Lately, video game publishers have citied declining retail sales as how piracy is directly hurting them. Well it seems that retail sales are only suffering because the increase in digital sales. According to the NPD report, digital download sales trailed closely behind physical box sales (21.3 million vs. 23.5 million respectively). During that same period, PC digital download sales made up to 48% of unit sales and 36% of dollar sales. So while retail sales may be declining, it's not necessarily because of computer video game piracy.

The big problem with trying to correlate X million in illegally downloaded games to X million in lost sales is that it simply doesn't work like that. There is no quantifiable number or study out there that shows a direct correlation between those numbers. So when you see these "studies" that claim piracy costs an industry millions in lost revenue, it's simply a load of made up numbers. In fact the U.S. Government has basically admitted that most piracy estimates are bogus. The Government Accountability Office said that it is "difficult, if not impossible to quantify the economy-wide impacts". What video game publishers should be doing is stop blaming piracy for their lack of sales and look at from a different angle.

See, since a video game publisher can't link a download to a lost sale, they should instead start looking at how they can make piracy work for them. Obnoxious DRM like Ubisoft's-always need to be connected to the internet-only affects the customers who pay for the game. Remove the costs of developing that DRM and accept the fact that people will download your game illegally. Take that saved cost to make the game cheaper or find a way to connect with your fans and give them a reason to buy. Look at indie game developers who embrace the fact that DRM is a failure and still make money from their game (Humble Indie Bundle). How many legitimate users is it ok to inconvenience in order to reduce piracy?" The answer should be none. Fans want to support artists, so who is to say that video game developers can look at experimenting with a new model revolving about a CwF +RtB model. Pair the infinite goods-namely a video game or such- with a scarce good to give more value.

Bottom line, video game piracy does somewhere between zero and slightly nothing in terms of damage to a developer. Think of video game piracy as word of mouth advertising for a game (the best, since it's free); all those "millions" downloading it are going to play it and recommend it to their friends to pass it along. Outwards those others may pay for it, or they may not. But by getting the (hopefully positive) word out, there is a much larger audience to connect with to give a reason to buy the video game. Look at successful crowd sourced projects for movies and tv shows that use places like The Pirate Bay to distribute their shows for free, and then generate money for additional content from fans who want more.

Make something that fans want to support; this means games that aren't rushed out to meet a deadline and buggy as all hell. Times are changing, and video game publishers should change with the times or become extinct like the dinosaurs. They can look at piracy in a different light and how they can use it to their advantage.

“If we’ve done our job right and implemented Battle.net in a great way people will want to be connected while they’re playing the single player campaign so they can stay connected to their friends on Battle.net and earn the achievements on Battle.net. The best approach from our perspective is to make sure that you’ve got a full-featured platform that people want to play on, where their friends are, where the community is. That’s a battle that we have a chance in. If you start talking about DRM and different technologies to try to manage it, it’s really a losing battle for us..”

On the other hand, it is just depressing; Namco Bandai's Olivier Comte sees Ubisoft's always connected DRM as a "good strategy". It's a good strategy if you want to prevent your paying customers from playing their video games that is. Ubisoft has had nothing but problems with their "always on" DRM and it is not a road that should be taken for any video game.

Videogame developers need to realize that onerous DRM does nothing to prevent piracy and only adds to the cost of the game and pisses off people who actually buy. They need to realize that people are going to copy and there is nothing they can do about it. Change your business models and/or provide solid reasons for your potential customers to go out and buy your game. Include in-depth matchmaking, or social tools to stay in touch with friends. Treat your customers like people and they will return the favor.

In a similar move as Modern Warfare 2, BioShock 2 will not have the ability for LAN play or to host dedicated servers on ANY platform. Instead PC gamers will be forced to endure the horrors of matchmaking. Toss in the heavy DRM and it's no reason why many PC gamers (myself included) are jaded about new releases. Even better is that 2k will have no method for booting a player from a game if they are cheating/griefing. Just suck it up because:

"If you do get matched up with one of those people, please report it, leave that game, and we'll try to smooth out the online experience as best as we can".

2k tries to sugar coat the LAN/dedicated server issue with BioShock 2 by citing that development time affected the decision to leave LAN and dedicated servers out.

"Bringing Multiplayer to BioShock was a daunting task between the tech (there was no multiplayer support in the codebase from the first game) and the expectations of the community. Either you try to do everything and so nothing feels finished or you focus your efforts to do a smaller number of things really well like an accessible online experience"

I fail to see how something as basic as LAN play can be excluded from the multiplayer process from the start. The lack of multiplayer in BioShock it isn't because they ran out of time; it's just a dubious (and ineffective) way for them to try and combat piracy. Now, maybe dedicated serves and LAN play will be included for BioShock 2 with a patch (or possible DLC); Don't hold your breath though.

Matchmaking-without the option to host a dedicated server-is killing PC gaming; try picking up a semi-recent game like Red Faction 2 and try finding a game. Although, that argument is for another article.

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.

So it sounds like C&C 4 will be optimized so that even a dial up connection will suffice and that it won't lag out your single player game and it won't hurt the multiplayer aspect either.

The announcement for a constant online connection for Command and Conquer 4 doesn't surprise me that much. Games like Company of Heroes already require you to sign in before playing singleplayer or LAN. Granted Company of Heroes doesn't have a player progression feature. Even Blizzard announced that there would be no LAN play for StarCraft II. Just another means of DRM in video games; this allows EA to validate the Command and Conquer install and prevent any pirates from playing single player.

I would guess that the need for a constant connection is also there to prevent people from cheesing their starts before they are uploaded to the C&C 4 servers. It worked pretty well for Company of Heroes after the Opposing Fronts Expansion; but as always, there are ways to get around it.

The MMO like concept of player progression in Command and Conquer 4 does seem very interesting and I would love to hear more about it. Looks like a type of leader board setup with experience tracking, games player, etc. Seems that there will be more info about Command and Conquer 4 and the MMO portion in a few weeks when the info hits the magazines.

We can elaborate more on gameplay details after all the magazines hit, plenty of details for you to check in those! Gamestar will have a very extensive story.

What do you think? A integral part of C&C 4, harmful DRM, or just intrusive? Leave a comment and let me know what your opinion is about Command and Conquer 4 requiring a constant connection.

Users on the Gears of War official forums are reporting that the digital certificates for the game have expired, as of 28th January 2009. This means that the game will not launch at a system date post-28th Jan. Obviously, this is awful news for those people who enjoy playing the game on the PC, since unless they keep their system date before the 28th, they cannot play the game.

Say it with me now, DRM ( Digital Rights Management) is BAD, this is what happens when you get games that require draconian measures to "prevent" piracy. This is not the stance that Epic should be taking, they should look at how Valve thinks that pirates are just under served customers. Pirates will not be stopped by DRM, be it for video games, music or movies and DRM just ends up being a massive inconvenience for the PAYING customer.

DRM is an arms race that the developers will always lose at. There are plenty of people who enjoy breaking their new DRM as soon as it comes out. Video games could be cheaper if they didn't try to inconvenience everybody with DRM!

Epic is also a big fan of getting rid of used game sales as well.

Leave a comment and tell me how YOU feel about it!