DRM in games leads to piracy, says Good Old Games

Andre Yoskowitz
13 Apr 2011 20:42

Good Old Games, the retro games site has made some interesting comments regarding DRM (digital rights management) this week, claiming that instead of preventing piracy, it instead encourages it.
PR and marketing manager, Lukasz Kukawski went as far as to say DRM's effectiveness was "close to none."
Kukawski, via Bitgamer:

What I will say isn’t popular in the gaming industry, but in my opinion DRM drives people to pirate games rather than prevent them from doing that. Would you rather spend $50 on a game that requires installing malware on your system, or to stay online all the time and crashes every time the connection goes down, or would you rather download a cracked version without all that hassle?

The manager also says the DRM is so abusive that some gamers will buy the game to support the developers and then just use a cracked version to avoid all the restrictions:

I know people that buy an original copy of the game just so they don't feel guilty and then they will play a pirated version which is stripped of all DRM. That’s not how it should be. Let’s treat legitimate customers with respect and they will give that back.

Concluding that DRM is absolutely useless, Kukawski says:

If you see the news on gaming portals that a highly anticipated title has leaked before the release date, and you can download it from torrents without any copy protection because it has been already cracked, how can you possible believe that DRM works in any way to reduce piracy?