The Tricky Issue of DRM

DRM is a tricky business when it comes to PC games. Ever since the advent of PC gaming, there have been those people who find ways around pirate protection and crack it for the world to have. No company likes losing money so they have all inevitably come up with different ways to combat the pirates. Hackers, being the resourceful people that they are, always find a way around DRM plans, much to the chagrin of the publishers and developers. Who is more to blame for the increasingly annoying DRM rolling out on PC games: the companies or the pirates?

Probably the worst case scenario of DRM was when Ubisoft rolled out its "always online" requirement for several of its PC games a few years ago, including Silent Hunter and Assassin's Creed II. The company promised stable servers and argued that the change would be best for both Ubisoft and gamers. When the servers crashed only a few days after release, the only people who could play these games, ironically, were the pirates. EA's pre-Origin online store system is another one to blame. Any time you bought a game through EA you got to download it once. If you wanted to download it again, you paid an additional $5 for the "right" to download it again. How crazy is this? Doesn't buying the original game give you the right to download it repeatedly in the first place?

On the flip side, you have The Witcher 2. CD Red Projekt, developers of the game, announced before release that the game would be sold online with NO DRM. Plenty of games come out each year without any DRM but much-anticipated ones like the Witcher 2would usually never dare to do such a thing, fearing a high rate of piracy. To make things even more crazy, the game is still PC exclusive. CD Red Projekt took a high risk but one that I feel paid off. Publishers like Ubisoft who try to punish average consumers for piracy of their games is almost childish and only causes more bad press for them in the long run.

Unfortunately, games are something that will always be pirated. While totally justified, sixty dollars is a lot for some people to drop for the latest game. The very easy setup of pirated games and the speed with which they are cracked and released make it a very tempting thing for those people with tight funds. As a favor to me, if you ever consider pirating a game, don't. Support the games you like with money and positive comments and you will be rewarded with more from those developers. If we keep pirating games on the PC, we may reach a future where no one even bothers to try.