Indeed it is. Good eye.
Care to back up your assertion that DRM definitely stops the "idiots" (or for that matter, define just who the "idiots" actually are). And for the clincher, even if we take your statement at face value, just how many of these "idiots" are actually out there, and more importantly how many of them were even interested in the game to begin with, and will go out and buy the game as a result of the DRM stopping them from pirating it? I'd contend you'd be hard-pressed to claim that the profits from these sales would even be able to offset the cost of licensing the DRM system, to say nothing of the sales lost because potential customers who were interested in the game decided the included DRM wasn't something they wanted to waste their time with. In short, as I said to you before: you're doing it wrong.

Does anyone here care to back up the assertions that DRM doesn't work and is evil? :P
We are all arguing opinions.
As for what I base mine off of:
"idiots" are the people who don't know how to find a crack that isn't a virus and who can't use a torrent. And all it takes is to have non-tech savvy family or to know someone in tech support to realize they are out there. And before you say that those people aren't interested in video games: Go read the community-run tech support forum for pretty much any major PC game :p. I think we can safely say that they are stopped, if only because they are so afraid of finding viruses when they try to crack The Sims 9534242. How much of the target demographic are they? No idea. But considering how many idiots are in any given support forum, I think they are a pretty large chunk.
Hell, do we have any good statistics on how many people actually don't buy games because of the DRM model? I know we have a lot of loud-mouths and what not, but I just cite the L4D2 boycott (or the MW2 boycott :p) as proof that people are full of crap. People are very loud about what they don't like, then they try it and realize they don't care. I know I have avoided a few games due to DRM, but I also know that I hopped the fence almost immediately with MEPC :p.
Do the costs of DRM and the benefits of DRM balance out? Honestly, I don't think they do with things like limited activation models, but I do when it comes to simple (and complex) disc checks. I also think that models like Steam/Impulse and the new crap EA is trying with emphasis on DLC are the way to go. They provide an incentive to keep legal while providing minimal hassle to the user (and if you are going to complain about internet connections, just go to a different website :p).
But I am not an economist, and I am also not privy to sales figures, surveys, and the like. If you guys who so definitively know that DRM is "bad" and "not good" and the like can point me to these studies, please do so. Until then, I am going to have to assume that the people who are making money have reasons.
I also love how anyone who isn't vehemently opposed to DRM must be a security freak who touches themselves to the thought of having their "liberteez" taken away :p. Well, okay, maybe I do touch myself to that, but I touch myself to a lot of things :p

I guess that makes me a "what not"?? I've not purchased a game or used a service with DRM in over two years . . .=) . . . that's why you find me here on GOG.
Just curious, why would you defend DRM on a website established purely for the selling of reasonably priced DRM free games? Do you work in the gaming or DRM industry?

I am not saying there aren't people who don't buy games with DRM (although, I suspect a lot of them have very specific definitions of what counts as DRM :p), I am just saying that I suspect the number is very small. Sort of like with vegetarians. There are the people who say they are vegetarians (but eat hamburgers), the kind who think they are vegetarians (but eat chicken or fish), and then the hardcore vegans (who often have thyroid issues :p).
As for your second point: Apologies. I did not realize that my opinion was not allowed here. Next time I'll make it a point to ensure that my opinion on a matter is not on the "do not say" list :p
Seriously though. I am not in the gaming or DRM industry, as you would put it. I just happen to not be vehemently opposed to the concept. Probably because I have been putting up with it (and bypassing it...) since as far back as I can remember. Hell, one of my earliest memories is thinking I broke the 486 when I "cracked' the Aladdin DRM (544, Loading :p). It is an evil, sure. But I can see reasons for it, and reasons against it. I guess I just don't see the world in black and white.

