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Comment by ajuc | Hacker News Reader

Talk by CD Projekt's CEO about not using DRM, and dealing with piracy: https://kotaku.com/some-real-talk-on-piracy-from-a-witcher-3...

Their approach always made so much more sense to me.

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I assume, since most revenue of major established game franchises is actually made in the first month, that it's probably worth it to add the DRM.

If you can delay your game getting cracked for a few weeks by using some obscure complex DRM, you've already recouped most of your investment and are in the clear.

Single player (blockbuster) games are probably one of the few industries where I would say piracy does matter. A pirate is not always a buyer, but gamers are notorious for not paying if they can. But they often will if they can't.

Not that I approve of DRM, but I understand why companies are massively worried about it -- they literally have billions of dollars riding on that one launch weekend.

That said, they should probably consider removing the DRM after a few months, or replacing it with something less complex (and resource intensive).

>A pirate is not always a buyer, but gamers are notorious for not paying if they can. But they often will if they can't.

[Citation needed]

This so much. Especially since we know from iTunes that people DO pay for content if the can. The burden of proof lies with the proponents of DRM!

People don't pay for content, they pay for convenience. When streaming was still non-existent, and if you weren't a college or high school kid, buying an album on iTunes was less hassle than torrenting it (especially for the non-technically inclined). Now that there's Spotify et al, iTunes sales have massively slumped.

The same goes for games: Steam killed a big chunk of piracy, as having to crack the game and crack again after each update (not to mention no achievements and no official multiplayer) is less of an user experience than just using Steam. However, if as in this case using the Steam version comes with a 40% performance cost... then yeah, piracy gets attractive again.

> The burden of proof lies with the proponents of DRM!

That seems like a just world fallacy. The decision is made based on the perceived risk/reward by the publisher before you the consumer ever have a role to play. If they have internally decided this is "worth it", then it is _to them_.

If you want to correct their internal model of a customer, the one where it is worthwhile to use DRM, then the burden lies on you. Not that I am suggesting you can but, theirs is the incumbent position, yours is the challenger.

If you really don't like the DRM policy, don't pirate the game either. Pirating solves your problem (the DRM) but it doesn't correct their model of you. Lots of active pirates are still seen as fans of the game and potentially customers. They still see an "opportunity to convert" if they can just get stronger DRM out the door for the next title.

Saying "people do pay for content if they can" is seeing it from your perspective. To change their minds you have to see it from their perspective. Even if you feel it is objectively untrue, their perspective is that piracy is lost revenue and DRM reduces that loss.

That was not my point, and proponents of DRM are not necessarily only the people selling products.

"Investigating Factors Influencing Game Piracy in the eSports Settings of South Korea"[0] shows that behavioural intention was the result of social norms and attitude; for example if people who had friends or spouses who viewed piracy favorably they too were more likely to pirate themselves.

[0] http://digitalrepository.unm.edu/educ_hess_etds/9/

I pirated the Witcher 3 originally, but it was so good I ended up buying it just to support the company. Step one in stopping piracy is to make something actually worth paying for.

The thing is that what you believe is worth paying for is proportional to the ease to find pirated content.

In argentina, people pay netflix and share accounts between friends, and some play hbo go for GoT, but thats it. In the U.S., its very rate to see pirated TV.

A sandwich might be worth 5 dollars to you, but if there are free sandwiches next to it, you will think "I would pay it if it were worth it"

I don't think it's that simple. In Poland in early 90s everybody pirated everything. I'm not overstating it. Only businesses bought legal software, everybody else pirated. Piracy was only a crime since 1992 IIRC.

And it wasn't easy - you had to copy dozens of floppy disks, often people copied each disk 2 times, because out of 20 floppies one is bound to have read errors, if not more. It took ages.

But the prices were crazy - a game costed 60-120 PLN and people earned like 700 PLN per month.

Then piracy got much easier thanks to CD recorders and internet - but it changed nothing, because you can't go over 100% :)

Since that time piracy only got easier thanks to broadband, dvd-writers, usb pendrives, ssds, yet legal computer market in Poland increased many times and piracy is in decline. Mostly because of increasing salaries, and extras included with legal copies.

Again, talking about piracy and fairness should be a moot argument. Something being expensive doesnt give you the right to consume something without the permission of the one who made it.

Think of this in terms of source code. If you wanted the source code for facebook, facebook might sell it to you (for billions ofc), but you cant pay for it. That doesnt give you the right to steal it.

Its just too easy to do. Its a basic microeconomics argument. But piracy has not only risks, but costs, and hence it does allow the product to be sold at a higher price. It constricts supply.

> Something being expensive doesnt give you the right to consume something without the permission of the one who made it.

Of course it doesn't (except in some special cases, but that's another debate, and doesn't concern games - see life saving drugs for example).

But the discussion was about DRM and whether they work - IMHO they don't, because the main reason behind piracy isn't accessibility, but too high (price/perceived value). So - limiting accessibility of piracy isn't going to stop it.

Also it would have worked by now if it worked at all.

Also also :) EU did a study in 2013 which found that piracy doesn't really hurt sales, because most people who pirated X and haven't bought it later - wouldn't have bought it anyway. https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2017/09/displacement_s...

Im damn sure it works because if piracy were not punished, popcorn time would swallow the entire consumer market, much like it has in countries like Argentina and the netherlands. The barrier of installing a VPN adds an expense higher than paying for netflix, making it unappealing.

> EU did a study in 2013 which found that piracy doesn't really hurt sales, because most people who pirated X and haven't bought it later - wouldn't have bought it anyway.

I haven't read that paper, but from an economic standpoint, this is still not enough to prove what people would have bought if they had access to piracy. Again, look at popcornTime. If people were fined in Argentina like they are in the US, I assure you netflix would surge in subscriptions.

I have no idea what popcorn time is, and there are next to no fines for piracy in my country. Well, in theory there are, but in practice there aren't.

In Australia, certain content is banned, so pirating or acquiring it via other means is nececery.

I also want to point out another problem in a lot of countries is bandwidth. Limits of 20GB is not unheard-off. But GTA5, 65GB. So easier to copy a couple of rar files on usb and sneakernet it around.

I wouldn't call watching TV a necessity, but sure, no doubt that restricted access causes piracy.

Its fundamentally a problem of business model. You can't charge differential pricing based on what the customer is willing or able to do, so one way or another you compromise revenue, or content, or something else.

Naturally as this has progressed with time, the shows themselves started adding ads within the show to prevent things like this.

They seem to be nice now, but during Witcher 2 release they had heavy DRM issues and threatened to go after pirates (while many of pirates were just people who wanted to play the game they bought).

Huh? I bought The Witcher 2 on release day from GOG with no DRM.

Physical copies in some countries had DRM because of publisher. There were problems, and they reacted to that poorly (threathening players who pirated). They apologised later.

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