Digital rights management and disc protection has been used by video games publishers for decades. At best, you don’t know it’s there, but at worst you can’t play a game without being connected to the Internet, the DRM installs the equivalent of a rootkit on your machine, or worst of all–that $60 game you bought can’t be played due to some unknown issue related to rights management and the publisher has no fix. DRM does not work, and that has been argued for years. Copyright holders argue otherwise and always want to clamp down harder, restrict more, and prosecute pirates for extrotionate amounts of money. With anti-tamper technology such as Denuvo proving incredibly difficult to crack, they may get their wish (albeit temporarily). However, we now have solid proof DRM is a complete waste of time and money. That proof comes in the form of development studio CD Projekt, owner of GOG.com and creators of The Witcher series. Marcin Iwinski, co-founder of GOG and CD Projekt, spoke at infoShare 2016 and pointed out how well not using DRM works. The Witcher 3 has no DRM and yet it has sold 10 million copies. It has been pirated, but Iwinski points out that many of those pirates have come back to purchase the game when they can afford it. Also, the regular free content drops for the title have encouraged gamers to buy a copy.
Add to that a growing library of games on the also DRM-free GOG.com and you have a thriving business in the games sector without any use of DRM. What further proof do copyright holders need that they are wasting their time and money, and in the process really pissing off gamers? So please other publishers, and I am looking at Ubisoft specifically when I say this, drop the DRM. It will have no negative impact on your game sales over their lifetimes and in the process will save you a small fortune in licensing fees and server costs. As Iwinski says, “We totally believe in the carrot, not in the stick…”
