.

 

Note: Assassin's Creed 2 is Ubisoft, not EA. Ubisoft is promoting a lot of always-on connections in single player games, but it is meeting with generally bad press, despite still successful sales.

 

I have no idea why I thought it was EA, probably because I stopped caring about Ubisoft after that terrible deal. I couldn't even play the game for the first month, I had trouble connecting to their servers.

 

The only time DRM is really a valid tool is the day that it eliminates the ability to crack/jailbreak/copy and distribute your game, completely. Since that will most likely NEVER happen, DRM is merely a customer deterrent and a large waste of developer time and money. If your game isn't selling the way you want it to, it's because you didn't make an impression on the rather large potential customer base that WILL purchase the game. Worry about them, not the mythical customers who "may" have bought it, if a pirated copy wasn't available.

DRM use, mostly by large companies, is function of two things:
1) Large companies limiting what their actual paying customers can do with their purchase that they view as a "license" rather than an actual purchase, so they throw out this corporate spin about fighting piracy as a smokescreen for limiting your use of their product. As in, limit the number of devices that the item can be used on, the number of times it can be installed, and therefore hope for the "oops, it was clearly in our license policy that you've exceeded your installs", please purchase another license/another format to use on said device.
2) Protection spawned from an archaic view of products and theft that comes from the sale of physical goods. The shop owner locks his door, and should continue to lock his door, because he has a specific fixed amount of product and the lock is a "deterrent" because only one thief at a time can steal from him, and EVERY thief needs the same level of expertise at picking the lock to perform the theft. Digital products only need to be stolen once, and they inevitably will be because a "perfect lock", doesn't exist. Thinking you can ever stop that from happening is a foolish thought made up by businessmen who don't understand how code works, and probably never will.

My favorite thing about all this, is the effort and money that is put into trying to control distribution by cracking down on P2P and such. The day this becomes reality, is the day that someone will come up with a new and even harder to monitor and detect form of distribution. Programs, music, and movies are just "data", there are endless ways to break it apart and obscure what it is in tiny little bits spread all over the place and then secretly reassemble it at the end user. This can NEVER be controlled. Companies really need to get over this need for control and just do their best to add enough value to the products and services that will inspire people to pay. Wanna sell MP3's? Make an exclusive free online or live concert that can only be accessed by registered purchasers of an album with a limited number of key codes. Want to sell a game? Make valuable additional content and services that are downloadable only by verified customers. Want to sell a book? Set up an exclusive live chat room with the author, that is only available to registered customers.
In other words, rather than try to control everywhere the product goes, try and encourage purchases by making people WANT to pay because of all the additional things you can provide that can't be obtained from a pirated copy. In other words, think about a whole experience and service you are selling, not just an "item".

 

I 100% agree with this concept. Rather than fight a never ending battle, rather use the information provided by piracy to enhance your revenue, marketing, or distribution. There is nothing wrong with using a disadvantage to your advantage. Its only the smart thing to do!

 

How to avoid piracy(from reading/watching all sorts of articles/videos on it online for the past 5 years):

1) Make a product that is worth someones hard earned cash

2) Price said product at a fair and reasonable price for people to buy, ($60-70 USD for games today is way too much for anyone who isn't already in love with what you have made)

3) Add minimally invasive DRM so the people who have paid you money are not bothered by it, and the casual customer will not feel the risks of piracy are worth it than to pay for the game. There are some people who have paid for a game but then pirated the game because the pirate copy doesn't force the "nasty, annoying, invasive" DRM, but these customers are few and far between as I understand. Many people would rather not support companies whom they don't like, and pirating is one way they can "fight back".
Here is an explanation of the above point except with movies:
Figure 3-1 image from http://i.imgur.com/GxzeV.jpg, google searched to find it as I saw it before. Google found it on: http://boingboing.net/2010/02/18/infographic-buying-d.html


4) The customers think you are fair and enjoy your product! You then make profit by them happily handing money to you! (if all goes well)

I also have read that many pirates pirate games to get a demo of the product if one doesn't exist or a "longer" demo if it does exist. So I would guess making a demo that is 20-35%(random %, I have no idea really) of the total finished game with a transferable save file from a demo to a full copy would let people experience what they would pay for, and let them pay for it if they want more than just the first act to see if its worth it. Then those who invested time into the demo can purchase the full version and resume where they left off making them very happy. It also may drag in customers who are unsure of the full game but are intrigued enough to buy it at your fair price.

Those are some more of my thoughts on the matter.

