I’m pretty hardcore when it comes to disliking people who pirate digital products. I think that those who knowingly do so are scum and should face stiff penalties when caught. But I’m also hardcore in my belief that you can’t treat your customers like criminals. Making honest people, who bought a product in good faith, pay for the crimes of fools and idiots is not a solution to anything. But it’s certainly something that can piss off the good guys enough that they turn to the dark side. When you see something like Sony’s rootkit fiasco, it’s pretty obvious that the people making the decisions have no understanding of human nature.
Over the years, there have been several cases of gamers having difficulty with the games they purchased as a result of draconian copy protection measures. One of the worst offenders was one called Starforce, a product which Ubisoft once used for their titles before they got smart. You’d think it couldn’t get any worse than Starforce. Yeah, well, you’d think wrong if you did.
The PC version of one of the most anticipated titles of 2007, Bioshock, is infected with a really, horribly nasty anti-piracy product called SecuROM. I’ve seen several blog posts about the situation over the past few days, but Shamus summarizes everything pretty well in a recent post. One thing I don’t get is that even the demo of the game is burdened with this crap. Isn’t it kind of the point to get a demo into as many player’s hands as possible?
This has to be one of the dumbest business decisions ever to be made in the game industry. It’s not something that has affected only a handful of players, but nearly everyone who has bought the game or tried the demo. SecuROM is installed without the player’s knowledge and apparently can’t be completely removed very easily. The result is a massive horde of pissed-off former players. Those who were infected by the demo are the lucky ones, since they didn’t drop any cash. But those who have actually bought the game are going to just have to write it off as a loss.
It’s quite likely that they are going to lose a great many sales because of this. I know that I was planning on buying it at some point, but I’m not going anywhere near it now. I’m also going to be hesitant about buying anything published by 2K in future. They’ve certainly got a credibility issue now. They’ve lost sight of one important aspect of consumer business: it’s not for you to trust your customers, but for your customers to trust you. 2K has chosen to assume that all of their customers are criminals and by doing so have made it near impossible for their customers to trust them.
This whole sorry situation will almost certainly create new software pirates. For some people, such a blatant example of “corporate greed” will be all it takes to push them over the edge. For others, it will be the loss of trust. Still others will see priracy as revenge for being “tricked” into wasting their money. Whatever the rationale, this sort of thing always breeds more foot soldiers for the Army of Darkness, which in turn leads to more severe DRM silliness from corporate goons, continuing the vicious circle.
I wonder if the corporations will ever get it?
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Man, this is serious shit! Just how stupid are they? I was gonna get Bioshock but this has made me change my mind. Perhaps I’ll get it when they resolve all the issues or remove that piece of junk. And now they have even infected the demo with it? That just doesn’t make a single bit of sense! Besides, it will only be a matter of time before this is cracked. Crackers have defeated security systems that were thought to be untouchable before and they will do so again. For their own sake, developers should just accept the fact that there will always be piracy, no matter what they do or how hard they try to prevent it. In the end, it will probably mean less trouble and less losses for them.
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