I agree, there are fewer of us every year. . . =) . . . if you want a good beat down, try telling people not to buy games with DRM or use Steam . . .=)
I appreciate and value your opinion, didn't mean to imply you shouldn't speak your mind. I mostly hear DRM defended by industry insiders, just curious if you worked in the industry and why you would defend it . . . nothing more . . .=)
Edit: I have no thyroid issues . . . =)

Please download demos instead of pirating.
$5 is fair to you, but that doesn't make pirating fair to the developer.
About the best you get and [url=http://torrentfreak.com/the-most-pirated-games-of-2009-091227/]here.

I've seen the piracy statistics based on Bit Torrent. Massive flaws with those:
A lot of clients don't report information "properly" according to a lot of trackers. So if they just count completed downloads, there is the potential for multiple "hits" from a single bad combination of tracker/client. And then you run into clients that can support torrents with multiple trackers (a "hit" to each tracker). I think we can see how it is possible that those numbers are grossly inflated. And they also ignore all the other methods of piracy.
And how do we define an unauthorized download? What about people who just grab the crack. Are those counted as hits or not?
That being said, all this shows is that piracy occurs. It doesn't really show the impact of DRM versus non-DRM, which is really the big argument. All those really do is just show the popular games. That being said, I am actually shocked that Prototype ranked so high :p

