Tom’s Games on DRM and piracy

Posted by Ken Y-N on September 1st, 2008 at 02:13pm

Travis Meacham of Tom’s Games made a rather interesting post on how software piracy of games results in stronger Digital Rights Management (DRM) protection methods. He himself is neutral to the presence of DRM, saying he would much rather play a game and support the authors buy buying it, rather than the usual “stick it to the Man” attitude of the typical software thief.

As he points out:

Publishers use DRM because the cost of implementing it is less than the projected loss of revenue attributable to illegal distribution. As piracy increases so does the projected figure for loss of revenue which in turn justifies more money to be spent on prevention in the form of stricter and more invasive DRM measures. So by engaging in piracy to combat DRM, you’re actually validating its further use and development by the companies that see it as a solution.

I often complain about how people equate TPM with DRM, but although one could implement aspects of DRM for games software aided by a TPM (I could see BioWare’s Steam using it, for example, with benefit to the consumer) the idea that a TPM will suddenly stop all pirate software running is completely fallacious.

Read the full store on Tom’s Games.

Tags: drm, tom's games, travis meacham

Under Advocacy Tags: drm, tom's games, travis meacham