DRM News

In a recent blog post at Public Knowledge Jef Pearlman quoted Michael Robertson who asked, ‘Do you own your digital property?’, and went on to say, ‘I know I sold you that, but you can’t play it on a portable device or put it on the Internet’ you’ve turned everything into a rental or a lease.’. This is exactly what the video game companies are saying. We now ‘license’ games, we do not own them.

Now there is an organization (DECE) that wants to start a ‘service’ that allows you to cross platform your media. That could mean music, movies, video games, etc. I would suggest going to my first link and reading that article for what that means. I am going to focus on video games and what I think DRM is supposed to be doing for the video game industry.

The video games industry likes to point out that DRM is needed because of massive piracy, they need to protect their IP. Which is fair, they do have that right. However is DRM only to protect their IP, or does it also have another purpose? According to a recent NPD Games Acquisition Monitor report, only 4% of US gamers pirate. So is piracy really the rampant problem the video game developers/publishers would have us believe? A recent Gamasutra article said that UK developers want to address piracy on their own, without government intervention. Only 30% of UK developers believe DRM is a solution, while 20% think its part of the problem. Instead they are looking at changing their business model to combat piracy. Conversely here in the US they are looking at restrictions with DRM and going after second hand sales.

This is really what I think DRM is for, second hand sales. A number of different developers have talked about second hand sales. Bungie, Epic, Take-Two, EA, all of them have said they deserve a cut of second hand sales. In the close to three decades of video game sales, its only been in the last few years have video game companies started in on the ‘licensing’ issue. There was nothing to stop any of these companies during the last few decades of going after the second hand sales market. They could have shut down used video games sales at stores, and then from ebay, etc… But they didn’t. They allowed it to continue unchecked, which is rather interesting considering their views now.

The only thing that has changed over the years is technology, and that has now allowed them ways to achieve what they want without taking a PR hit.  DRM using activation limits so it is very nearly impossible to trade or sell the game, attaching it to online accounts with no way to transfer are just two ways to stop second hand sales, and who knows what the future will bring?

I simply do not understand why game companies are taking this road. Second hand sales are the ‘gateway drug’ to future sales. I can’t tell you how many used games I’ve bought or traded for that I ended up liking the developer and buying more games from them, new games too. Almost every gamer I have talked to has done the same thing. If you take this away they are going to lose a revenue stream. Although typical bean counters cannot see that, they only see the huge second hand sales market and claim they are losing money.