DRM News

In a recent interview with cnet, CEO David Roberts and co-founder John Vechey of PopCap talked about DRM. PopCap is a developer and publisher of such games as Bejeweled and Plants vs Zombies and many other excellent casual games. The article only asks one DRM related question, but its a doozy.

Some other publishers have had to resort to some pretty invasive DRM solutions in their titles. What kind of DRM do you employ in your PC and Mac games, and what are your thoughts on games that require an always-on connection to check in?

Roberts: We do have DRM on our games, but it’s pretty mild. Cracks for our DRM are everywhere. My philosophy is the same as what PopCap had when I got there, which is put it on there enough to protect us, but don’t inconvenience real, paying customers with it. And that’s a fine line.

I’ll date myself here. Back when I first took over Pagemaker [at the Aldus Corporation] a long time ago, we had DRM on the floppy disks, and you had to insert the floppy disks and do all this stuff. It was a horrible customer experience, and our customer service people were having to spend a lot of time on it. And when we took it out, sales went up. So it became pretty clear that the obtrusive DRM can be worse than what you’re protecting it from. And look, we sell $20 games. If people are determined to steal them, they’re going to steal them.

We do have DRM on our games, but it’s pretty mild. Cracks for our DRM are everywhere. My philosophy is the same as what PopCap had when I got there, which is put it on there enough to protect us, but don’t inconvenience real, paying customers with it. And that’s a fine line.

Vechey: It’s the same thing with [Ubisoft's] Assassin’s Creed 2. I mean I’m sorry, but if you want to steal it, you can steal it. You’re going to find a way to do it.

Roberts: Our customers are less likely to go steal it. Your grandma is not really going to go hop and search through BitTorrents to try and find it, whereas the target 15- to 25-year-old target of more of the hardcore games is more likely. I’m certainly not in the right position to make comparisons. I do also believe that if DRM or any of those sorts of protection technologies inconvenience paying customers, then the cost is a lot higher than you can know.

Their view on DRM is pretty realistic. Protect themselves as they can, but not make it so that customers are hassled by it. Also they don’t seem to worry about pirates, they know people are going to pirate regardless, so taking drastic measures isn’t going to work. Recently one hacking group claimed success in ridding Assassin’s Creed 2 of its restrictive ‘always online’ DRM scheme, proving Vechey right.

Piracy is going to happen no matter what, it just is. Companies do have the right to protect themselves as much as possible, but when it starts restricting paying customers piracy is going to increase and they are going to turn away paying customers as well. Search out any game forum and look for discussions about Ubisoft’s DRM, you’ll find many people saying they are stopping buying any Ubisoft game, not just Assassin’s Creed 2. This is not something any company wants to hear.

If you haven’t been a fan of PopCap’s games before, you should be. Not only do they make great, cheap games, but their thoughts on DRM are right in line with the paying consumer.