BY ALEX BARNARD
Digital rights management, commonly referred to as DRM, is any technology that a digital content producer uses to set how the consumer may use their digital product. The purpose of DRM is to stop pirates from enjoying illegally obtained digital goods. DRM can range from mild security measures such as CD-Keys used to install a program for the first time, to the current extreme of a persistent online connection required to play a game.
The recently released Sim City features some of the most severe DRM available. Sim City requires users to constantly be connected to its publisher’s (Electronic Arts) servers through an online service called Origin. The game’s release led to a flooding of these servers and many users were unable to play the game they had just spent $60 on. Instead of playing, users were directed to a large queue, where users had to wait about 30 minutes in order to be allowed the luxury of launching the game they had purchased. Even after connecting and launching the game, users reported software crashing bugs due to the failure of EA’s online infrastructure. Still, many critics, who gave the game positive reviews after playing it on special servers before the game was even released to the general public, continue to ignore these issues.
Electronic Arts scrambled to get more servers online after experiencing a public relations nightmare: consumers couldn’t play and many demanded refunds from Electronic Arts. While a select few consumers received refunds, many others were dismissed, and some were banned from the game for even requesting a refund. When adding more servers wasn’t enough to make the game stable, they resorted to taking away features including the online leader boards, achievements, and ability to set the in-game simulation to “Cheetah” speed (fast). Of course this was only meant to allow more users to connect to game at once, however it essentially changed the way the game was played for the worse. If Sim City didn’t require this ludicrous DRM, the game’s launch would have went much smoother.
Sim City isn’t the only game to require users to constantly be connected to the internet. French game publisher, Ubisoft, used similar software on their PC versions of Assassins Creed 2, From Dust, and several others. This restrictive DRM didn’t seem as effective as Ubisoft had hoped; “cracked” copies of these games that could be played offline showed up on illegal file sharing networks within a week. Many PC gamers stopped buying Ubisoft PC games for this reason, and the DRM essentially backfired. The bottom line is, regardless of the DRM implemented to “protect” a digital product, users will find a way to remove it.
Sony Music Entertainment’s CD DRM of 2005 led to a host of problems and brought the negative aspects of DRM to the general public. Sony music CD’s were implemented with a rootkit that would install itself into a consumer’s computer automatically and could not be uninstalled. After discovering just how difficult it was to remove Sony’s rootkit, computer virus creators released a series of malicious trojans and worms that embedded themselves inside Sony’s rootkit and destroyed computer systems. While the he rootkit’s initial purpose was to stop consumers from making illegal copies of music on their computers, this instead rebounded by allowing computer viruses to attach themselves and destroy the computers of anyone who unknowingly installed the software. The discovery of this led to a series of lawsuits against Sony, causing them to recall many CDs and stop using the disappointing DRM.
The biggest debate over DRM is over how much it actually makes a difference in stopping piracy. Sony’s rootkit only stopped files from being copied on Windows, allowing anyone with another operating system to distribute its content freely. Ubisoft stopped requiring their PC games to have constant online connection after seeing their games continue to appear on file sharing sites and consumers became more enraged. DRM is inherently useless when it leads to a worse version of a product for consumers, who will often flock to the illegal version that functions better.
CD Projekt RED is a polish video game publisher and developer. Back in 2008 it released an online pc game store called gog.com (Good Old Games). This service originally provided classic PC games without any DRM for cheap prices, and has since grown exponentially. Recently, GOG started selling new games while still implementing a DRM-free policy, and despite what most publishers would make you believe, still turns quite a profit. CD Projekt’s last released game The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings showed just how pointless DRM can be in the grand scope of things. The game was released simultaneously at retail stores as on the GOG website. The retail copies of the game carried DRM while the online downloadable copy contained none. What was interesting to the market was that the first copy of the game released on illegal file sharing sites was not the DRM-free copy, but rather the retail version contained copyright protection before being removed by pirates.
The implementation of DRM is tricky, but there is no easy solution. On one hand releasing a product without any protection appears irresponsible and does absolutely nothing to stop people from releasing your content all over the internet for free. The only hope of removing this content is with the help of the FBI, and they don’t exactly have a good track record with keeping illegal copies off of the internet. On the other hand restrictive DRM is taking away the basic trust consumers once had for digital goods, and if left unchecked will kill off consumer desire. For now it is up for companies to find a balance between these two extremes, one that preferably treats consumers with respect, rather than the current mentality which makes the consumer almost guilty until proven innocent.
