The DRM Conundrum

Well, it seems big GabeN over at Valve has made some waves in recent days talking about his stance on DRM. Gabe always offers some great talking points! Mr. Newell stands with most gamers' saying that DRM is "dumb." He says that the focus should be to add value to a product, not take it away.

All this comes to light as the hotly anticipated GTA 4 launches on the PC. GTA 4, as reported before, uses the controversial SecuROM copy protection software. However, Rockstar has allowed users to have unlimited machine activations so gamers don't have to worry how many times they can uninstall their game.

To me, this all seems kind of rediculous. DRM is something that should be on the forefront of the PC Gaming Aliance's agenda. Something along the lines of what Stardock's Gamer's Bill of Rights looked like. Since the dawn of the platform, PC Gamers have enjoyed backwards compatability (when Windows will allow it) and could play games 10 or more years old. DRM schemes on SPORE and Mass Effect only stymie the consumers ability to use their product.

Why wouldn't a company allow for unlimited installs? If you have online activation it really doesnt matter. I mean, how successful was EA's attempt to control their digital rights? Well, SPORE was on a torrent days before its official North American release. It's not the average consumer EA needs to worry about. Just pulling numbers out of my ass, I'd say that 99.99% of consumers are not taking their copy of "insert game here", cracking the DRM and puting it up on a torrent for people to download. Whoever these people are, get their hands on it before hand. Using draconian DRM only isolates the gaming public, and shows that EA is on a trend to kill the PC as a platform.

I've never had any problems with DRM before. It's never killed my computer disabled a game. I think it's within a developers rights to try to protect their investments, but not when you infringe on a consumers right to use a product/service thats been paid for. There has to be some middle ground both developers and consumers can agree on. I think we will see this relationship grow with independant devs such as Valve, Id Software, Stardock because they only answer to themselves. Bigger firms such as Microsoft and EA have shareholders and bottomlines to worry about. If the consumer is unhappy with a PC game, so be it. You can't return open box PC games to most retail stores. Either way "insert large corporate developer here" gets your money and doesn't have to give it back. I feel that independant devs are more intouch with their player base and usually keep them in mind when creating games, and for the most part are sympathetic to the gripes and complaints of their community.

As for now, Rockstar's use of SecuROM is just fine with me. If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.