Stardock Working on User-Friendly DRM Package for 3rd Parties

[DoctorFinger]

DRM (digital rights management) is one of the real hot button issues in the gaming industry right now. From the Spore brouhaha to developers hanging poor sales of their games on bittorrent hubs. Then there's Michigan-based Stardock. With their 4X title Sins of a Solar Empire they managed to buck the conventional wisdom. They released a DRM-free title, and still managed to maintain enough sales to more than float the game's development.

Now, according to CEO Brad Wardell, some of the movers and shakers in the industry have approached Stardock about creating a DRM package that would protect their investment while at the same time pleasing gamers who actually do buy the game.

Wardell said, "While Stardock doesn't put copy protection on its retail games, the fact is that most publishers are never going to agree to do that.
"So the publishers are telling us, 'Put your money where your mouth is. Why don't you guys develop something that you think is suitable that would protect our IP, but would be more acceptable to users?'
"We're investigating what would make users happy to protect their needs, but also provide some security for the publishers. ... We're actually developing a technology that would do that."
--
He did say that one goal of Stardock's security solution would be when a consumer buys a PC game, that game, or technically the license to play it, belongs to the consumer. Often, DRM methods only allow a certain amount of installs on a certain amount of machines. "We want that license to be yours, not per machine. ... It's not your machine buying the game. It's you."

This attitude - that gamers who buy the game shouldn't be undully burdened by the copy protection on a game - is one of the tenets of Stardock's 'Gamer's Bill of Rights', and as a gamer all I can say is: Bravo. It makes no sense that consumers who actually buy the product should be more burdened than the ones who pirate the game. It still remains to be seen if this consumer friendly copy protection will ever find it's way into other publishers' products, but the fact that they're at least investigating the possibility is a positive for gamers.

Source - Edge-Online.

[Telefrog]

Brad Wardell is my man-crush.

[boratika]

This news story, this is what I like to call "good news"*

Definitely intrigued to see how they tackle the issue.


*should probably be accompanied by picture of Hubert Farnsworth.

[President Fred]

Yeah this is pretty great. I wonder what they will come up with. So far I have been pretty happy with the steam method, but it's always good to have alternatives.

[GigaFuzz]

Originally Posted by President Fred

Yeah this is pretty great. I wonder what they will come up with. So far I have been pretty happy with the steam method, but it's always good to have alternatives.

Steam does it pretty well, and is one of my preferred methods, but it has major downsides when you lose an internet connection. We recently had a weekend-long LAN party, and we lost connection on the Sunday. Some people couldn't get Steam working in offline mode, which ruled out a number of multiplayer games.

[H.Bogard]

I live in a city where pirated DVD stores are all over the place that have shitloads of popular and niche games, and I have never seen a single copy of Galactic Civ 2 or Sins of a Solar Empire in ANY ONE of them... ever.

[Ancalagon]

"So the publishers are telling us, 'Put your money where your mouth is. Why don't you guys develop something that you think is suitable that would protect our IP, but would be more acceptable to users?'

They already have put their money where their mouth is - they released some of their biggest titles without any DRM at all.

[Johan]

As a pessimist, let me just say that this could potentially be a very bad thing. They are being asked, to some degree, to put up or shut up. If they fail, DRM will have lost one of its major opponents.

[DangerousDaze]

I can't help feeling that this is doomed to failure. Stardock's reputation is built on trust, not just a "nicer" form of DRM. Anything they develop will be cracked, so they'll tighten it up further and further until they'll be in the same shit pool that the rest of DRM is in.

[Raen]

Originally Posted by Johan

As a pessimist, let me just say that this could potentially be a very bad thing. They are being asked, to some degree, to put up or shut up. If they fail, DRM will have lost one of its major opponents.

I dunno. I think they'd take a very Benjamin Franklin approach to failure from what I've read of their thinking etc...

[Morangie]

Originally Posted by Johan

As a pessimist, let me just say that this could potentially be a very bad thing. They are being asked, to some degree, to put up or shut up. If they fail, DRM will have lost one of its major opponents.

Not really, its more win-win for Stardock. If they can make a DRM system that doesn't penalize customers then great, though it will be cracked just as quickly as all the rest. If they cannot make user friendly DRM then they just say "We tried, but it isn't possible. DRM always screws over the legimate customer more than it stops piracy".

The worst outcome is that they'll just keep on saying what they have for years, that DRM is always more of a problem than a solution.

