There are petitions these days trying to get developer From Software to port Dark Souls to the PC. The petitions have garnered hundreds of thousands of signatures, but it’s still unlikely we’ll ever see Dark Souls on PC. Why? Because PC is a platform with 90% piracy rate.

The majority of PC gamers will never pay for their games, no matter how many Steam sales Valve has, no matter how much the game are marked down, no matter how easy and convenient and DRM-free it is: it’ll never be better than free. Last year, a whopping 4 million PC gamers pirated Crysis 2. When time comes for Crysis 3, which platform do you think developer Crytek will focus on? PC or consoles? Even Portal 2, which is made by Valve, a company with a God-like status among gamers, was pirated more than 3 million times on the PC.

“If you didn’t pay for it, you stole it. Doesn’t matter if its a physical copy, or a digital copy — the developer won’t get paid for their work.”Developers like Valve can afford to put out great and expensive PC titles: they have an established fan base who are going to buy the game no matter what. But when it comes to small developers, and especially first time developers, it’s a very different story, as Bohemia Interactive showed last year with the release of ArmA 2: for every 3 people who bought the game, 100 pirated it. The head of Bohemia said the statistic was “really worrying for us as a mid-sized, independent, PC-oriented developer”.

Politically correct PC gamers insist that services like Steam and lower prices are the solution to game piracy, but Steam has been around for a few years now, as have other digital distribution systems. Has PC gaming piracy gone down? Not at all. Granted, publishers share some of the blame: restrictive DRM solutions have certainly driven away some legitimate gamers. But before you start praising “non-DRM” solutions, know that there are no true “non-DRM” services. Steam is a DRM service. If you don’t believe that, try and give one of you Steam games to a friend. Try and sell the game that you bought and rightfully own — oh, you can’t. That’s because you don’t own the games in your Steam library, technically you pay for a “subscription” to them.

With those kinds of numbers, why should From Software make Dark Souls for the PC platform? If 9 out of 10 gamers will pirate the game, that’s not a good business proposition. And when multiplatform titles do get a PC release, it’s usually in the form of a bad console port. That’s where the hypocrisy lies: elitist PC gamers complain about bad ports and developers not caring enough about the PC platform. But then they pirate the game anyway. At least 9 out 10 times. The tired old excuse that “online piracy isn’t theft, because it’s just a copy” is bullshit. If you didn’t pay for it, you stole it. Doesn’t matter if its a physical copy, or a digital copy — the developer won’t get paid for their work.

“If I was a developer, would I spend my resources developing for a platform with 10% piracy rate, or 90% piracy rate?”For the record, I don’t own a console. I’m a PC gamer. And all but one (Battlefield 3) of my 40+ games were bought on Steam. But unlike many other legitimate PC gamers, I don’t complain when a developer decides not to release a PC version. Or when they decide to spend most of their resources on the console versions. Nor I don’t complain about bad PC ports that are released years later. I understand their reasons. If I was a developer, would I spend my resources developing for a platform with 10% piracy rate, or 90% piracy rate?

Face it, we PC gamers don’t deserve any more exclusive titles. We don’t deserve proper PC versions or ports. We don’t deserve a truly non-DRM system. By pirating 9 out of 10 games, we have’t earned the right to any of those things.

Sincerely,
A PC gamer.

According to new findings, Ubisoft’s draconian DRM system is even worse than we thought. The company has received heavy criticism for the limitation it puts on PC players, like having a constant Internet connection in order to play offline games. Now, it appears that the DRM software also monitors your hardware changes, and if any major changes are made, the game won’t run. Those changes could include a simple graphics card upgrade.

PC enthusiast site Guru3D found out that if you swapped your graphics card, Anno 2070 would no longer run and would refuse to be installed on the system. We dunno about you, but this is definitely taking it too far.

EA’s Spore effectively took the world by storm allowing gamers to literally create their own civilization from the ground up. However, the game featured some annoying DRM that gamers have constantly scolded EA for. Well, it seems that EA is at it once again with Darkspore a king of Spore spinoff that is described as fast-paced, sci-fi Action-RPG in which the player battles across alien worlds to save the galaxy from the mutated forces of Darkspore”. Sounds pretty cool, right?

