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Comment by PaulHoule | Hacker News Reader

For one thing, DRM for games actually works.

To a certain extent, ars has an article about "issues" with DRM in video games.

>One of the biggest arguments against anti-piracy checks built into video games (commonly known as "digital rights management," or DRM) is that they punish paying customers with stuttering, loading times, and other detractive gameplay issues. While leading DRM vendor Denuvo has long claimed that its tools don't hamper video games, the stats keep piling up to suggest otherwise.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/12/evidence-continues-to...

Almost all of it gets cracked. The key is to make buying it and providing the content so much more convenient compared to stealing it that people just don't bother.

DRM only needs to work well enough that people can't copy and paste it to their friends. Most games have online multiplayer modes now that can endlessly check for a valid copy from a central server though.

Isn't console game piracy effectively dead as of the current generation (Xbox One, PlayStation 4, etc.)?

Multiple root access hacks were created for the PS4, I assume some used it to pirate. Console piracy is general has effectively always been rarer than on PC, presumably due to the higher technical barrier. Dragging a cracked .exe into a directory is a lot harder than installing some sort of Homebrew on your console.

PS4 and Switch both have kernel level hacks which have allowed folks to boot pirated copies of games.

But for the most part, I'd say that yeah priacy is effectively dead. The ease of hacking the consoles and running pirated games isn't there (IMO) and thus the percentage of users who are doing it is very small. Much more an enthusiast community moreso than a community of pirates who want to play games.

This could all change, but I don't think that the piracy scene for the newest generation is anywhere close to the last two.

Hell, I remember flashing the firmware on my xbox 360 disk drive within the first year.

Or soldering a modchip into my OG Xbox. RIP that console, best console ever.

For some developers (iD /Bethesda for example) only need DRM to work for the first few of the games lifespan so if you come up with something agressive enough to keep its secrets for a while then it doesn't matter if it gets cracked.

Almost all of it eventually gets cracked. But these days Denuvo is enough to prevent the game from going up within a week or two, which is when a majority of sales are.

Console piracy is effectively dead.

I'm not saying that DRM is a large reason that movies/TV are behind, but I don't think this is a good counterargument.

Temporarily. Denuvo is incredibly effective, but it still gets cracked eventually. But, no piracy for 1-9 months in many cases is definitely an improvement.

Seems like multiplayer + freemium model is the ultimate "DRM".

I wonder if there are any popular private or reverse engineered League of Legends or Fortnite servers. These are also the most profitable games in the world.

I have to wonder if a game like World of Warcraft, if it were released in 2019, would even consider a monthly subscription given what it has to compete against these days. I would assume private servers for WoW made sense because people wanted to dodge $15/mo.

My experience with private servers for WoW is that they offer a very different gameplay experience than retail World of Warcraft, which is their primary draw. The lack of a subscription fee is a nice side bonus.

People do a lot of gaming on consoles. I know I do. There is piracy there but it is certainly not overwhelming.

In the case of music and video it seems that DRM is 100% ineffective, and particularly once the content is cracked it can be moved entirely outside the DRM system. In the case of games you still need a runtime environment which is at least somewhat proprietary.

Both music and movies have been devalued to a $10 month "all you can eat" scenario which has nowhere near the revenue potential of a $100 a month cable subscription or buying Blu-Ray at $20 a pop.

4k content still has not been cracked so DRM seems to be working this generation.

Not true, you can rip 4K BluRays with the right drive.

DRM is anti-consumer in a huge amount of ways that have nothing to do with the mere prevention of unauthorized copying. To describe any form of DRM as 'working' is charitable to say the least, and sophisticated "gamers" are highly aware of this.

It does? I thought almost every game is available a few days after launch?

I say this as an avid PC gamer myself, but PC gaming is a niche. The vast majority of games are bought and played on mobile and consoles, and those are DRM by nature.

Even on PC, more games are going towards always online/multiplayer and lootbox/cosmetic/etc., which are also DRM by nature.

Measured by revenue, PC gaming is about a quarter of the market, same as all consoles. Mobile makes up the other half. None of these are niches.

Only in that it doesn't fundamentally have an analog hole which makes attempting it certifiably insane.

Since there is no other word for requesting that something be readable by the consumer and not readable by the consumer at the same time.

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