PC PC GAMES

Great article over at EuroGamer about Piracy, real and imagined damages and the a special look at UBI and the damage they have caused by insisting on punishing customers. It looks like customers did vote with their wallets and my assesment of “Driver: SF” and it’s lack of sales wasn’t far from the truth.

Notable quotes:

“Ubisoft told me that their PC game sales are down 90 per cent…”

“[There's] no public data to suggest that DRM works,” says Pachter, “but the fact that more companies are imposing it strongly suggests that they believe it works.”

“Consumers are right to complain about DRM, since it impacts both legitimate and illegitimate users,” reckons Pachter. “The problem is that the companies think it limits piracy, and an industrious and determined hacker can work around DRM, while a normal, legitimate user must deal with a hassle. I’m not sure where to come down on this, as I respect the companies’ right to protect their intellectual property, while acknowledging the legitimate consumer’s complaint about the problems created with DRM.”

“There’s good DRM and what we call bad DRM,” explains Svensson. “There’s a huge breadth of parameters and technologies available, and no one technology is bad – it’s the implementation that can be bad, the communication around the implementation that can be bad. What we try and do – and we haven’t always been successful in this – is never hurt the legitimate user. If the legitimate user is ever going to have a more negative experience than a pirate, you’ve done something wrong.

Of utmost importance, says Svensson, is “being upfront with fans”. And he himself has been on the receiving end of fan backlash before.

“If I were a console evangelist I’d totally play up piracy on the PC,” Ployhar says. “But I have to stop and wonder how in the world they can continue to make that argument when a few years from now most games are likely going to be free-to-play anyway.