Technology Review
Companies struggle to balance copyright technologies with players' interests.
Computer game companies use increasingly complicated software to protect against piracy. But these efforts can frustrate gamers, who protest that the protections restrict legitimate game play. Last week, Ubisoft, a company accused of using a draconian and convoluted protection scheme, backed down by announcing that its new game RUSE would use a less restrictive scheme.
The change highlights the tension between gamers and game companies regarding copy protection schemes. And it shows how companies struggle to balance fears over copyright infringement and the demands of their customers.
Legitimate copies of games, like other pieces of software, usually come with a unique code that unlocks it. But game companies are concerned about rampant sharing of pirated games online and the speed with which hackers can break ordinary "digital rights management" (DRM) schemes.
Earlier this year, Ubisoft launched a game called Assassin's Creed 2 with a controversial new "always-on" DRM scheme. The game required a player to be online so that it could check in with the company's servers to verify that the gamer had a genuine copy. Some players grumbled about the scheme before it even launched, and worried that the game would be unplayable if the company's servers went down, or if players didn't have a network connection. There was more trouble once the game went live--Ubisoft's servers couldn't handle the load of players, which meant that many people who had bought the game couldn't play it.
Richard Esguerra, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), says tensions tend to erupt when a DRM scheme violates customers' sense of ownership. "Gamers have an idea that if you bought it, you own it, and that's what's being violated here," he says.
Esguerra says an "always-on" DRM scheme can unfairly affect those who live in rural areas and lack consistent connectivity. He adds that such DRM schemes can render a game worthless if the company behind it goes bust or decides to stop supporting that title. Some games, such as World of Warcraft, need a connection to provide integral features. But Esguerra thinks players are offended when the connection isn't essential to the game play.
Russ Crupnick, vice president and senior industry analyst for NPD Group, says the intricacies of DRM technologies don't matter to most consumers unless the system gets in the way. The key for companies, he says, is to find a system that's unobtrusive.
Ferdinand Schober, a graduate student in computer science at Georgia Tech who previously worked at Microsoft on the popular games Gears of War and Halo, says some companies are pursuing ever more restrictive DRM. One possibility is "executable content"--forcing players to download new pieces of a game as they progress through it. He says that hints on forums and in game code have led him to believe that companies are experimenting with this technology.
Jessica Simpson's DRM-free single could be the beginning of the end for copy-protected digital music.
When Sony BMG hid a "rootkit" on their CDs, they spied on you and let hackers into your computer. What were they thinking?
is regularly and quickly cracked, but the difference is that Valve gives the user a better service, good prices (on sales weekends), and treats every customer as an opportunity to gain a sale.
Most other games companies treat legitimate customers as criminals to be punished, and actually push gamers to pirates who offer a better, simpler, easier product that additionally costs nothing.
Valve have realised that getting a hold of the customer and treating them well creates a good relationship where they accept a little unobtrusive DRM, and give the opportunity for more sales through Steam.
Other companies simply create a bad relationship that promotes piracy rather than deal with the issues, and pushes customers away by treating them badly and giving them a worse product.
Concur, Steam does offer a good service that allows gamers easy access to games, competitive prices and easy installation/gaming without all the hassle. Of course, some argue that this also presents a problem should Steam ever cease to operate. If it is temporary, no problem - you get 30 days of grace - but if Steam shuts its doors, what happens to all the games users purchased? Imagine if all the games you purchased disappeared simply because Best Buy shut their doors? The same holds true for the newer service out there - Onlive - where you buy the right to play the game, but they keep the license.
As far as I'm concerned the entire concept of the EULA is flawed and has been from it's inception. Sure, computer companies want to keep people for copying their software and distributing it to their friends. I get that. But the EULA as a solution to that problem has been a huge mistake. For one thing, in the EULA software makers put in legal disclaimers to the effect that even if they know their software is flawed and will cost the customer to lose data or crash their machine, that they are not liable for the consequences. This has led to a generation of extremely sloppy development practices, which emanate directly from the main software development tools makers, and the problems exist at every level of the machines. Sure, I understand it's a complex environment. However, the EULA as a solution to piracy has introduced a huge number of systemic errors into the computer environment. Ones that will in all probability not go away any time soon. DRM is another downstream consequence of the EULA strategy, and another one that has all sorts of "unintended consequences". Basically, they've made the computer environment a big fat hassle that's becoming more and more of a pain for people to deal with - vastly undermining it's value overall, and creating huge vunernabilities that threaten the entire ediface over time. Who is responsible for the invention of the EULA, what is it's history and what are the unintended consequences of it's adoption? I think that might make a good study for TRM.
When I buy something like a book, I buy it and I own it. If I want to give it to a friend to read, so what? Should I have to agree to a EULA for everything I buy? One that prohibits me from any recourse if the product is defective? One that introduces who knows what "unintended consequences"? I don't think so. The same should be true for software. Sorry. When I buy something, I spent money and I expect to own it because it is my property - not the manufacturer's. They no longer have any right to tell me what I can and can't do with my property. It is this principal that is violated by the EULA, and in my opinion it should be stopped. If software and computer manufacturer's can't figure out how to safeguard their goods from copying, then they are not spending enough time looking at the problem from that perspective. Instead they are looking at it from the perspective that having the EULA has given them. A very bad one. Instead they should be working on figuring out - how do we prevent the software from being copied to more than say two or three machines? I'm pretty sure that creative minds could solve that question. But with the EULA dominating the thinking of executives, that question seems to be shunted aside, and so other policies and strategies are adopted - to the detriment of the community at large.
Do away with the EULA, I say. It's a bad idea that should never have been allowed to begin with.
Nice post -- I've checked in on the first-sale issue over at the Legal Satyricon
http://randazza.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/penny-arcade-turns-traitor-used-game-purchasers-pirates/
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2600hz
11 Comments
thnx god we have crackers
The easiest way...
You buy a game, then search and download some crack, then play the game without problems.
Simple as that.
Reply
rsanchez1
213 Comments
Re: thnx god we have crackers
Unfortunately I've had to do that a few times. An example: I bought a copy of Age of Mythology a short while ago. The game had been out for years already, so nobody played it anymore, but I just wanted it so I bought it. The problem was that the game didn't come with a CD Key! Personally, CD keys to me are the least obtrusive way to protect the game, but only when you actually have the key. So I just downloaded a keygen and played the game using that key.
Having more protection on games is starting to degrade the quality of the experience as well. Another example: I bought Grand Theft Auto 4 for PC, and I had to go through so many hoops just to play it. I had to install Windows Live, had to install some social thing from Rockstar Games, some program got installed on my computer that prevented cracking the game, and a whole bunch of other stuff, in addition to the CD Key! And to top it off, I'm pretty sure I have to be connected to the internet to even save my progress.
This increasing trend in putting more and more protection on games gives me more incentive to support open source games. They take me back to a time when all you had to do was install the game and play.
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