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A new blog post on Gamesutra suggest that game publishers may be encouraging piracy with their actions.
Citing adandonware, high prices and DRM, the blogger, Alan Youngblood, suggests that while piracy is impossible to prevent, at the very least, companies should not be encouraging it.
Adandonware are old games that are no longer available for sale. But these retro games are incredibly popular, and so the only way to download them is through less then legal means.
High prices are self explanatory, in that if one cannot stop piracy, then one must compete against it. To compete against "free" is hard, but not impossible if prices are more reasonable.
DRM - enough said.
My personal opinion is that you can fight against piracy, but you need to use the tools available to you and abandon methods and practices that do not work. Intrusive DRM has proven to be completely ineffective when it comes to stopping piracy. The "best" DRM systems only hinder the piracy process, but when faced with a little bit more work or having to spend $50, people will still find the pirated version "better value".
But by providing extra content and services, even if it is tied to an online DRM system, and by lowering prices through digital distribution, this can have a major effect on piracy. If companies promised free extra content, but only if you authenticate online, there will surely be many that will put up with DRM just to access the content, which then opens these gamers up in terms of marketing paid for downloadable content.
Whatever the solution, you can't argue the fact that the current way does not work.
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Citing adandonware, high prices and DRM, the blogger, Alan Youngblood, suggests that while piracy is impossible to prevent, at the very least, companies should not be encouraging it.
Adandonware are old games that are no longer available for sale. But these retro games are incredibly popular, and so the only way to download them is through less then legal means.
High prices are self explanatory, in that if one cannot stop piracy, then one must compete against it. To compete against "free" is hard, but not impossible if prices are more reasonable.
DRM - enough said.
My personal opinion is that you can fight against piracy, but you need to use the tools available to you and abandon methods and practices that do not work. Intrusive DRM has proven to be completely ineffective when it comes to stopping piracy. The "best" DRM systems only hinder the piracy process, but when faced with a little bit more work or having to spend $50, people will still find the pirated version "better value".
But by providing extra content and services, even if it is tied to an online DRM system, and by lowering prices through digital distribution, this can have a major effect on piracy. If companies promised free extra content, but only if you authenticate online, there will surely be many that will put up with DRM just to access the content, which then opens these gamers up in terms of marketing paid for downloadable content.
Whatever the solution, you can't argue the fact that the current way does not work.
More:
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