DRM and You

DRM and YOU, Understanding your relationship with DRM.

Hello, and welcome Ladies and Gentlemen. My name is Derron also known as the VeryOpinionatedGamer. What are we here for, AH that's right we are here to talk about DRM. Before we go any further i want to let this be known, I'm not supporting or defending any company that uses excessive amounts of DRM. What this video is here to do, is to explain what DRM is, what it was created for, and how it affects us as gamers eh. Now that, that is all cleared up and out the way, let’s move on shall we.

First thing i want to talk about.

WHAT DOES DRM STAND FOR, and WHAT IS DRM?

This is quite simple, you can Google it and find out. DRM is an Acronym for Digital Rights Management. That in its self should explain to you what DRM actually exist for. If it doesn’t let me break it down for you.  It exists for dual purposes; to drive up sells of their product, by preventing pirating. These purposes intertwine with each other, and no one purpose exist without the other. What it does however is completely different. Let’s back track a bit though before going on to how DRM actually affects gamers eh. Talk about what Business's view DRM as. To a business DRM is a broad term used to explain and describe the vast number of techniques or methods, they use for restricting the free use and transfer of digital content. In laymen’s term, it's the way business prevent file sharing on any level. Besides in games, DRM is and has been used in a number of media outlets for several years now, yet it's most commonly found in video games, movies, and music.

WHAT DOES DRM DO?

Here is the case built for the use of DRM. Without a strong system in place to ensure that only PAYING consumers can access media of any kind, piracy will grow out of control, unchecked, and will cut drastically into profits of the producers, and distributors. With this decline in sales, the creative content will drop, and as a result, the overall quality of the media PAYING customers view, and enjoy will drop as well.

Therein lies the fact that, DRM is there to protect profit, to increase profit, and prevent piracy. If you still doubt that, answer me this. Just what are movie, media, and game developers expecting people to do if they can't pirate eh? What are they thinking will happen if they can prevent access to their content to only those who pay? I'll tell you, they are hoping that these people who can't get this content will go out and pay for a legitimate copy. They are hoping that it will increase sells of the product, AND THAT is a fact.

That is the truth behind why DRM was created to begin with. HOWEVER in today’s society things don't always go over as planned... and in my opinion, DRM may not have serious and lasting side effects on movies, DvD sells on TV series, and music, it does however leave a major impact on gaming.

I think i spent enough time sounding like I’m all for DRM eh, now let me explain to you what is wrong with this system. See in the land where everything works ALL THE TIME, and nothing fails to do exactly what it was designed to do, DRM would be fine. People would stop pirating digital media, and they would go out and buy a legit copy, companies would generate more profit, and the quality of those products sold with DRM would be increased as a result of the increased in revenue. Thing is, we don't live in that world. We live in a world where things rarely work as they are intended, and have bloody horrible side effects on those things it's intended to protect. In the world we live DRM doesn't do what it's intended to do at all. It actually locks down rights to paying consumers that are perfectly legal, and drives up the desire to own a DRM free copy of the product, which drives the pirating scene. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not supporting pirates, but ignoring the fact that DRM increase the desire to pirate won’t help me prove my point.

It is a known fact that DRM has yet to actually prevent piracy. An what effect it has over sells is solely dependent on the consumer and how much they actually know about the games they are purchasing and the effects added DRM have on them. I'm not going into pirating games, that is not what this post exist for, nor this isn't about your opinion on on the matter, what I’m going to talk about is the affects of DRM on gamers and Video Games.

THE AFFECTS OF DRM ON VIDEO GAMES.

IF YOUR NOT PIRATING, and refuse to pirate. Things change for you as a direct result of DRM. See your experience in the game could be changed, and it's all thanks to the corporate heads who believe there is nothing wrong with the System of DRM. Your choice comes down to this, Are you going to buy the game or not. If your going to buy the game, the next section should be of interest to you, if you are not, feel free to stop reading and carry on with your daily life.

If you are legally purchasing a game, DRM affects you in a different way. The biggest of all ways is Persistent online authentication, or as we gamers call it, ALWAYS ONLINE DRM. Many AAA publishers use AODRM, companies such as EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Valve, and Atari. EA and Blizzard (owned by Activision) have been taking the hammer for this as of late with SimCity and Diablo 3 being tied to an online server. These games were previously playable without the need to be online, and now, not only do you have to have a internet connection, you also have to depend on these companies to keep their servers up and running,  Blizzard has had years and practice and still they failed, and EA…  I’m not going to talk about EA, by the time I do, it won’t be relevant, and I don’t like to waste time.

