Since the introduction of Denuvo, a global application protection and anti-piracy technology platform, video games were kept out of the hands cracking groups for quite some time, or at least until most of the people who wanted to play the game actually bought the game. There was even a time when these piracy groups thought they had lost the battle against game makers, to the point they thought cracking Denuvo was such a difficult task that they speculated game piracy would no longer be possible within two years. However, this week South Park released their highly anticipated sequel to The Stick of Truth, called The Fractured but Whole, which got cracked in less than 24 hours from release.. This could have major implications for the video game industry as a whole.
But before we delve further into the cracking of video games, let’s look at the effects of anti-tampering technologies such as Denuvo, and DRM as a whole. DRM, or Digital Rights Management, is a kind of copy protection technology used by many companies to limit the usage of digital media. While it was intended to stop pirates from creating illegal copies, in reality the customers are the ones that are affected the most. Customers are stripped of their ‘fair use right’ through the addition of the DRM to a video game. Some forms of DRM even required users to always have access to the internet, even for a single player game such as SimCity. This game in particular required access to EA’s servers, but these servers were simply not up to par, leaving many gamers without access to a game they purchased.
This is one of the reasons piracy got ramped up as reviewers were amped about SimCity, but customers were not given the same DRM-Free copy the reviewers were given. Their answer was to pirate a game so that they could experience the game and know whether it would be worth their money. While many expected this piracy to lead to a decrease in sales as customers would already have the game, so they would have no reason to buy the game. It turned out that illegal downloads and streams could actually boost legal sales of games as customers would still buy the game to achieve the full experience and support developers if the game met their expectations.
On the other end, some game makers and platforms moved away from DRM entirely. GOG.com is one such example of a digital distribution platform that offers anything from indie games to AAA games without any DRM or intrusive copy protection so as to provide the customer with the best possible experience.
So, where do you think the video game industry will move towards? Will game makers apply more and more intrusive protection to ensure that their creations will not be pirated, or is DRM-free the future?
Sources:
https://gizmodo.com/the-eu-suppressed-a-300-page-study-that-found-piracy-do-1818629537
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/10/denuvos-drm-ins-now-being-cracked-within-hours-of-release/
https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/212181769-So-what-s-with-this-DRM-thing-
Hi Denis, interesting article you wrote!
I still remember when it was a big thing with SimCity to have that much DRM quite well. This was especially a big problem because the developer lied about the real reason of the always-on internet connection at first (Anthony, 2013), saying that the internet connection was necessary for computations that were performed by the server. This was obviously not the case. Given how dependent we are on the internet today, it is nice to still be able to play games offline when the connection is not working.
I do agree with you that piracy increases sales of video games. There was actually a study of this performed by Ecorys. This study funded by the European Commission and then later burried. This study suggested that piracy may actually boost sales of games (Kanji, 2017).
Now in regards to your question, I do not believe that DRM will get worse as time goes on. Everytime there was very intrusive DRM on a videogame, without good reason, there has been a big backlash towards the developers. It also has the opposite effect the distributors prefer as you pointed out. That it fully goes away I do not think either as Ecorys’s study was of course carried out under the current conditions of DRM. I do believe that the struggle of getting a cracked copy, compared to the convenience of buying the game on Steam or GOG, is a necessity. The service legit distributors provide is enough for distributors to earn as much of a profit as they would have without piracy even existing.
References
Anthony, S. (2013, March 13). DRM deceit: SimCity doesn’t need to be always online, says Maxis developer. Retrieved from ExtremeTech: https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/150598-drm-deceit-simcity-doesnt-need-to-be-always-online-says-maxis-developer
Kanji, M. J. (2017, September 22). EU paid for, then suppressed, study that says piracy doesn’t harm sales. Retrieved from Neowin: https://www.neowin.net/news/eu-paid-for-then-suppressed-study-that-says-piracy-doesnt-harm-sales