DRM: Good or bad?

I briefly touched on this topic when I talked about Diablo III moving to the PS4, but I wanted to go into a more broad discussion of how games are sold these days.  CD Projekt Red, the developers of The Witcher, recently said that “DRM is the worst thing in the gaming industry.”  Many games have recently adopted a trend of having some form of DRM (Digital Rights Management) in their games in an effort to prevent piracy, something that was not seen, and was perhaps not necessary, in the early days of video games.  In principle, I can’t say that I disagree with including some form of DRM in your game.  Developers, publishers, and everyone else associated with making video games need to actually turn a profit out of their games, and that is difficult to do if your game can be pirated without much difficulty.  However, many people, including CD Projekt Red, feel that current DRM tactics aren’t very effective at stopping piracy and only lead to a much more annoying experience for the players who actually bought the game.

I must admit that when I hear that a game I want doesn’t have DRM, I get excited.  Years ago, I didn’t have to worry about things like internet connection or how many computers I had installed a certain game on.  It was just my game that I could play whenever I wanted. Games that don’t have DRM bring me back to those days, and even though I understand the need to at least attempt to prevent piracy, I wonder if the sacrifices that have been made in the form of limitations on how and when players can play the games that they bought are necessary, if they are worth it, and if they are even working.

What do the rest of you think?  Is DRM in it’s current form effective at preventing piracy?  Should game developers continue including DRM in their games?

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One Response to DRM: Good or bad?

  1. Di Wang says:

    First of all, I will say that DRM actually could prevent some piracy. For example, Diablo 3 did a pretty good job on that. Till now, as far as I know, buying a legit version is still the only way to play it. However, from my experience in last summer (I spent the whole summer playing Diablo 3 with friends.) , I have to say that I hate DRM. In my opinion, it just doesn’t make any sense that you have to be online all the time even for a single player game and suffer the same laggy issues as all online games have. I was in China and I couldn’t even have a good time playing on the Asian server. While I understand why they do that initially, I couldn’t understand why they keep doing this. I’m pretty sure whoever love their games will never private the games without DRM as long as the developers delivered a good one. So, dear developers,please do learn something from Sim City and pay more attention on the quality of the games itself. That’s the only way keep you from losing the royal player, not by eliminating piracy.

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