 

Like many others, I don't believe DRM will do anything other than deter possible buyers. I suggest strategy that seems to work quite well is what the band Radiohead did: a "pay what you want" policy. You can't prevent piracy so you give it away for free, but you still let the buyers pay what they think the game deserves. Of course there will be those people who won't pay, but there will also be those people who will.

 

I will clarify, I am not a fan of DRM myself. If you are an indie or small studio, chances are you will already have a tough time getting customers as your voice is relatively small. Why use DRM at all in this case? Wouldn't it be more important to spread your name and company than to ensure all users are using perfect purchased copies? Now if this is your lively hood and your only form of making money, then I can understand, but I think establishing yourself or your studio as something to the masses is more important than a few lost sales. I would save the money from DRM implementation and spend it trying to out reach to more people. The more people that know about you, the more people will be potential customers. If not for your first game, but for any sequel or other game you put out as they are interested in what you make.

 

1 - Getting paid is most important
2 - Customers pay you money

Therefore customers are most important

3 - DRM makes it harder for everyone to enjoy your product
4 - Everyone includes your paying customers

therefore DRM is bad for point 1

Spend your time looking after your paying cutomers and more people will want to be your customers. That's the only thing you can rely on when you operate in a system where information is freely shared. Stop thinking like your selling apples at a Market. It doesn't cost you more to sell 101 copies then 100 anyway.

 

DRM punishes the customers while the pirates get away with what they want.

It's a revolting process where big AAA titles enforced stricter DRMs the more their products are being pirated. Even these DRMs wont help solve any problems but to hinder the customers usage of their product.

Never get DRM. You're just shooting yourself in the foot and attracting more pirates to flood your software illegally. Give a reasonable price, make it easily available, and of course, give technical support and get feedback from your customers.

All it takes is a step of trust. If you don't give them your word, they wont trust you enough to feel satisfied.(Except for freeloading, leech-sucking pirates, of course)

 

The problem with AC2 was not its copy protection but that a single player only game was forced into full online! Same with Settlers 7 in single player where the verification servers were basically more down than online for the first weeks after launch which should have lead to a class action suite against Ubisoft out of my view instead of refunds that the game stores had to handle. Thats a clear rippoff and a planned one as ubisofts settlers ervers even for mp games were NEVER stable in the past decade, not for a single title.

Such a practice of enforcing something for DRM reasons that has no use and meaning otherwise for the title is plain simply inacceptable. Don't add a copy protection that requires a thing that you don't make use of otherwise FOR the player, only against him.

If you want to make it simple, go by apple guidelines for appstore approvalon't require a thing you don't make use of in a meaningfull way or you get rejected for being an asshole (like add location services just for analytics which was the first large scale ban and rejection reason, later on adding gyro just to cut pre 4th gen was added as a second reason if you had no gyro focused title) -> apple does it and the community of gamers has widely boycotted the ubisoft titles too. The 'success' was driven by the console incarnations without that bs, not the pc, where it required multiple patches.

Also Ubisoft claims it was a success cause the initial sell rate was higher, which might indeed be true and I understand the need of the DRM for the first 3 months or so. But at latest by then its just meant to be gone. Also out of my view big publishers are losing any right for copyprotection for their active efforts in screwing my rights by preventing new titles from going to second hand market at all on titles that don't have a persistent or heavily connected social aspect that needs the 'person lock' (again, Apple guideline reasoning here - don't lock it down if you don't give a substantial gain for it. Just doing it to piss the customer is a thing that would entitle any such dev to go out of business right away when it would go by me)

 

make sure your game is worth the money and you don't need any DRM to protect it. Simple as that.
(not my words but i agree with it 100%)
"When asked if there were any plans for Deep Silver-brand DRM on its upcoming PC titles, he replied, “We have not, no. Uplay is not the way we want to approach things, definitely. I think we just need to make sure that the games we publish are worth the money, and certainly there is always this piracy situation that any publisher has. No publisher can tackle, really.”

 

I wonder if the anti-DRM crowd would be so enthusiastic in their positions if it was their own games on the line...

I dislike DRM as much as the next guy, and I definitely agree that some types of DRM are probably more of a pain to paying customers than to pirates, but I can still see some forms of DRM having their place.

 

I've released two commercial games with basic offline serial DRM, and the piracy rate for both games was ~99%. It only caused inconvenience to paying customers who had issues when they lost their serials, and also wasted my time as I had to look up the license details. Hence, all future games I make will be DRM free. If companies like Activision can't stop piracy, then we sure as hell can't either. And honestly, I don't feel bad when I see people have pirated my games - at least they thought it was worth their time to download it, that's a win in my book

 

Sure it's a win in one sense, but it doesn't help you pay your bills.

