The future of the video game industry?

20

October

2017

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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://www.denuvo.com/

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/01/major-piracy-groups-warns-games-may-be-crack-proof-in-two-years/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/03/07/what-simcity-and-always-online-drm-mean-for-video-game-reviews/#594dc1883cc1

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://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/01/major-piracy-groups-warns-games-may-be-crack-proof-in-two-years/

https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/212181769-So-what-s-with-this-DRM-thing-

 

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Apple’s Cookie Cutting Raises Concerns

24

September

2017

5/5 (4)

Apple recently released the latest version of their mobile operating system, including a new feature that has concerned advertising groups to the point where they banded together in order to write an open letter of complaint. This feature has been dubbed “Intelligent Tracking Prevention” by Apple and makes it harder for advertisers to follow the digital footprint of users of the web. The way the feature does this is by disabling certain digital cookies, text files that are used to track users as they surf around the web. (Wycislik-Wilson, 2017)

By making it more difficult for advertisers to track users, and provide specifically targeted ads, Apple has made users and privacy advocates alike happy. These changes will make it harder for advertisers to build up consumer profiles for targeted advertising. In addition to this, Apple is using machine learning in order to determine which cookies are useful to users and which ones are privacy-invading (Wycislik-Wilson, 2017).

However, not all parties involved stand by Apple’s decision to implement this feature. The earlier mentioned group of advertising companies claims that this new functionality would create a haphazard set of rules over the use of cookies. This would then hinder the innovation of digital companies as they depend on consistent and applicable standards in order to build personalized content and services (Wycislik-Wilson, 2017). Some, like Alex Hern (2017), speculate that this could turn into an arms race as advertising companies have been spotted experimenting with different ways to track users.

In a digital environment where Facebook is already able to identify when teenagers are feeling “insecure” or “worthless”, this might just have devastating consequences for surfers of the web (Wong, 2017). The experiments to track users, spotted by Hern (2017), include measuring the amount of battery life left and seeing the brightness of the room a user is in. Tapping into this data could allow trackers to let adverts follow you from home to work and back each day (Hern, 2017).

I wholeheartedly stand by Apple’s decision to protect their users from unwanted gathering of their web browsing history. However, they should follow up on what they started and continue protecting users from these various tracking initiatives by advertising companies. What do you think about Apple’s recent initiative to protect privacy?

References

Hern, A. (2017, September 19). Apple cuts cookies – but there is more to come in the online advertising arms race. Retrieved September 24, 2017 from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2017/sep/19/apple-crumbles-cookies-but-there-is-more-to-come-in-the-online-advertising-arms-race#img-1

Wong, J.C. (2017, September 20). Facebook to tighten ad targeting after antisemitic ‘fail’, says Sheryl Sandberg. Retrieved September 24, 2017 from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/20/facebook-jew-haters-ad-targeting-sheryl-sandberg

Wycislik-Wilson, M. (2017, September 20). Privacy: With iOS 11 and Safari’s cookie blocking, Apple is kicking advertisers in the teeth. Retrieved September 24, 2017 from  https://betanews.com/2017/09/20/ios-11-safari-apple-blocks-ad-cookies/

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