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The question is, what's the point of the DRM once you have something like Steam? The DRM is not actually preventing people from pirating the games; you can still download them from Torrent sites. And you can prevent people from playing online if they haven't paid without any DRM; you just keep track of that on the server side. So, by still including DRM, you are limiting users freedom, installing crap on their machines that they don't want, for no particularly good reason. The essential part to keep people buying your games instead of going to torrents is not the DRM; it's offering a good service that's competitive with the torrents. The convenience of fast downloads, of being able to reinstall the game on a new machine without keeping track of physical media and keys. And with a service like Steam, you can offer more than that, such as a nice option for online play, tournaments, leaderboards, and the like, updates that add value and keep your interest in older games. While some people are just so cheap that they'll go with the torrent no matter what, I think there are a lot of people who would be willing to buy DRM free games if they offer a compelling enough experience. The reason that media loses sales to piracy is that they offer so much of a worse experience than just doing a search and a download. See iTunes, for example. The music isn't DRMed any more, and it's the largest music retailer in the world; it offers a wide selection and easy download and no crappy DRM hassles. Steam is not successful because of the DRM. It's successful because of the service and convenience. They could drop the DRM, and be even better off than they are today, and not have to spend all the time and money writing the DRM that will just be cracked anyhow. |
These decisions aren't made by programmers or people who otherwise deal with facts.
The point is that when your boss's boss asks why it's showing up on TPB, your boss can say "Look, we put DRM in it. We did the best we could. With more funding we could make the DRM system better."
The next project gets a few more hires (probably only DRM-related on paper), your boss practiced CYA, his boss practiced CYA, and everybody's doing great except the legal consumers of the product, who nobody really cares about anyway.