Will they Listen? Probably not.

I was just reading about Spore's recent crisis at Amazon.com. The much anticipated game was released to some fanfare. It seems however, that Spore implements the DRM scheme Securom. And take it from me, Securom causes more problems than it solves. I personally have had issues where Securom games refuse to work because I happened to be running the Daemon Tools virtual drive software.

For a game company to expect me to uninstall perfectly legitimate tools simply because those tools might be used for piracy, well let me just say that this is a slap in my face; an insult to my intelligence and my reputation. When I was first into computing, piracy was just as rampant as it is now, if not more so. First, there were "uncopyable disks" that could still be copied with the proper image software. The next reaction was to include a code wheel or code sheet, usually filled with esoteric symbols that correspond somewhere in the game. Usually red, or somehow otherwise protected from photocopying. This did not really work either, since code wheels could be taken apart, copied and reassembled, and you could get a copier to copy the red code sheets if the setting were just right. But the PC game market had a saving grace that both provided a means for them to produce more technically superior games AND reduce piracy. The CD-ROM. For about 6 years in the 90's, game manufacturers released many games on CD-ROM with absolutely no copy protection whatsoever.

The reason was, was that CD Burners were unheard of, and most hard drives were mostly no larger than 1GB. So copying a 600MB CD made little sense, and that is IF you could fit it on your hard drive. So at that point the only way to get a full game was to buy it. For a long time, copy protection was nowhere to be found. Then of course, came the advent of CD burners and the Internet. These two factors combined gave rise to a new era of piracy. So what did game makers do?

For a while, they did nothing. Burners were not that popular and most people accessed the internet through dial up and most people were unwilling to download entire cd images. But the threat had begun. Game manufacturers, taking a page from recent controversies from the RIAA about MP3 piracy, decided to implement DRM. They were just checks to see if the CD was in the drive, but it had begun. And so, with major piracy fears, game companies are more and more using the utterly draconian Securom protection. Never mind that it doesn't work on a large amount of computers for people who actually bought the title. So, more and more, users are turning to less-than-legitimate channels for these titles.

I had thought that computer software vendors would have learned a lesson long ago, a lesson that the RIAA is now just learning. There will always be pirates. The pirate has been an accepted stereotype in the computer industry since the early eighties. And these guys aren't going anywhere. Arrest them, confuse them, make everybody authenticate with thumbprints, they are going nowhere. This is the digital world now, and pirates are a fact of life. If you provide a digital product for sale, it will be acquired by a percentage of pirates. It is going to happen. Instead of trying to accuse every customer that buys your product of being a pirate, why don't you concentrate on the title. Make no mistake, you are calling every one of your customers a criminal, just like the RIAA. Oh you could be like them, track down a handful of pirates and sue them. Of course, this is futile as well, as there is no way you will catch even a fraction of the actual pirates, and you will just ruin a few dozen lives.

As if being treated like a criminal by default wasn't bad enough, the worst part is that the DRM functionality does not work on a growing number of systems. This is inexcusable, especially when the customer is being called a criminal even though he purchased the product. Now, the advantage of piracy is not only to make the game free, but for some people who bought the title, this is the only way for them to actually play it. And the activation part of securom? Three activations and then you have to call??? What happens if I feel nostalgic and want to load up Spore in 10 years? Are those activation servers still going to be functioning? I highly doubt it. Which means that your game will have a limited shelf life. As far as I'm concerned, the minute those activation servers are offline, every customer who purchased that product should get a refund. Because then it becomes impossible to install this title legitimately.

Software companies, I truly am sorry. Piracy is not going away. In my opinion using lesser draconian DRM measures like Safedisc is OK, but do what you can and then accept what happens afterword. If its a good game, it will sell. Sure some people will pirate it, but again, this has been going on for the last 20 years. One day, when these games requiring activation are forgotten because there are no more authentication servers, software companies will listen. But until then the gaming public seems to be speaking. Treat paying customers like they are criminals and they will, invariably become them. And you have no one to blame but yourselves.