[bean]

Originally Posted by DangerousDaze

I can't help feeling that this is doomed to failure. Stardock's reputation is built on trust, not just a "nicer" form of DRM. Anything they develop will be cracked, so they'll tighten it up further and further until they'll be in the same shit pool that the rest of DRM is in.

Right. For instance, Spore has obnoxious DRM that many of us resented and thus cost Firaxis some sales, but there were tons of news stories about how it was being pirated anyway.

So if even really restrictive and predatory DRM is unsuccessful, how is Stardock going to be successful while also respecting legitimate consumers?

They could go the Steam route, of course, but why would publishers ask them to create "DRM" that is already existent?

[c0m3d14n]

nice to hear them try, i recently did not buy far cry 2 because of their drm

but an interesting point, which wasnt obvious, to me at least, that was brought up in one of the many negative reviews for fc2 on amazon that i read, was, that drm isnt really targeted against pirating of games, because it obviously fails, its targeted against reselling of the game...

[rein]

Originally Posted by DangerousDaze

I can't help feeling that this is doomed to failure. Stardock's reputation is built on trust, not just a "nicer" form of DRM. Anything they develop will be cracked, so they'll tighten it up further and further until they'll be in the same shit pool that the rest of DRM is in.

Stardocks stance has always been anti-stupid DRM and copy protection, not anti DRM and copy protection.

How long has Stardock been working on a DRM solution? I'm curious if it is about the same time they were doing all of the surveys regarding piracy and DRM. Is this the result of the information they gathered during the surveys? Or, was the information for the surveys being gathered for creating a DRM solution? It doesn't matter much, just curious if this is a result of the surveys and they found a solution that will appease both sides of the DRM dilemma.

As you said though, I hope by creating a DRM solution they do not lose sight of their consumer friendly approach and tighten things further and further to satisfy publishers.

[Johan]

Originally Posted by rein

Stardocks stance has always been anti-stupid DRM and copy protection, not anti DRM and copy protection.

Which is why this is such a risk. They could very well release a DRM method that is seen as stupid by consumers/gamers, or that just doesn't work.

PC games should just go Steam and be done with it. Forget disk-based releases for the PC.

[DangerousDaze]

Their major games have no copy protection mechanisms at all but the game must be registered to a an email address. The same is true for their non-game products.

Stardock's rationale is that if they offer enough ongoing compelling content that can only be used with a registered version of that product then that should be enough to keep people honest. They figure that this is probably acceptable to most; it's certainly acceptable to me because I've been licensing Object Desktop from them for nine years now!

[rein]

Originally Posted by Johan

Which is why this is such a risk. They could very well release a DRM method that is seen as stupid by consumers/gamers, or that just doesn't work.

PC games should just go Steam and be done with it. Forget disk-based releases for the PC.

I absolutely agree that it is risky for Stardock to become a provider of DRM and copy protection since they have the reputation of being the "good guys" when it comes to the issue. I may have misunderstood DD, but I think some people are under the impression that Stardock is anti DRM. They are not, they have said before that they are not anti DRM, they are anti stupid DRM

Heck, I already have doubts creeping in my mind of what all of those surveys were really about.

Originally Posted by DangerousDaze

Their major games have no copy protection mechanisms at all but the game must be registered to a an email address. The same is true for their non-game products.

Stardock's rationale is that if they offer enough ongoing compelling content that can only be used with a registered version of that product then that should be enough to keep people honest. They figure that this is probably acceptable to most; it's certainly acceptable to me because I've been licensing Object Desktop from them for nine years now!

I know that Stardock does not incorporate DRM in their games, but that doesn't mean that they are anti DRM. As I said above, it was them that said they were not anti DRM, just anti stupid DRM. It makes me wonder if they will incorporate their DRM scheme into their own product or if they will continue using their current method of copy protection.

[MagGnome]

I prefer Stardock's current method of copy protection above all others. Keep out DRM, and provide updates to registered users to reward those who have bought legit software. It's worked very well for Sins, and I will continue to support the company in the future because of their great, consumer friendly approach.

[agentgray]

This is great with all of Stardock's talk on DRM there, but now...



(I've been using the image too much. Too much subversion by companies lately...)

[J Arcane]

Originally Posted by MagGnome

I prefer Stardock's current method of copy protection above all others. Keep out DRM, and provide updates to registered users to reward those who have bought legit software. It's worked very well for Sins, and I will continue to support the company in the future because of their great, consumer friendly approach.

And it actually works better as a piracy hindrance I think than any DRM scheme. It sure worked on me. I pirated GalCivII back in the day to check it out, and wound up just wanting the damn retail version, so I could get the expansions and the patches.