This isn’t going to be an Angry Internet Man rant. I don’t have the energy to just place a few hundred words of anger on this page. Instead I’m going to brainstorm and try to get to the bottom of this, and of course, I’m going to succeed where the corporations can’t or won’t. I’m going to solve the problems of Piracy and DRM. I’ve got a few ideas on the subject, things that will help combat this vicious cycle that’s just perpetuating both sides. Bear with me and I’m sure something insightful will come at the end of it.

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In the past Ubisoft have earned a name for themselves as being ones to blame the woes of the PC squarely at the feet of video game pirates. So it comes as no surprise to read that Far Cry 2 will be using the same DRM as found in Spore, Red Alert 3 and other recent EA titles. Ubisoft forum manager bukowski113 has posted the details of the DRM on the Far Cry 2 forums.

-You have 5 activations per machine on 3 separate PCs.

- The 3 machine activations can be concurrent, but you must have the disc in the drive to run the game

- Uninstalling the game “refunds” an activation. This process is called “revoke”, so as long as you complete proper uninstall you will be able to install the game an unlimited number of times on 3 systems.

- You can upgrade your computer as many time as you want (using our revoke system)

- Ubisoft is committed to the support of our games, and additional activations can be provided.

- Ubisoft is committed to the long term support of our games: you’ll always be able to play Far Cry 2.

While I obviously am not best pleased to see constrictive DRM methods used in this game, I will still be buying it. However I fear that this is going to lead to a similar backlash as to what happened with Spore with many people refusing to purchase the game due to the DRM. In fact I think that the DRM will do more harm than good and we will see more people pirate it as there will likely be a non-DRM version of the game on the usual suspects soon.

Furthermore EA CEO John Riccitiello has commented (as reported by Yahoo) on the use of DRM in EA games.

“We’re still working out the kinks. We implemented a form of DRM and it’s something that 99.8 percent of users wouldn’t notice. But for the other .2 percent, it became an issue and a number of them launched a cabal online to protest against it. I personally don’t like DRM. It interrupts the user experience. We would like to get around that. But there is this problem called piracy out there.”

We have a policy at work, if we see a product on the shelf that we wouldn’t buy ourselves then we remove it from display. It is something which should apply for a whole lot of other businesses too. If the CEO of EA doesn’t like DRM then why of why would he insist on it being implemented in his games? He may have a point that only a minority of people will actually be impacted greatly by DRM, but even this is too much. It is more the fact that people shouldn’t be affected by the actions of the pirates. Hell I already know that people go out and pirate non-DRM versions of games that have it. These are people that had pre-orders in place or were just waiting for the game to be released before purchasing it. Due to the DRM they went and pirated it.

The game companies should realise that DRM is doing more harm than good and is contributing to the (overblown) problem of piracy on the PC.

Those 2D Boys behind World of Goo have posted an update regarding their no DRM experiment with their game.

so far, the experiment is going well. we’ve sent the full unprotected game out to the few thousand people who pre-ordered it before this past monday and we haven’t yet found the game on any torrent sites.

They do request that you get in touch with them if see any illegal copies on the internet.

The crucial thing is though that currently the game has only gone out to people who pre-ordered the game. These are people who were willing to pay the money for the game, and as such are less likely to go out spreading the game illegally. It must also be noted that the game hasn’t been released properly yet and hasn’t been covered madly in every magazine out there. No, it has just been me and a few other sites that have been doing that.

The true test will be what happens when the popularity of Goo explodes into a big world-wide thing. If piracy remains a small issue then, well 2D Boy will have proved in some small way that by creating a great game with no-DRM that piracy can be fought.

Here is to 2D Boy for having created a master-piece of a game.

This time though they are talking about EndWar. Ubisoft Shanghai creative director Michael de Plater told Videogaming 247 that they aren’t releasing the PC version of the game at the same time as the console version due to rampant PC piracy.

“To be honest, if PC wasn’t pirated to hell and back, there’d probably be a PC version coming out the same day as the other two.”

“But at the moment, if you release the PC version, essentially what you’re doing is letting people have a free version that they rip off instead of a purchased version. Piracy’s basically killing PC.”

I don’t want to take the same line that I did when tackling Cliffy B’s piracy comments so I will simply link to what John Walker wrote over on Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

John takes the view that unless we get hard evidence regarding the impact of piracy on sales of PC games then these comments are just rumour-mongering and doing untold damage to the reputation of the PC. Damn right, tell us the truth devs and stop tarnishing the image of the PC.

The editor for patching service GameShadow, Tom Jubert has blogged on Edge Online about how Cevat Yerli claims that Crysis was pirated at a ratio of 1 genuine copy to 15 illegal copies are overblown.

Jubert looks at GameShadow figures show that in the UK the ratio of legal to illegal copies is closer to 7:3 while in the US the figure is around 5:1. While Jubert admits that while in places in Asia and the CIS may see higher levels of piracy than in Western regions, those who pirate these games are unlikely to actually buy the games anyway.

This is an interesting an insightful piece, check it out here.

