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Comment by hellbanner | Hacker News Reader

You're exactly right. However, back when the NES came out, duplication of an NES rom was beyond the average consumer. Now, say you release a DRM free game (that will be available regardless of internet connection, server uptime etc) -- how do you monetize it when fans will install free copies?

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There's a reason gog.com is making money. Going DRM-free doesn't harm your business, it just respects the users.

If people like a game, they will pay for it as long as you don't have some kind of annoying obstacle preventing them from doing so.

edit: DRM isn't even really a good counter to piracy for the most part. It will be cracked sooner or later (sometimes before the game is even officially released) and the people who wish to pirate it will do so.

DRM is largely about protecting the new-release window where a supermajority of AAA game/video sales happen. It doesn't have to be effective for all time -- if it delays the first crack until release plus two weeks then it's still worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in marginal sales.

It's less effective at even that much than it could be, e.g. any game released on Steam can be cracked in a largely homogeneous fashion.

(Which is exactly the value point I'd be working to improve if I was working at Steam and trying to convince more titles to release there.)

Steam has cultivated a culture of paying for games, because it's easier than pirating, which is easier than buying physical copies. Given their success, I don't think they need to change anything, especially if it makes anything harder for the end-user; plus its bedrock is smaller, more indie titles who can't afford to implement DRM anyway — so the platform treats them very well.

* http://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/1j4lj3/how_doesdid_st...

Steam is hugely important in this regard because it shows how catastrophically wrong the old guard in games, video, music, and other media are. By default, people accept that paying for things is right. The challenge is to make paying for things easier than not, and to not actively sabotage the social relationship that makes customers prefer paying for things to pirating them. Steam has actually done a reasonable job at that: by contrast, DRM and MPAA/RIAA-style tactics are, to understate, recent-severe-head-wound-level dumb business decisions; they say to customers "our relationship with you is fundamentally antagonistic." Once that social message has been sent and supremely customer-hostile services like Ultraviolet (and worse earlier systems) established, piracy becomes massively attractive and the MPAA/RIAA-style cartels have cut off the ability to have a reasonable conversation about it.

I agree with this - low friction is what makes Steam successful. (Personally I stick with HumbleBundle as the Steam client has traditionally sucked ram).

Steam lets players join multiplayer games with their friends -- seamlessly merging a friend list with game servers across all games. That's a strong incentive to use Steam.

So what about other forms of content without online multiplayer like say, TV shows?

Those people were never going to buy anyway. There (hopefully) are enough people who want good games and are sick of the freemium garbage, that they'll pay for a game.

I.e., 100k paid sales and 10M "unauthorized copies" is still enough for an indie dev to make a living.

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