Indeed we are. Hence why I've tried to word most of my statements to show that I'm putting forth little more than assertions and speculation. You may want to also throw in some qualifiers to your future statements, as currently it comes across like you're trying to claim you definitively know many of the assertions you're throwing out.
Again, you're pretty much dealing with the mother of all sample biases there. That's not to say that such people aren't out there, but the demographic you're focusing on is the overlap of people who are ignorant enough of computers to not know about bittorrent, who are interested in some non-trivial number of PC games, who would try to track down a friend or acquaintance to burn a copy of a game before going to buy it, and then who would actually buy the game if they weren't able to burn a copy due to DRM. Are you going to tell me you honestly believe that this demographic is anything more than utterly insignificant when compared to the entire demographic of PC gamers?
I wish we did have some solid statistics on the matter, but unfortunately we'll have to make due with speculation for the time being. First off, the people making lots of noise are not the ones you need to be thinking about, most of them are all flash and no photo. The people who are of concern are those who don't find it worth their time to rant about how they're not going to buy a game because of the DRM, but instead just quietly pass on the game and buy some other game. That said, I'm also of the opinion that this is a pretty damn small group of people when compared to the full demographic of PC gamers. However, there are also people who don't fully know what DRM is, who also aren't set on one particular game, but will just read through a few customer reviews to pick between a couple of games they're potentially interested in, and if they see a couple of reviews stating the people had trouble even playing the game because of DRM problems, well guess what game they probably won't be choosing? Now, I think this group is probably larger than the first group I mentioned, but still very small when compared to all PC gamers. But it's not all PC gamers that these two groups combined needs to be compared to. They need to be compared to the number of people who were deterred from piracy by the DRM for a game, and as a result actually went and bought the game. I wish I had some kind of solid information on how these groups compare, but just based on anecdotal evidence and some understanding of people's behavioral patterns, I'm personally of the opinion that the groups are either comparable in size, or that the group deterred from buying by DRM is a bit larger than the group prompted to buy due to DRM.
I actually agree on this, provided that the disc check doesn't cause any problems and doesn't get in the way of people actually using the game. For instance, the implementation of the Securom disc check in Fallout 3 seemed to be pretty terrible and caused quite a few people problems, and I personally had an issue with the disc check for HOMM5 failing for some reason (although in a delicious bit of irony a NoCD crack fixed them problem quite nicely).
While Steam and Impulse seem to be doing quite well, I think developers will end up losing out on quite a few sales for games that are Steam/Impulse exclusives. This is not necessarily due to DRM, but rather simply due to sales being limited to people who are aware of and use those particular distribution channels. Generally, when selling a product, you want it available through as much distribution channels as is economical. An exception can be when exclusivity can drive sales through brand image (e.g. Apple), but that doesn't apply to most games. Additionally, while heavily hyped games can draw people to a distribution channel they otherwise wouldn't have used, the rest of the games will often get a "meh, not worth it" response if the customer is being asked to go out of their way to buy it.
As for the DLC approach, I'm still waiting to see how it plays out for DA:O, but I think it will ultimately be a method that can work for heavily hyped AAA titles, but which will fall flat for the rest of games available. I also think it will become much less effective if more companies start picking it up, simply due to consumers becoming overwhelmed by the amount of DLC being offered and ultimately just tuning it out (similar to how most people learn to tune out shovelware).
For the record, for FY 2009 EA lost $1.1 billion, so don't be too quick to assume the big players are raking in money without first consulting their actual earnings reports (also for the record, Activision-Blizzard reported $4 billion in revenue but I couldn't find their net income, Ubisoft reported a net gain of €109.8 million, Take-Two reported a net gain of $97.1 million, and THQ reported a net loss of $431.1 million). It's also important to recognize that just because folks may be in charge of a large company it doesn't mean they are making good decisions or informed decisions (I thought the fiasco with the banks would have taught everyone that).
Now, I actually have a little story to tell, although it also serves as a decent analogy to DRM. Shoplifting has always been a problem for brick-and-mortar retailers, even more so than piracy for purveyors of digital goods, since when something is physically stolen the shop owner actually loses money on it regardless of whether the person stealing it would have bought it. So naturally there's quite a bit of motivation to figure out effective methods for loss prevention in retail. One fad that some large chains implemented over the past decade was to stop people at the door when leaving the store, insist that they produce a receipt, then look through their bags to make sure that the contents matched the receipt. Thing is, this method cost quite a bit (for paying the staff standing at the doors), and also did a wonderful job alienating customers (shocker, that one). Two chains I particularly remember engaging in this practice were CompUSA and Circuit City... guess where those two chains are now? (In case you aren't aware, CompUSA underwent a massive liquidation from 2007-2008 going from 140+ stores to under 30, and was then sold off, while Circuit City went into chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2008 and was then sold off in 2009). Now, was this because of checking people's bags at the door? Ha! It was due to a series of poor management decisions, of which customer-alienating practices was only one. However, in these cases you had highly paid professionals, who had all the numbers, and still made a bunch of very poor decisions. Hopefully this at least illustrates the folly in thinking that the folks in charge, having access to more information than us, must have a good idea what they're doing. Never cease to question the decisions being made, using whatever information is available, and coming to your own conclusions, even if those who should have better information come to different conclusions. If those other folks think they're right, then let them explain themselves.
I'm probably more of a "security freak" than you or most folks here, in that I find security quite interesting and regularly read theory, commentary, and case studies regarding security as it applies to numerous situations. Something that results from this is learning to differentiate between actual security practices (which is often invisible to most people) and the appearance of security, which despite announcing itself loudly (of by inconveniencing people) does very little to make anything more secure. One also comes to realize that security is always about trade-offs, and as a result you have to keep in mind what your ultimate goal actually is (security, or something else that security only contributes to) and consider whether the trade-offs being made for the sake of security work against your goal more than the security you gain works towards your goal.

