As seen in the latest iteration of the Gamer's Bill of Rights Stardock has been working with trusted partners to come up with a framework that would give PC gamers a better experience while still having a realistic chance of being adopted by publishers.
One of the issues that keeps coming up is IP protection. What we keep being told privately is that "Sure, your games don't need copy protection because your demographic is less likely to pirate but even if we agreed with your philosophy, we will never be able to sell DRM-free games to management".
This eventually leads to the issue that the alternatives for intellectual property protection are limited.
So what alternatives do developers have today?
SecuROM. This is what has been used by Electronic Arts in Spore, Mass Effect, and most other titles. Ubisoft uses it as well such as in Far Cry 2.
Pros: Makes developers feel their IP is well protected. It is quite effective at slowing down cracking of games, especially to on-line features (Spore was leaked day 1 but only the unprotected versions of it, you couldn't make use of on-line features).
Cons: Apparently installs a device driver that stays behind. Developers have used it to hard-code a limited number of life-time activations (3 in Spore initially raised to 5 more recently).
Steamworks. Valve protects its games and offers to third parties the ability to protect their titles and gain the feature benefits of Steam.
Pros: Proven 0-day protection by installing the last bit of the game upon installation. Includes a ton of other features such as hardware tracking, updates via the Steam client, and more.
Cons: Requires Steam (the client) to be installed with the game. Requires the user to create a Steam account.
Starforce. Starforce is pretty well known in the industry.
Pros: Quite secure at making games harder to crack.
Cons: Installs drivers on the user's system. Reported compatibility issues.
There are a number of others but those seem to be the most prevalent right now.
My opinion on the matter, reflected in Stardock's position on copy protection is that anything the inconveniences legitimate customers is unacceptable. The goal should be to increase sales, not stop piracy. Focus on the people who buy games and make them want to buy your game. Don't make them feel like chumps for buying your game (such as having them jump through hoops to get it to work while a pirate can just get a torrent).
One of the major philosophies of Impulse has been to try to change the way licensing works. Today, licensing tends to focus on the PC rather than the user. This makes the user feel like they're renting a game. If I buy a game, it's MINE. I paid for it. I should be able to use it on my machines as much as I want as long as only 1 copy is being used at once (unless it's a Stardock game where we allow multiple people on a LAN to play from a single copy).
So what could we make that might help gamers but still be acceptable to publishers?
I think, for starters, is that any IP protection should correspond with some user benefit.
Here are some examples:
a) Publisher wants Internet activation in their game. Okay, label that you require that but give the user the ability to re-download it.
Publisher wants to provide 0-day protection to their game. Okay, but be clear about that but also make sure you're giving the user the latest/greatest version so I don't have to hunt for patches on day 1.
In many respects, Steamworks takes care of a lot of this. But it requires the Steam client. A game that uses Steamworks can't be on Impulse or be sold in other channels where the website/store/distributor doesn't want to be distributing a competitor's store to people or having their customers create a Steam account. I have a Steam account and I like Steam but I don't think it would be a great thing if there was only 1 vendor. Particularly if the one vendor could potentially (and likely) be acquired by one of the major publishers down the line.
Impulse has the Impulse Reactor platform. The Political Machine, Sins of a Solar Empire v1.1, and Demigod use Impulse Reactor for multiplayer match-making and a variety of additional game and software functionality. Impulse Reactor has the benefit that it's free and is simply a DLL that users include with their game.
We could integrate IP protection features for developers who want to protect their IP and do it in such a way that is just as effective as other methods but a lot less intrusive. Because while Stardock itself can and will continue to release its retail games with no CD copy protection, other publishers have different needs and as a practical matter, they are going to use something. The question is whether they should have more alternatives?
What do you think?
