DRM News

GamersGate is a digital distribution platform that enables people from around the world to purchase and download games online, without having to leave their own home. I recently wrote an article about how GamersGate and Steam proved that by dropping prices actually increases their profits. Since that article I was able to have an interview with Theo Bergquist, GamersGate’s CEO.

How did GamersGate come about?

- It all started with Paradox Interactive and their PC titles. As they struggled to find retail shelf space for their titles, fans began asking if they could download the games straight from the Paradox FTP. Eventually it became so popular that we created a separate brand, GamersGate, and spun it off from Paradox so we could host games from other publishers.

Coming from an independent background of Paradox, how many Independent developers are you currently working with and do you have plans to reach out to more?

- Currently we have more than 200 partners and over 1800 games for sale. Independent developers are an important factor for us and we’ve always seen them as our kin. The more games we can add, even if it’s from small independent developers, the better. Also, it’s a good source of revenues for them. I mean, they get 70% of the revenues within 30 days! That’s way higher than what they would get if they were to go through physical retail.

GamersGate mentions what DRM is on some games, but not all, in the future are you planning on listing what DRM is on all games (if its present)? Or is that up to the publishers? Do you feel that DRM should be disclosed prior to purchase?

- Absolutely. The type of DRM a game carries should be clear in the description. For many gamers this is an essential factor in whether they make the decision to buy the game or not. We try to state that as clear as we can and we’re updating the product pages constantly. From our end this should be no secret.

Do you think DLC accessed through systems like EA’s Cerberus will come to stores like GamersGate, Direct2Drive Steam, etc? Or will that stay with the publishers?

- Yes I think some of them will be accessed thru such systems, but not all. There will be many hybrids of how to deliver a game and gaming content in the future. I don’t think there will ever be one singular way of distributing a game.

Companies are planning account based DRM systems for their games; do you think this will have an effect on game sales?

- We believe account-based DRM is a much better way to go than the DRM’s we see out there today that are embedded in the games and can sometimes mess things up for the gamer. We feel that account-based DRM should be the distribution portal’s responsibility, not the publisher’s. We don’t believe in the concept of having multiple log-ins for different publishers.

* I have to note here that this question was asked before Ubisoft’s fiasco with their authentication servers.

Who decides when sales come about? Is it a deal you make with publishers before hand or how does that work?

- Sales are generated on an ad-hoc basis, typically. We’re happy to work with publishers when they want to have a sale to promote a certain game or games. We can also offer discounts at our discretion if we want to, for example, drive interest in a certain genre to build visibility for a specific upcoming title.

Do you think that, since specific games being marked down resulted in massive sales increases on both Steam and GamersGate, publishers might see those results as an argument for lowering initial game prices?

- Yes, I think many games are over priced today, and that price point could be much more flexible than most care to imagine. It’s so much easier to skew down the price with digital distribution – as compared to physical retail. if you see that the price point is too high and that more and more publishers are aware of this. We’ve also seen quite a few interesting phenomena whereas we have a higher price point, then lower the price over the weekend as a “good offer”, then skew it up again without having a drop in sales.

Considering that Vernor v. Autodesk is a fight between licensing verses ownership how do you think the First Sale Doctrine effects GamersGate? Are there any plans to allow people to transfer games from account to account (second hand sales)?

- We’ll it’s a very interesting question, perhaps the most interesting in the landscape of digital distribution. For us the ONLY reason to carry a good DRM would be the fact that it allows a gamer to resell their game to someone else, and to be able to track that. I think we will see these kind of features on the portals in the future, and of course this is something we want to solve for the gamers.

Now that you’ve added new US servers and added a chat feature, are there any other big plans in the works for GamersGate?

- We’re constantly working on improving the service. For example we just released the in-game chat overlay feature from PlayExpert, our reward program has been a great hit and we will continue to develop that. Within soon we will also release the news about our improved technology to deliver games. Since a year back we’ve taken the “client free” approach and with this upgrade we take it even one step further, but more about this later on. We have some great things in the work for 2010, but first and foremost it’s about deliver games anytime, anywhere to the right price to the gamers.

Overall some very interesting answers to our questions. I can’t wait to see what is in the future for Gamersgate.

Part 2 of the interview can be read here.