Nerd Mentality

Atari Reminds Us DRM is Still Around

Posted April 16th 2009 by Derrick Lutz.

I'll admit, I've never had a technical issue with PC games that could legitimately be blamed on DRM. I've never had a system become unstable because I had DRM software like Starforce or SecuROM installed. I've never run out of allowed installs with no recourse, leaving me unable to use the software. But all of that is besides the point; the point is that this restricting technology is clearly offensive to a large number of PC gamers. Maybe most of them wouldn't have bought your game anyway, but why risk alienating people for some artificial peace of mind?

Gaming is the same as every other media industry. The old guys in charge don't understand how people use the internet today. They still think that DRM is protecting them from people burning copies of the DVD and handing them out to all their friends. Nobody does that anymore, if you need help pirating a game at all somebody might IM you a link to a Pirate Bay torrent containing the already-cracked-before-release game, but more likely you already know how to find it for yourself. This is the world we live in; no type of DRM is going to change that.

While most publishers are slowly realizing that limited-installation DRM is 99% ineffective at stopping any piracy and 100% effective at alienating the PC user base, Atari has not yet made this intellectual evolution. The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena shipped last week with a three install limit and required internet activation. This is probably the first game in several years published by Atari that anyone might care about on the PC, so this is their first experience with the angry mob showing up at their doorstep.

The users have gotten smarter in making their point heard over the years. Realizing that consumer complaints on blogs and forums fall on deaf ears, they now try to hit the publishers where it hurts: their pocketbooks (I can't believe I just used that tired old phrase, I hate me). Atari's oblivious response to the complaints is simultaneously frustrating and laughable. For other publishers, EA in particular, Spore was probably the turning point; it received hundreds of 1-star reviews on Amazon.com at release, the vast majority in protest of the included DRM. Though EA never removed the SecuROM DRM from the retail release of Spore, they did increase the install limit, provided a de-authorization tool for recovering an install slot, and released the game without SecuROM on Steam.

Most or all of EA's PC games since then have used SecuROM for a disc-check, but allowed an unlimited number of installs with no internet activation. This is where the angry mob turns dumb. Admittedly, it still doesn't make much sense to have the DRM on the disc, but you've got to know when you've reached an acceptable compromise. If you keep ranting and raving at a company after they have made reasonable changes, they're just going to start ignoring you. This isn't a civil rights issue where compromises aren't enough, it's videogame DRM. Relax. It's not actually hurting you or your computer. Let them have their little peace of mind, it's a negligible inconvenience compared to the authoritarian DRM they'd rather be using.

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