I can definitely see both sides of the argument here. Yes, badly implemented DRM is a pain in the ass to paying customers, and getting rid of it is good service to them. On the flip side, using your own numbers, there are 99 times as many people who are obviously interested in your game but who aren't going to pay for it if they can get it for free.

There are many things you can extract, conclude or ask from that statement alone:
- Is there an opportunity there to leverage that interest to get the game into the hands of more people who will pay? Ie: turn it into marketing.
- Would some of those people potentially pay if it weren't so darn easy to pirate?
- Is there some other way that you might be able to get some of those 99% to pay? DRM isn't the only potential solution.
- How many of the 99% are actually interested in your game? From my time at LAN parties when I was younger, plenty of people who downloaded stuff just liked to hoard and would grab things even if they weren't of interest to them.
- Serial keys are hardly transparent for users while also being really weak protection. Could there have been more effective methods that are also less of a pain to paying customers?

Lets consider for a moment that you managed to convert 1% of your pirates to paying customers - you literally just doubled your sales. And that's only by changing the nature of the relationship you have with people who already have or want your game in their hands. The question is, how can you do that in a mutually beneficial way?

Sure, but companies like Activision also understand that it's not about stopping piracy. It's about increasing sales income by more than the cost of the protection system. If I were to hazard a guess, it probably has most of its effect on "passive" pirates - people who don't do the pirating themselves and would consider buying a game, but will take a dodgy coppy if one happens to come their way*.


Please note that I'm not saying that people either should or should not use DRM of any particular kind. I'm just saying that it's a meaningful decision that should be made based on objectives and information rather than either idealism or fear. DRM-free clearly works for some people, like the Humble Bundle and GoG, but it strikes me that it's as much a marketing angle** there as it is anything else.

* That's a guess... but I honestly can't think of anyone else who this would effect. I mean, if you're a dedicated pirate then you know you'll be waiting a few days after release at most, and if you're opposed to piracy you won't be pirating either way. So those maybe people in the middle are the only ones who's behaviour might be effected as far as I can tell.

** Consider, for instance, that with GoG the original DRM typically has to be stripped from a game because the checks used back then aren't relevant or wouldn't work now - for instance, how do you perform a CD check on a downloaded game? They probably don't want to invest in new DRM for old games. And anti-DRM sentiment abounds. Taken together, there's a group of three very compelling reasons to adopt DRM-free as a part of the marketing strategy whether or not they are also opposed to it on principle (which they may well be).

 

Mm, some interesting thoughts there. I'm gonna have to look into this some more.

 

Cool story, bro. Definitely worth the necro. The total lack of punctuation makes it even more edgy and earnest, and a "dats base" sounds totally pimp.

Good post overall. There are, however, a few things about the anti-DRM/embrace piracy side that annoy me to no end.

Like failure to recognize that "DRM" is a blanket term for a wide range of protective measures, some of which are 100% transparent to the end users, and still they are discounted just because "DRM don't work, man!"

Obfuscation is a good example. If someone wants to decompile my code, then by all means let them have at it and I'm not counting on obfuscation to stop that. But I also don't want them to be able to understand and re-purpose my code, or at least not until their brains feel sodomized by their own spinal columns. To me that's a valid investment in a DRM technology.

Or like treating all issues as black and white polar opposites in a way that only serves to abort any useful discussion. Like the "piracy is not theft" truism. Yes, piracy is not theft, but neither is it innocence. Or "a pirated copy is not a lost a sale!" Probably not, but any reasonable person can intuit that every pirated copy does hurt the bottom line by some amount.

 

Is killing the possible mod community around your games worth having your code "protected"? How long does it take to change obfuscated .NET code into something comprehensible?
Last time I've done it for a company which had an in house programmer who was fired, and he has left behind some obfuscated code. Then tried to get some extra cash for the source code. It took me roughly three days to reverse engineer the code into something usable.
Let's face it, your game code is probably not something special that needs to be protected. It's just the same stuff over and over again, and it only makes sense when it's plugged in your game. It will be so tightly coupled with your game mechanics and assets, it will not be worth the time to reverse engineer it even if it's unprotected.
Every programmer thinks his code is somewhat special, and to some extent that's right, but you should be realistic in this case.
Of course, if your biggest nightmare is that somebody will steal your generic code and use it, then by all means go, and invest your time or money into obfuscation. Just make sure it won't harm you in the long run.
I agree with the rest of your post about piracy.