Want to know the bad thing? If you don’t have a constantly active Internet connection you won’t be able to play the game at all – that’s right, not at all. This is part of EA’s new DRM system that they hope will work to curb piracy which is, at least, somewhat admirable. The bad news for EA? Anxious crackers will most likely take it upon themselves to undo this DRM not long after the game is released which is on March 29th for the PC.

To confirm this for yourself, head over to the game’s Steam listing here and check out their online disclosure notice.

Not too long ago we let you know that the PC version of Splinter Cell: Conviction was getting delayed until April 27th. This led many gamers to ponder whether the delay was regarding Ubisoft’s DRM software. Well, according to Ubisoft, no the delay has not at all been related to DRM:

The reason that has been given for the delay is that the extra time was need to polish and debug the game. The slip has not been linked to the DRM.”

Let’s hope that means the DRM will actually work when the game hits.

via eurogamer

While some have complained about EA’s online DRM featured in Command & Conquer 4 but I somewhat see where they are coming from. While it punishes those with poor internet connection it helps curb piracy, which I’m all for. However, one feature that’s recently been discovered I’m not too excited about.

It seems that you need internet connection 100% of the time that you’re playing C&C 4. If you’re playing even singeplayer and lose internet connection, the progress you’ve made during your singleplayer session will not be saved.

Come on EA, really?

via destructoid

It seems that Ubisoft just can’t get a break — Back in January we told you that Ubisoft would be trying out a new online-based DRM service that would, theoretically, help the studio combat piracy. Well, not long after the service launched hackers had their way with it cause it to crash altogether. After that, Ubisoft managed to get the service back up but once again they are being attacked.

They comment:

Our servers are under attack again. Some gamers are experiencing trouble singing in. We’re working on it and will keep you posted.”

Luckily, the servers have since gone back online meaning you’ll be able to play your games but the chances of this happening again, unless Ubisoft makes some major changes, remain high.

PC game piracy is at a steady 90% according to some sources, which means that DRM makers are always fighting a war with the pirates, and so far, they’ve lost every battle. Ubisoft is planning on using a new DRM, which is online-based and will require an Internet connection. The new DRM will debut with The Settlers 7, and will give players the ability to install the game on as many system as possible, as long as it’s confirmed over the net — which will work pretty much like Steam, where you’ll need to be logged in to Ubi.com in order to play the game.

Now here’s an idea developers are sure to adopt — It seems that a user by the name of Chesirec_the_cat recently posted on the Batman: Arkham Asylum PC forums, expressing his concern that he could not use Batman’s glide at a part of the game thus leading to his continous death.

Well, it forum moderator Keir replied letting this user know that Eidos put the glitch into the game intentionally so those who pirated the game could not play through the entire thing. He then went on to say, “It’s not a bug in the game’s code, it’s a bug in your moral code.”

So, EA are you listening? This seems like the best alternative to DRM as it’s been proven no one likes that, right?

via maxconsole

Piracy has been an issue for a long time. Even before Napster was made mainstream people were recording songs off the radio and selling bootleg copies. Well, the game industry is no different and one company in particular has been hurtin’ especially bad; Ubisoft.

It seems that the publisher is so fed up with piracy that they have plans to combat the issue with their own firepower. Yves Guillemot, head of Ubisoft, speaks of the piracy problem:

“Altogether on console, the piracy is low. On the PC the piracy is quite a lot. We are working on a tool that would allow us to decrease that on the PC starting next year and probably one game this year.”

So what do they have cookin’ over at Ubisoft? Let’s hope they aren’t getting ideas from EA as we saw how well that was recieved with Spore.

Here’s something that is sure to piss a few people off — Community Leader APOC has recently said that you will need to have a constant internet connection to play Command & Conquer 4:

“As of right now, you need to be online all the time to play C&C 4. This is primarily due to our “player progression” feature so everything can be tracked. C&C 4 is not an MMO in the sense of World of Warcraft, but conceptually it has similar principles for being online all the time. While some may be taken aback by this, we’ve been testing this feature internally with all of our world-wide markets.”

He then goes on to point out that this won’t be a big deal as it won’t require high-speed connections and won’t cause any lag in single-player gameplay. Hell, you can even use one an oldschool 56k connection because who needs phone calls, anyways?

ThatVideoGameBlog points out that this seems eerily like a ploy to hide the fact that EA will use a constant internet connection as a way to prevent piracy rather than using DRM.