
"To see anyone defending EA and Maxis for the state of SimCity, even were it in perfect working order on launch,
depresses me to my core. This self-flagellation-as-skincare notion, where gamers loudly and proudly defend the destruction of their own rights as consumers, is an Orwellian perversity. That it might be considered in any way controversial to call them out on their crap, to point out that no, always-on DRM is not an advantage to anyone, is bewildering. It's a sign of just how far the gaming world has fallen into the rabbit hole of the publisher's burrowing." As usual, RPS hits the nail on the head so hard it shoots through the board.
Member since:
2005-10-13
You forget that many of these pirates are people who have bought the games and then use a torrent to bypass the DRM. I know many people who have done this, so using the inflation of piracy as a justification of ever-more draconian DRM is misleading. There are three types of pirate and only one of them counts as a 'lost sale'.
The first are [mostly] children and teenagers who don't have £50 a time for games and would never have bought the game to begin with.
The second are people who have already bought the game, but dislike the DRM, so they've torrented a cracked version.
The third, and as far as the [objective] published research shows, much in the minority, are those who could and would have bought it, but can get it for free, so they do.
There has been research published (albeit specifically about the music industry) showing that the second group are much greater in number than the third and actually contribute extra sales, rather than the company losing sales.