How so? My point was that they exist, and that a large number of idiots play. If we are to take the support forum as a somewhat accurate sample of who is (trying to) play a game, then it shows that they are at least a non-trivial group.
And why are we assuming they are in the "try before you buy" category? Maybe they are just pirates. Pretty much everyone talks about piracy (the news, when it is a slow day. Any given gaming forum), so it is not a stretch to imagine that someone would think "Hmm, I can have this game for free!"
While I do agree that few people buy games FOR the DRM (excluding stuff like Steam and Impulse, where the DRM actually adds a lot of benefits) and that some of the negative reviews probably hurt things, I also feel the need to point out just how many negative reviews there are. Anyone who would actually look at reviews has probably learned how to tell what a bad review is. And honestly, I think we can all agree that almost every single review that makes a point out of DRM is probably in the bad category (since it is clear that the person is more interested in the DRM than the game).
Well, I was mostly thinking games like Dark Messiah, DoW2, and even MW2 which integrate with Steam (or RF: Guerilla which used Impulse). All the joys of buying in stores, with the DRM of digital distribution.
As for the DLC route: I think that when someone (probably EA) finally decides to fully get behind one or two services, it will work perfectly. People aren't overwhelmed by having large lists of uninstalled games in Steam, so it will just be a matter of getting a lot of trivial free DLC with the occasional bit worth buying.
That is a given, but with something that has been going on for this long (and been hated for this long. I mean, people screamed when they needed to keep discs in the drive :p) there has to be a rationale. The bank fiasco was largely one of nobody caring (and the ones who did were ignored).
I think that CompUSA and Circuit City went down more because of Amazon and NewEgg than anything else. Best Buy still does that garbage (albeit, it seems to be on a store-by-store basis) and they are the "last store standing" as it were.
And my point isn't to trust them blindly, but to just consider that there IS a reason. Is it a good one? Maybe, maybe not. But there are rationales. Hell, one I can think of is that the devs get discouraged when their games are pirated. I know that if I worked my butt off to design some fancy innovation I would patent it ASAP. Because otherwise, I would be PISSED when it becomes the shiniest thing since sliced bread and I don't make a single penny. Then there are things like appeasing shareholders (if applicable). Again, just a matter of balance.
Pretty much. It all boils down to the end-goal. And the problem is that most of the militantly anti-DRM people think the end-game is that nobody can pirate anything. Like I tried to say at the start of this fiasco: That isn't the goal. The goal is to stop the idiots. And that is a big whopping success. The problem is that, as you mentioned, there are trade-offs. Starforce worked PERFECTLY (and actually stopped a lot of the power-users too), but it got smashed in the PR game (all the stories of people who knew a guy who had a friend whose computer raped his mother after installing a game with Starforce :p). So they tried to go for the online activation model (people had stopped caring about Steam), but the pirates got pissed off again (MEPC) and all the threats of games not working cropped back up.
DISCLAIMER: I actually hated Starforce, and I am opposed to limited activation models. But I mostly just didn't like Starforce because it made me reboot to play Chaos Theory. Bastards :p

My point was that a support forum is not an accurate sample of people trying to play a game, as it specifically attracts those who aren't able to get a game to work and aren't able to look up the answer without having to post on the forum. In short, the number of technically inept people are vastly over-represented. This is what a sample bias is. If you don't know what a term I use means then in the future please either look it up or ask specifically what it means. It'll save us both time.
I wasn't addressing the "try before you buy" group (a group that, interestingly, will actually spend more money as a result of piracy), but the "will be willing to buy" group. This is because if a person is not willing to buy the game under any circumstances there is no way to make any money off of them, and in an economic analysis of DRM they are simply not part of the picture.
It's not the "this game contains X DRM, thus it sucks" reviews I was referring to, but the "this game didn't work for me because of X DRM" reviews. The salient point of the review being that the game did not work. This is useful information to people deciding between games, as such people typically want a game that they're not going to have to waste their time trying to get to work right. All else being equal, buying a different game based on such information is simple risk-avoidance, a very common behavior.
Sorting through and installing lots of DLC takes time, and much more time at that relative to the amount of playtime a person will get. For a game with <5 key pieces of DLC that has a strong following it can work, but if we get to the point that people are dealing with nearly every game they're getting having DLC, and all the DLC for just one game costing as much as a whole new game, people will have to start making choices based on either money or time costs, and the path of least resistance here is to simply start tuning out most DLC. See the video game crash of 1983 for a historical analogy. It's my prediction we'll see something similar if we get supersaturation with DLC, but only time will prove me right or wrong.
Oh, there certainly is a rationale, but that doesn't mean that the rationale is rational. And I'm sure it all makes perfect sense to the people instituting the various DRM policies, but that doesn't mean that their perceptions of the world happen to match up with the world itself. (And the bank fiasco was caused by all sorts of bad policy decisions on multiple levels, but let's not derail this thread).
Naturally competition (Amazon, Newegg, BestBuy, Fry's, etc) played a role. But the question you need to ask is why certain businesses in this arena failed while others succeeded (Best Buy was $1 billion in the black for FY 2008). What decisions and policies resulted in customers choosing some stores over other stores? There's plenty of commentary out there if you wish to further inform yourself, but this particular thread of discussion is starting to veer off the topic at hand (and is purely tangential to the point I used it to make) so it's probably best if we left discussion of specifics on this matter for another time.
And there you just showed two good examples of rationales that are not rational. Satisfying egos and appeasing shareholders are certainly reasons for using DRM, but neither does anything to help a company's bottom line. And both are perfect examples of "you're doing it wrong."
You're doing it wrong. The goal should be for the development company to make as much profit as possible off of the game they made. Deterring piracy is only relevant if doing so contributes to this goal. One of the biggest problems I see is that many people in the gaming industry get stuck in the same mindset you're stuck in: that the goal is deterring piracy, and as a result even if they succeed to some degree in this perceived they fail at what they're actual goal should be.
And with that you've provided two nice examples of failures that were due to the people involved forgetting what their actual goal should have been: to get people to buy their games.