 

By your own admission it took you three days of rewriting an obfuscated code from scratch. If that's what you mean by "changing it into something comprehensible," then yours is probably an obfuscation success story. And unless you work for free, then— morality and legality aside—paying that programmer might have been a wiser investment.

By that same argument, you are not someone special either. There are 7 billion homo sapiens just like you. Yet I won't call you life worthless or that you're not deserving of protection.

That is to say that just because something isn't unique, it doesn't imply that it's without value.

 

My life is of great value to me, but is it of great value to others? I highly doubt that. Nobody will ever value my life as highly as I do. It is very similar to your relationship with your code. Nobody will bother to steal your code, unless you have developed a rare system, or you just generally do something better than it was done before. If that's the case, no amount of obfuscation would prevent other people from stealing it.
I'm not saying you shouldn't do it. If you feel like you have to do it, then do it, I would be honored if somebody would decompile my code to learn something. I know it will probably never happen, because I don't work on unique problems, and solution to problems I'm working on are already available all over the internet.
It's not your code that's valuable to others, it's your code + your mechanics + your assets. If you take it apart, you are greatly diminishing the value of each component.
Anyway, I'm done with sidetracking the thread.

 

You're basically making the same argument but in a different guise. That code has no intrinsic value whatsoever and thus it isn't worth protecting.

So if all programming problems are solved problems then what am I doing having a career as a software developer? If a solution to every software problem already exists then we should all be out of work, shouldn't we? And commercial software would be the biggest racket in history, since we're being sold a collection of solutions that exist on the Internet for free. In fact, yours seem like a great pro piracy argument.

This is a more reasonable argument, that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Maybe the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but parts themselves must have value in and of themselves to begin with, right? More so in the case of code since mechanics are implemented in code and assets are used by the code. There is no mystical power that only gets activated once the parts of this trinity are joined together. Value was there to begin with, or value wouldn't have been there in combination.

 

To me, the whole idea of obfuscating things purely to make it harder for others to learn from them strikes me as... inherently selfish? I mean, I can only do the things I can do because of the huge number of people before me who came along and developed and shared knowledge. I'd feel like a total jerk if I refused to share my own advancements back into the world.

Plus, if I could come up with them myself then I don't see why someone else couldn't come along and improve upon it all on their own anyway. I'm not the best. There are people bigger or better or with more resources than me. I think it's a bit socially irresponsible to force people to waste time, energy or resources just for the sake of it (though I also agree that they should go about gaining that knowledge in a reasonable manner, eg: paid consulting with current experts so they can also share in the benefit from their own advancements).

Having said all of that, I do think that there are perfectly reasonable reasons to protect such IP. For instance, if your business relies on having better processes/algorithms/quality/speed than the competition and your code would reveal how you achieve that... it's not your code that you're protecting, it's your livelihood. And I think that's perfectly fair enough.

So, would I obfuscate game code? Generally, probably not. If I'd developed some particularly unique module, algorithm or functionality that I wanted to sell on to others, though, that's something I'd protect.

 

I would like to point that no one, least of all me, argued for using obfuscations solely for thwarting someone's attempt to learn through decompilation. I also question your assumption that decompilation for learning purposes is a common practice.

I generally have a lot of respect for your opinions, but I have to take issue with the implicit accusation stated here. If you would care to take the time to look at my website or my GitHub account, then I think you'll find that I try my best to give back and share what little knowledge I have. Even here half of my posts are attempts to answer people's questions and share what little I know with the community.

And for me this was never about stopping the innocent youngling from leaning programming by looking at someone's code (though if said youngling really wanted that, then there are plenty of open source resources out there for him or her to explore). For me it's about doing what I can to hinder someone from taking my product and swamping the various app stores with multiple variations of it therefore devaluing it, or using it as a portfolio piece to gain employment advantage over me or someone else who is actually a worthy candidate, or selling the whole thing as a kit or a done project.

C++, the language most often used in game development, produces native code that is almost impossible to decompile into any usable form. I don't think any reasonable person would refer to using C++ or AOT compilation in Unity on the iOS platform as immoral, socially irresponsible, or inherently selfish. Yet it seems that the argument here is that it becomes all of those things when it's done through obfuscation.

If someone wants to share their code, then good for them, but they might be better off sharing it through more direct methods like open source dual licensing. Others have done that, and look where it landed them.

 

Au contraire. This is exactly what this thread is about; the OP wanted to know about DRM systems to secure sales of his game (since, that's the point of DRM, to enforce the 'pay upfront' business model.) You're responding that the business model being promoted might be the wrong one, in light of everything that's happening in the current day.

