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Gaming industry analyst Michael Pachter supports Ubisoft's controversial "always on DRM" system when asked a question by a viewer of his "Pach Attack" show on GameTrailers.
Although not directly addressing the issue of normal DRM versus "always on" DRM, Pachter feels that game copying is not different to stealing a copy of the game from the shops, despite the fact that the latter act is physical theft, with tangible physical losses to the store owner, and the former is only theft if you consider it from an ethical point of view, as nobody has been left out of pocket if the "thief" did not intend to pay for anything in the first place.
""When a company sells you a game they have no problem if you resell it and someone else buys it and they have no problem if you give it away," Pachter also said, despite recent efforts by game publishers to prevent the sale of second hand games.
Pachter also added "The guys that ran bittorrent [sic] are in jail: it is illegal". The BitTorrent system itself isn't any more illegal than say HTTP or FTP, but it can be used illegally to pirate games. And as jail terms are concerned, nobody has yet gone to prison for running a BitTorrent website, uploading or downloading copyrighted files through BitTorrent networks, certainly not the creators of the BitTorrent system, many of which have gone on to work at industry leading firms such as Valve (who created the Steam platform, the most popular digital game distribution platform around ... and yes, it is legal).
And for critics of Pachter's stance, he has this to say, "I welcome the flamer comments on this one ... we have no interest in your business since you don't pay for stuff anyway."
Well, as for paying for stuff, that would be the customers of Ubisoft that gets stuck with a DRM system that hardly works, as opposed to the people who didn'y pay and can use the cracked version without the limitations.
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Although not directly addressing the issue of normal DRM versus "always on" DRM, Pachter feels that game copying is not different to stealing a copy of the game from the shops, despite the fact that the latter act is physical theft, with tangible physical losses to the store owner, and the former is only theft if you consider it from an ethical point of view, as nobody has been left out of pocket if the "thief" did not intend to pay for anything in the first place.
""When a company sells you a game they have no problem if you resell it and someone else buys it and they have no problem if you give it away," Pachter also said, despite recent efforts by game publishers to prevent the sale of second hand games.
Pachter also added "The guys that ran bittorrent [sic] are in jail: it is illegal". The BitTorrent system itself isn't any more illegal than say HTTP or FTP, but it can be used illegally to pirate games. And as jail terms are concerned, nobody has yet gone to prison for running a BitTorrent website, uploading or downloading copyrighted files through BitTorrent networks, certainly not the creators of the BitTorrent system, many of which have gone on to work at industry leading firms such as Valve (who created the Steam platform, the most popular digital game distribution platform around ... and yes, it is legal).
And for critics of Pachter's stance, he has this to say, "I welcome the flamer comments on this one ... we have no interest in your business since you don't pay for stuff anyway."
Well, as for paying for stuff, that would be the customers of Ubisoft that gets stuck with a DRM system that hardly works, as opposed to the people who didn'y pay and can use the cracked version without the limitations.
More:
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