Oy, I love arguing with people who feel the need to be aggressive every chance they get :p
Let me clarify: My point is that there is a large number of people who are technically inept. The sampling bias would only apply if I said that a large percentage of the users were non-tech-savvy. I just said a large number. By the definition of it being a sample, and there being a large number of people who ask for help, we can assume there are a large number of people.
Apologies. I was not aware there was a distinction between trying a game before buying it and those who are going to buy it but just happen to be trying :p
That being said, you are right. There is no point to really consider those people (who, I honestly suspect make up a lot of the "I won't buy a game with DRM" category). That is why I said to ignore them :p
Again, that doesn't apply so much with PC users, considering that so many poor reviews are a matter of "OH MAH GAWDZ!!! IT SAID I NEEDED SHADERS 2 AND I ONLY HAVE 1! THIS GAME IS TEH SUXXXOROROXORXORX ZORRO!!!". It doesn't help, but I also doubt they have much of an impact these days. Hell, just look at Steam.
Maybe it would help if you actually read up on how the EA model is working. All that DLC downloading and installing is automated. And most of it is free. You basically just download it by going to a little submenu from the main menu (and it could easily be set up to run in the background if it weren't for the whiners). Combine that with a digital distribution service (like Steam), and you download the DLC when you download the game. Nifty fact: That is actually how Steam DLC works right now.
And my point is that we can't really determine how rational the rationale is without knowing it. Everyone seems to be ready to assume they are all idiots who masturbate on piles of money.
Yes, but I already pointed out that the reason you are blaming (bag checks) are done at many Best Buys (which did so well). So you are right, these stores dying are irrelevant to the thread :p
Oy. Let me elaborate.
I am working my butt off to make the newest type of sprocket. I am willing to go out of my way and work weekends. Why? Because I will benefit from it. I will either get a bonus/promotion from my company, get a crapload of money for my invention (less likely these days), or get published and get a really good job when I graduate.
Now what happens if I find out that nothing I do will matter and that the best I can hope for is to get a small blurb on Wikipedia some day? I'll give you a hint: I am not going to be coming in on weekends, and I am a lot less likely to bother fixing every single potential flaw.
Hell, take a look at that Saboteur game. The devs knew they were getting fired, and their already crappy quality control was even worse (and THAT is saying a lot, since they were already at Troika levels :p). They had little incentive to "go all out" as it were.
This isn't "you're doing it wrong". This is capitalism and actually giving your employees incentives to work. That is why property laws and the like promote strong economies. It gives people incentive to work harder. You work hard because you will get rewarded. It is the old "light at the end of the tunnel".
Same thing with shareholders. Nobody is going to want to invest in a company that throws away the stuff it makes. No money means no products.
Again, where are you getting these statistics on how DRM impacts profits?
That being said, by deterring the idiots from pirating a game, they are maximizing potential profits. If we assume the idiot-population is large enough, then it pays off the DRM. And if we are a particularly large publisher, we get a contract that lowers the cost of DRM even more.
Failures? Those worked wonders at the start. It was only later on that it got problematic.
People who really wanted to play The Two Thrones needed to buy the game (or unplug their disc drives). People who wanted to play a lot of Starforce games ended up having to either skip it (and that probably puts them in the pirate category) or buy the game. So it was working. The problem was that it was very intrusive and got bad PR. So you have a kernel of feces with a bunch of angry pirates spreading horror stories.
So sorry, but I am just not seeing what I am doing wrong. Maybe if you get a cute little kitty picture it will make your point stronger (See, two of us can be annoyingly condescending :p).