I know what you’re thinking, well what’s wrong with the game being online all the time. Well nothing if you don't mind the fact that it depends on you to have a reliable internet connection to play the game when previous versions did not, or being forced into a multiplayer environment when you never intended to play with others, or having to rely on companies who you wouldn’t trust to babysit your children, to keep their servers up and running. If something goes wrong server side, a game that you would regularly be able to enjoy is now completely unplayable. You will have to wait till they fix things on their end, which could take DAYS or even WEEKS, and I'm sorry that is unacceptable. On top of all that, the game will undergo MAJOR changes,  we will take SimCity. This game was changed drastically due to AODRM, your given a limit to your city size, there are glaring bugs, an the game is purposely created to be played with friends if you wanted to play by yourself, HA have fun trying to get that one city to do what four cities can do. I'm not going to sit here and list all the things wrong with this game,  you can Google “SimCity launch” and see from there the hell and chaos of this choice. I will list some major issues I had, such as your city saves not being yours anymore, server instabilities, places that lack internet connections or have unstable internet connections effect access to a game where I’d otherwise be able to play just fine. The need to have friends playing with me, or I would have to spend hours building one city to try to get it to do what 4 can, because when you leave a city IT STOPS SIMLUATING thus if I build a second city, my first city stops growing, stops producing money, time freezes in that city. Why would they do this, TO INCREASE SELLS, because all previous versions of SimCity could be pirated. So to prevent pirating, they are willing to fuck over everyone who has bought the game. Did i mention the city sizes are way too small, they force you to go from being able to build cities that go from one edge of the map to the other edge, to building cities within a small confined space. Why is this done, the answer is simple. They did it to force online multiplayer down your throat. These choices to connect single player games, that no one really ever played multiplayer was on, to a server was just plain greedy. If you can prove to me it was done for any other reason, i'd be happy to hear it.

Look at Diablo 3, in terms of game play, i really enjoyed that game. Not much in way replay value if you ask me, I’m not the kind of person who wants to play the same content only harder. I’d expect secret unlocks, new boss fights, stuff like that, but it was a fun game. Yet the fact that it's on a server has ruined that game, that and the AH… real money auction house could have been done much better than that. That was ham fisted and blizzard knows it. Aside from Diablo 3, StarCraft 2 was also connected to blizzards battle.net server, and while it hasn't suffered nearly as much from it, Blizzard went as far as to ban players who cheated on their single player. AS IF SINGLE PLAYER HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH MULTIPLAYER. Now the single player has built in cheats, due to the uproar that came about from this. Still players who never cheated in a multiplayer game, got their accounts banned, for doing something that most pc gamers do in the single player, and that affects on one but that particular gamer. AODRM effects your fundamental enjoyment of any game, they remove features tamper with software, add in features that are forced on you if you want to play this new game with this AODRM. Hell even Ubisoft has used AODRM, and in a much worse fashion then the others. Uplay is AODRM, and if you bought Assassin’s Creed II for the pc, and knew of DRM you know where I’m going with this. When you buy a pc game made by Ubisoft you have to connect via a Uplay account, when you do this, you can play the game. What’s going on under the hood is that the rest of the games content is being downloaded and installed to your pc as you play via a Ubisoft server.

The whole thing is access, not being able to access a game you would otherwise have access to. As gamers, being able to play the games we care about is a big thing. When that access is taken away, hampered or tampered with, we can't enjoy the games the way we used to, and want to. An publishers are expecting us to believe that they can get it right. Expecting us to put faith in them that they won't have any major foul ups, and that we will be able to enjoy the games we love MORE with AODRM, then the way they were. It's bullshit, look if Blizzard the company best known for getting it's gamers to believe or even accept it's bullshit, couldn't get them to accept Diablo 3, what in the hell makes you believe I’m going to accept what your trying to feed me. DRM in the right form is fine, Valve (steam) is full of DRM an while some of its games require you to be online, no all of them require this functionality. I understand the need to protect those who develop and produce quality video games. This however i don't understand, justify, or support. I think it's a safe bet to say that the quality of several great games would be affected by AODRM, and that they aren't as good as they could be, and had the games with AODRM been released without these features, they would be so much better.  I'm not the only one, several of us have come together to make our point. Yet companies are continuing to push their agenda, these choices are made on the corporate level, and they don't give two fucks about gamers. I once heard someone say, games are no longer being made for gamers; they are being made for money. Gamers need to make games for gamers, and that is the only way things will get back to the way they were. I mean DRM isn't going anywhere, It's been around far longer than people care to believe. Yet because Companies are making games for money, that the use of DRM is only bound to increase until gaming becomes intolerable. Thanks for your time and have a great rest of the day.