Top Ten Pirated Games of 2008

[Electryc]

http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pir ... 08-081204/

Sounds like the controversial DRM Spore made the top pirated download.

Anyone care to enlighten how DRM is harmful, and how it is harming the PC game industry. One guy complains it ate his computer, another complains he cant put it on his 3+ computers. (Who wants to put a game on 3 computers anyway? :lol) I bought Spore, and Fallout 3 which has DRM, I found no problems myself. I found it nice not entering a 80 character password code, and not needing the game in the drive.

[Swift]

http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pir ... 08-081204/
Anyone care to enlighten how DRM is harmful, and how it is harming the PC game industry.

Depends on the DRM used. For example, Bethesda uses DRM, but all it amounts to is a disc check. On the other end of the scale you have EA, who limit your installs and require constant online authentication of your copy.

DRM is harmful in 3 ways:

1) They can cause issues with your machine. For example, many DRMs will not let you run the game if they detect cd imaging programs (eg Daemon Tools) or burning programs. They have also sometimes been known to cause instability outside of the game.

2) They breed the perception that the developers treat their paying customers like criminals. Nobody likes being thought of as a criminal.

3) The ones that limit installs provide far more hassle to legitimate customers than it does to pirates. You may notice that, the majority of the time, the people that have DRM issues are paying customers, because most pirated copies come with files that totally bypass the DRM. Anything that causes problems for customers instead of pirates is a bad thing. What happens when its format time? New OS time? Get a new hard drive?

I bought Spore, and Fallout 3 which has DRM, I found no problems myself. I found it nice not entering a 80 character password code, and not needing the game in the drive.

To be fair, the Fallout 3 DRM is barely even DRM, and Bethesda are on record as saying they use the least problematic DRM that they possibly can, presumably because they actually like their customers. On the other hand, you have Spore, whose DRM has resulted in multiple class action lawsuits against EA. Their chances of success might not be good, but really, that is the kind of hassle no developer likes.

DRM has proven time and time again to be an ineffective way of combating piracy. If you want to make more people buy your game, it needs to be a game that really makes people want to buy it.

[mxlm]

Talk to Stardock. Increasing sales should be the goal, not stopping piracy.

Few seem to understand that.

[Electryc]

3) The ones that limit installs provide far more hassle to legitimate customers than it does to pirates. You may notice that, the majority of the time, the people that have DRM issues are paying customers, because most pirated copies come with files that totally bypass the DRM. Anything that causes problems for customers instead of pirates is a bad thing. What happens when its format time? New OS time? Get a new hard drive?

Ya I agree with that statement. Reminds me of gun laws. When do criminals abide by laws? Unless you go house to house and destroy everyone's guns. Criminals will still aquire guns to commit crimes no mater what laws are on the books. Oh dear I derailed my own thread. Thanks for the comments. Appreciated.

[Grand Fromage]

If DRM actually prevented piracy at all, they'd have a much easier time making an argument in support of it.

[zicada]

It's pretty hard to come up with any real numbers like this. These are mostly from public trackers, and thus totally off. Maybe by multiplying them by 30 or so, we get more likely numbers.

[Swift]

It's pretty hard to come up with any real numbers like this. These are mostly from public trackers, and thus totally off. Maybe by multiplying them by 30 or so, we get more likely numbers.

As a rough guide, though, i do not think it would be all that far off. I disagree with some of the titles, but i can easily see something like The Sims 2 still making a top 10 pirated list.

[zicada]

It's pretty hard to come up with any real numbers like this. These are mostly from public trackers, and thus totally off. Maybe by multiplying them by 30 or so, we get more likely numbers.

As a rough guide, though, i do not think it would be all that far off. I disagree with some of the titles, but i can easily see something like The Sims 2 still making a top 10 pirated list.

Yeah I don't have much of a problem with the actual list, just the numbers attached. Would have seemed a little less stupid if they had dropped the numbers IMO, as well as slapped on a note on the sources and methods used to get there.

[ThinkTank]

2) They breed the perception that the developers treat their paying customers like criminals. Nobody likes being thought of as a criminal.