[dageshi]

It's really only to protect the launch window. Most games will be discounted later on to the point where they're more or less affordable to everyone. But if someone pirates on release they'll never be inclined to buy at that lower price later on.

[shmde]

> But if someone pirates on release they'll never be inclined to buy at that lower price later on.

Just a personal anecdote. I have pirated a shitton amount of video games when I was young and didn't have money. You know what was one of the first thing I did after getting my salary ? I bought burnout paradise. I now own almost 1/2 of all the video games which I played as a pirate on steam and epic.

And also people who generally take the pirate route to play video games, never ever generally pay for it. So expecting a pirate would give in to buy a video game which he thinks will definitely get cracked in the near future is not really a good idea.

[novok]

This is the reason why I've mostly heard. TBH it would probably be a good ideas for vendors to remove DRM after a game has been out for a few years and has stopped getting patches for a year+.

[dageshi]

I think a lot of them do. It's not uncommon to hear of devs removing DRM after a certain number of months. Especially nowadays where after a certain point they just want people to play the game ready for when the sequel comes out.

[jimbob45]

Not only this but for some games, the launch window is all they’ll have because the game is terrible. This works as insurance to make sure they make some money.

[Macha]

Also DRM vendors (like Denuvo) have moved to a more aaS licensing model and homegrown DRM solutions fall so quickly they're out of fashion, so there's financial incentive to stop paying licensing costs for games in their long tail phase for sales.