I would just like to say in the precursor to this that I in no way support piracy in any form at all for any reasons. Secondly this can be seen as a bit of a follow up to Cliff Harris’ (of Positech) piece called ‘Talking to Pirates.’ Yes I am aware that many of the issues I raise here are only present because of piracy, but if you can look past that, then enjoy.

Everyone is negative about piracy, especially when it comes to piracy on the PC. We have developers all over the place claiming that due to piracy they have had to spread into console development, that because of the potential lost sales on the PC they see no point in releasing games on it anymore. Others claim that in their efforts to combat piracy they are introducing ever tougher and more stringent methods of DRM. The way I see is that developers should stop looking at piracy like this, they should follow the example set by Cliffski (Cliff Harris) and attempt to communicate with pirates to see why they pirate.

They should then follow Cliffski again and change how they operate so as to encourage pirates to start purchasing their games again. I see many people comment that many of the EA Sports titles that appear on the PC are shoddy ports of the PS2 game, not a game that has been tailor made, or even ported with the PC audience in mind. If EA Sports were to realise that by making their PC versions of their games, well actually worth splashing hard earned cash out on then maybe the pirates will have done something good.

Perhaps this has already happened with regards to the EA Sports games, recently Peter Moore revealed that EA Sports titles were being reworked to take advantage of what the PC offers. It is possible that this abrupt change in philosophy by EA Sports occurred because they want to make their games good enough that some people may stop pirating their games, and instead buy them.

Cliffski revealed that following his exploration of the world of piracy that he was going to remove DRM from his games. I envisage a day when developers will cut away all forms of DRM and treat us like respectable human beings. Perhaps it will be due to people pirating games to get away from the DMR and those people who download no-CD-cracks that developers realise that this is damaging their reputation, and indeed sales. For this reason pirates and those people who crack DRM on games should be supported by us. If they continue as they are we will eventually come to a position where we can play games without fear of registering our games via text, email and phone before having to download the second half of the game before we can play, and can only play on one PC as we can only activate it once.

Perhaps too we will see games prices fall to equal levels worldwide and be in a position to buy any game, anywhere in the world we want. If companies like Ubisoft see people pirating their games more heavily in the UK than in the US they will realise that they should make their games available worldwide on Steam, and for a fair price to all. As such we should support these pirates so as to further provide evidence to these companies that by changing their actions they will create a world where people won’t pirate due to the injustice of it all.

In closing then constant reader, piracy is something we should support as one day it will have positive benefits for us all. I fully expect companies to change the way they operate so as to give people a reason to buy their games, not provide us with second-rate turd that is so full of DRM we can’t even play it, that is if we can even get it at a fair price in our own countries. Piracy will have a positive effect on the games industry, it is the only thing that will make companies sit up and listen to our rightful complaints.

I am a big fan of the Football Manager games and it was a pleasure to recently do a little Q&A with two of the biggest figures in the series, Marc Duffy (MD) and Miles Jacobson (MJ). With chatter about topics as varied as Football Manager Live, E3 and piracy this is a must read for anyone interested in the Football Manager series and in the anti-piracy debate. Check it all out after the jump!

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Peter Moore the head of EA Sports has revealed that piracy is at the heart of the reasoning for cutting back on EA Sports titles, specifically Madden 09, being released on the PC. In an interview with Game Daily he had this to say.

Piracy’s a big issue on the PC. I can’t turn a blind eye to the fact that it’s very difficult for us…and we lose money making a game. At some point, I have an obligation not to bring out products that lose money.

Which is quite a crap excuse really, if EA used better methods of prevent Day 0 piracy then the money lost from pirates would be much much less. They just have to invest money in preventing the games getting leaked before release to cut down on a large number of the pirated games.

Finally I don’t think just churning out the same game with updated team sheets and a few minor improvements each year endears EA Sports titles well to PC gamers.

Piracy is not just a consumer problem, developers have to accept that their actions are causing and leading to people pirating games.

In an interview with PC Play CryTek boss Cevat Yerli has claimed that due to PC piracy the company behind Far Cry and Crysis won’t be making any new PC Exclusive titles.

We are suffering currently from the huge piracy that is encompassing Crysis. We seem to lead the charts in piracy by a large margin, a chart leading that is not desirable. I believe that’s the core problem of PC Gaming, piracy. To the degree PC Gamers that pirate games inherently destroy the platform. Similar games on consoles sell factors of 4-5 more. It was a big lesson for us and I believe we wont have PC exclusives as we did with Crysis in future. We are going to support PC, but not exclusive anymore.

Which is a sign that piracy really is having a big factor on the PC as a gaming platform. But I am not sure what CryTek expected from a game boasting pretty high system specs. I am not condoning piracy but I can see that many people are going to have pirated because they won’t be sure that it will run on their PC.

As ever the piracy issue leads back to at times to the PC being a confusing platform for gamers due to all the different hardware combinations. Time then for the developers to start making games which are playable on the majority of PCs!

It seems my article on piracy has caused some good debate to emerge over on the halflife2.net forums. Really quite interesting to read it, find the debate here.