You're also right that this isn't a problem that's easily solved, either. Many 'free to play' games aren't, specifically, they are set up to be as abusive as possible (Dungeon Keeper Mobile, for instance) to get whatever they can out of players.

While we need money to earn a livelihood, there have to be better ways of doing this that are A) respectful of our players, B) still profitable for us, and C) apply industry-wide. Such win-win scenarios exist in other industries, what is ours?

In any event, DRM is not that solution. It's just as abusive of the player as the worst application of microtransactions, for the exact same reason: it assumes that you're not going to pay for the game anyhow. And by that logic, why should you?*

*: Referring to quality, not legal or ethical obligations. Legal and ethical obligations say, 'Yes, pay for this thing I am buying, even though it's digial.'

 

this is still circumvented... and really only meant to make things more difficult. Even some of the most popular MMO games have had their servers cloned for "communities" to play without those protections.

I think many people against the idea of DRM understand that even with all of these checks it still is not enough. So, for me (and perhaps others), just accepting that some basic obfuscation and possibly login checks will have to do and those of us using any managed language with a CLR, we just have to face the fact that basic obfuscation will have to be enough and that even more complicated methods (with say, a VM).. just isn't going to be enough to justify all the other implications we force on ourselves to try to protect a dollar... when it could cost two dollars in the process.

Perhaps when Microsoft finish their Native compilers, things could change a little.

 

The question seems to be.. How do you make an App free and still make money on it? I notice that some are placing ads in their apps but is this successful and does it deter people from playing or using the app? Maybe there is another way..Perhaps having the game online is (as has been suggested) is a useful way to avoid the whole issue of piracy although then people would be looking for ways to gain free access.

 

Ultimately their is no way... people are going to do what they do, which includes piracy and stealing. I learned a while ago, that you just can't teach stupid.. just like you can't teach morals. Either people get it, or they don't.

 

Woah there, none of that was in any way meant as an accusation toward you about anything and I apologize if that's how it came across. I meant nothing more than exactly what I said - that I personally don't like the idea of doing anything deliberate designed to stop others from learning stuff except where it's a side effect of protecting myself.

 

I can give a different take on piracy.
We sell business apps and do private development for other game companies.


Piracy - we just leave it alone. Those pirates eventually buy them. We've had pirates using our business software for months on end, then later brought multiple licenses.


For gaming -
The free version comes with Ads. The paid one removes them. Piracy problem solved.

 

LGR - History of DRM & Copy Protection in Computer Games

 

now certainly game information is not so crucial.... but i feel like ranting on my opinion LOL
i tend to have an opinion about intellectual copyrights thats like this:

ALL INFORMATION SHOULD BE FREE!!
"beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master"
- videogame alphacentauri, planetary datalinks project video (lol i love some stuff of that game)

screw you for not wanting to share it!
your viewpoint is incorrect, and is hindering the advancement of the human species!

i think its immoral to protect info, and hinder advancement of information...

for example, someone on these forums used the "voynich manuscript" as an example of a writing that has never been able to be read, for 600 years.. i was curious and looked it up...
certainly, i cant know what it says, but according to the pictures, its literature on medicinal herbs, the illustrations are very mysterious, .. theres some drawings in particular, its like dissected plant organs, with women sprites drawn connecting plant organs?? ... ...anyway... perhaps the drawings are the information about microorganisms, or plant cells? or the spirit of the plants or whatever..
it was written in ~1404-1450 they say....
well microorganisms werent discovered until 1665 ??

if the text describes what i believe it may.... thats 200 years of people dying that could of possibly be prevented,

just cause some asshole wanted to protect "His information"


there was a race to be first to own the rights to the human genome, luckily it was made illegal,
but damnnn thats some BS...

also, all FPSs since Red Faction should have the GeoMod tech they had in Red Faction... lol.. but nooo they own the rights to it... =LAME= (sure theres maybe better solutions nowadays, but there wasnt)
(lol thats a dumb example but its what came to mind right now)


all said, i believe the blame is to be put on the inadequacies of our civilization's monetary system in general.

 

LOL! actually my hate of intellectual copyright stems in part from the fact that there was this one mod of a game, i REALLY wanted to alter the mod, cause it was Super fun!

now, i just wanted to mod a mod, in the sake of fun... but nope.... its encrypted and stuff...

well, guess what, instead of increasing the value of the game the mod was for...

now i get to make my own game, using those ideas, and make money myself... so