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Comment by Jyaif | Hacker News Reader

This is going to cost them tens of millions of loss in sales.

Not really. Doom has enough of a brand name that the average person probably isn't going to say, "Great, now that I know a DRM-free version exists, I will pirate it!"

More likely, someone like me would just say, "Sweet! Now if I buy the game, I can get at a version that won't slow down my performance with all of the obnoxious DRM crap running in the background!"

This is part of why I quit PC gaming and took the plunge to Linux. It seems like every PC game recently requires a social login with its own launcher and a dedicated DRM rootkit. And the privacy policies for all of this stuff are very "permissive." After a certain point you realize you aren't in control of your own computer.

At least with consoles you _know_ going in that the manufacturer has every executable on lockdown. But I couldn't stomach _not knowing_ if some poorly coded DRM or RGB control service was opening up my private files to remote code execution[1].

[1]: https://twitter.com/gsuberland/status/1175570500292108289

Agreed. I gave up when everyone demanded that I install Steam.

Please don't say PC when you mean Windows. Playing games on a Linux PC is still PC gaming.

(I play games on a Linux PC myself.)

It's gaming in the sense that racing in the Special Olympics is still racing. Sure, but for the purposes of the marketplace it may as well not exist unless you're talking about Linux+Android gaming.

There are other valid perspectives than the marketplace's.

Not if the market's is also the colloquial definition.

It was my bad calling it "PC gaming." You're misinformed on this. Check out protondb.com - by opting into the Steam beta in Linux you can play Windows games, oftentimes with the same or better driver performance than in Windows. And sometimes not. But to liken it to the "Special Olympics" is a bit cruel and ignorant.

Such a shame that Valve isn't pushing SteamOS harder (unless I'm missing something?) because they are in the best position to loosen Microsoft's stranglehold, not only in terms of the Windows platform but also controller support. Even when games do run on other platforms, they often only natively support Xbox-style controllers. I don't think this is an accident.

I think it’s fair to say that you have a very naive view of the average human. I‘ll stick with the real data on piracy rates.

I think your own view that every game pirated is a lost sale is equally naive, so, to each his own.

I certainly don't believe this, but I doubt that the "I only pirate games to try them before buying" crowd is terribly large either. even fewer people are going to actually buy the game first and then download a pirated .exe to replace the original.

That group is not large but they weren't buyers to start with so they aren't counted as lost sales.

If this game is as good as the previous instalment in the series it won't make a difference. There are several types of players, the ones who buy games on launch day, those will still buy. The ones who wait for sales, those will still buy it, the pirates who try and then buy and those who only play cracked games. Only the latter group won't be buying the game and they weren't going to in the first place.

This may actually bring them additional millions in steam sales from additional exposure and playerbase.

A good number of people will buy this on Steam, which is a bigger lock-in than any other DRM.

Based on how many games using only the in-built DRM in Steam are cracked I'd guess that "lock-in" is really not that big of an issue, if at all. Other DRMs are far more invasive than the Steam DRM.

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