Well, this seems to be deteriorating rather quickly; most isn't worth or doesn't require responding to. Guess I'll give it one or who more tries before I decide whether it's worth any more of my time.
And just what is a "large number of people"? 10 could be considered a large number for some situations, while being an utterly insignificant number for others. Everything must be taken in context; absolute numbers are utterly meaningless without context. Now, I was previously working under the assumption that you were actually trying to say something meaningful, and thus assumed that you were placing your claims about numbers within the context of the number of PC gamers out there. However, if I was wrong in that assumption then please let me know so I can stop wasting my time.
Rationale doesn't actually matter. What matters is how things end up working out in practice. You were the one who chose to focus on rationale and wanted to assume that the folks in the gaming industry had some rationale that led to some worthwhile results. My basic point surrounding that matter was pretty much that that assumption is worthless and quite often incorrect.
Might want to re-read my earlier posts. You seem to have misread what I said.
And how does this relate to DRM and piracy? Bonus pools tend to be determined by how much money a company actually brings in and whether company goals are met, and continued employment is based off whether a company is profitable and growing or if it's on the verge of collapse. Again, what it actually comes down to is whether the company is bringing in as much money as they can from their game, not how much the game is being pirated. Looking at piracy as a metric for any of the things you mentioned simply shows a complete lack of understanding of how businesses operate.
And again, how does any of this relate to piracy? The ability to pay employees competitive salaries is predicated on the company having and bringing in enough money to pay all of its financial obligations. Fighting piracy only effects this to the extent that it manages to increase net revenue. Focusing on piracy instead of profits is where you're doing it wrong.
Informed investors invest in companies based upon current and prospective earnings. Fighting piracy doesn't help this unless it results in greater profits for the company. Speculators may buy and sell based on announcements about piracy, but at most this only results in small swings in the stock price while having little effect on a company's ability to raise capital on any timescale longer than a week or two.
The assumption that deterring certain demographics from pirating a game results in greater profits is what I have been attacking for most of this discussion. I really don't feel like repeating myself, so please go make a re-read my posts, as I've spoken to the faultiness of this assumption multiple times and in multiple ways.
They only worked wonders if you use deterring piracy as your metric, and as I've been arguing this is the wrong metric to use. Additionally, the fact that Ubisoft then moved away from the use of Starforce and even released the next PoP game without any DRM at all would seem to indicate that the folks in charge there certainly didn't view the use of Starforce as a success.

You know what, I am going to do something I almost never do.
I am going to drop the argument. All you seem willing to do is make personal attacks, rather than actually read the points. Then you keep arguing that all of my responses to your statements are irrelevant (no arguments there :p).
So I'll do you a favor and just stop responding. If you want to argue that you won, feel free.
If anyone else wants to continue the conversation and can avoid making naught but personal attacks, feel free. Or, if you can't avoid the personal attacks, at least make sure they are funny :p. I figure, it is important to always entertain the public.

I'm on your side for what it's worth. Hate being in these situations.

Sorry you feel that way, but suit yourself. I actually never intended to attack you personally and don't think that I did, although apparently it came across as such. Oh well, c'est la vie.