> Instead of relying on a single instance of a product making money for years to come, focus more on new games
Sell it at a loss, make it up in volume? Right.
> or in-game content sales.
That's exactly what I DON'T want. Dragon Age has a guy in your camp with the "I have a quest!" marker above his head. Except it's a paid quest. And you can't make him go away. Die. And what, exactly, is supposed to prevent someone from pirating in-game content sales?
DRM sucks. But so do people. LGP is a small company fighting the good fight. They have clear evidence that piracy is taking place. There are only a few things they can do about it:
- Suck it up and take it. This is the route that most indie/small companies take. Estimates at the piracy rates from other indie devs seem to be about 80-90% [1][2][3].
- Build DRM like 2k games, using SecuROM and like technologies, that make users despise you. This option is expensive in both money and reputation.
- Build DRM like Steam or Stardock's Impulse, where the pain of DRM is offset by the community aspects and other perks. This option is expensive in money, but the reputation damage is minimal.
- Do something quick and simple. LGP seems to have implemented this option.
I posit[1] that DRM does reduce piracy. It cannot stop it, but it can reduce it. Most vendors try to come up with a 100% solution that turns out to be an 80% solution while screwing the legit user over. LGP has chosen to aim for an 80% solution, and I bet it will be just as effective as the other DRM schemes (which is to say, maybe 10-20% of people who would have pirated won't. It only has to pay for itself, remember!). The LGP solution isn't described in much detail, but if it works the way they claim (no internet connection, etc) it seems to fail open. How common is that? I really hope this works for them, because evidence that this works would be a great precedent.
Due to this scheme, when LGP says they're giving you a license for the game and not the game itself, they really mean it. They're giving you the benefits of a license-based scheme rather than just the usual punishments. This sort of scheme is exactly what I want the RIAA to implement; I want my collection in the cloud, and I want to be able to download and play the music on any computer I want, as many times as I want.
1) http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17350
2) http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/
3) http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/25809/TapFu_Developer_Cla...