They could just use batch processing and uploading of the stats and information, or allow offline mode without Stat tracking. It seems to me what they're doing is to try and replicate a method of control that Steam uses as apart of it's system; internet access required. However, even Steam has offline mode for it's games.

Or just use the pirate cracks and don't give them any more money. Best method of getting their attention is through their wallets after all, only issue is one individual purchase loss won't bother them.

Piracy won't make people stop making games. I am not advocating piracy, because in the end you're only hurting the creative types at the end of the line (head honchos at big publishers always have a way of getting their wallets stuffed, even if it rams the rest of the company into the ground).

But piracy won't destroy game making. Before the big publishers reared their ugly heads, we had games, and arguably much better ones than what we have today. We had innovation, the developers were all "hey, let's try this out, its never been done before", because in the end they were making the game in a garage somewhere with a "beer&pizza" budget.

Now, we have all the latest effects, multi-million dollar budgets involving professional voice acting, motion capture animation and CGI production which could shame Hollywood - and being fed repeatedly the same regurgitated stuff as far as game creativity is concerned. Because the guys at the big publishers go "hey, you can't do that, its never been done before!".

Developing games is all about unleashing your creative drive. Selling them is all about profit. And you can't wipe out the creative urge just because you can't make any profit out of it. If that were so, the mod scene today wouldn't even exist. And in my humble opinion, if you want good gaming... go and check out the mods and indie games. That's where most of the fun is today, unless your idea of fun is watching pwetty expwosions with no substance.

I agree 100%, creativity can't be stopped, ever!

Actually, that is a very smart way of making 1 company (EA) stop producing games. If they dont make enough profit out of their games, they will eventually just stop making them. So its a very logical approach. Why do you think EA is so focused on implimenting multiple forms of control on their games...

So every time one copy of a game produced by a bad company (EA) doesn't get sold, we win. So in the end, it works!

yeah, i played c&c 3, instantly fell in love with the series, even went out and got the decade pack. then i didnt buy red alert 3 due to DRM and now im not buying C&C 4 because of it either. but who knows, EA saved me money with spore also, most of my friends got tired of it after a week. i really dont see how DRM saves money, battleforge requires you be online all the times also, it was a fun game but not being able to play single player without connecting to a server stopped me from buying it.

People who steal aren't lost customers. They're just dinks who think they're more important than everyone else.

 Ergo, DRM serves no purpose. People who pirate games won't buy them anyway, DRM or not. As you said, they are not customers, and never will be.

This also has something to do with the exorbitant prices computer games publishers slap on their merchandize these days. I guarantee you that "less is more" approach would yield far better results than any sort of DRM. Cheaper games and studios working with the gamers is what defeats piracy. Not checking whether you have a legitimate version every five minutes.

Especially since you can always hack through software protection. Hacking through people's sense of decency is not that easy. Emotionally and morally,  its always easier to steal from a huge shopping center than from your local friendly grocer. But then again, that sense of propriety has to be inspired by something... money-grubbing mega publishers like EA, who treat their customers like potential thieves are not exactly going that way.

That's true, however the ease of searching for such things is rather scary these days; typing just a games name into Google will bring up all kinds of illegal content.

The main reason I have a problem with DRM is because I'm paying money for their product. I'm not the criminal here, why do I need to jump through their hoops? Stardock follow the kind of business solution that I would; ship your games with no copy protection however restrict online play and updates by way of their CD Key. The programmers responsible for breaking the copy protection of the latest titles have turned it not only into a game but also a race to crack games and get them up on the net. These guys aren't just working for their 'pride', they're also incredibly gifted and are often able to circumvent security procedures faster than the companies can make new ones. I believe the Playstation 2 was cracked within 24 hours of it hitting the public shelves. The harder the task of breaking the security, the harder the pirates are going to go to break it.

EA Games is leading the industry in the wrong direction. We shouldn't be trying to prevent piracy with these overly draconian methods of control - customers should be exempt from that crap, not held hostage by it.

Reading this topic, I'm convinced that EA is treating their customers like potential thieves because most of you ARE potential thieves. If the DRM pisses you off, don't buy it - but don't pirate it either. You are 1) showing they were right to put DRM on it in the first place, and 2) creating incentive for them to make more intrusive DRM for their next title. There isn't some magic number of pirates out there that will finally convince EA to drop DRM, any change will come from collective action. Write to your congressman, join the pirate party, DO something instead of sitting on your ass and whining about it. Pirating isn't doing something about it, it is simply sitting on the sidelines in apathy.

Ideally, EA could cut their prices in half and make more money, but only if every current pirate bought all the games they now steal. How likely is that to happen? No, people will still pirate $20 games at about the same rate, because piracy isn't strictly about cost. It's about people who feel intitled to play every game released, and piracy allowes them to.

Reading this topic, I'm convinced that EA is treating their customers like potential thieves because most of you ARE potential thieves.

 The problem with the term "potential" is that you can apply it for anything and to everyone. Most people are potential murderers. Does that mean we should pre-emptively treat everyone as such? There is also a different approach. You can treat everyone as potential customers. Even pirates. If your profits fail because of piracy (never happened, by the way, games fail because they're bad games, not because of piracy) then you might ask yourself, ok, what am I doing wrong? Is my pricetag too high? Is the lack of a demo contributing to people being reluctant to fork over cash for something they haven't seen in action (I burned my fingers on that one more than once)? Are my customers deterred from buying the game because of intrusive DRM?

Or you can go "screw 'em, dirty thieves, INCREASE THE DRM VOLTAGE!"

If the DRM pisses you off, don't buy it - but don't pirate it either. You are 1) showing they were right to put DRM on it in the first place, and 2) creating incentive for them to make more intrusive DRM for their next title. There isn't some magic number of pirates out there that will finally convince EA to drop DRM, any change will come from collective action.

The problem here is one of perception. The EA management probably is convinced that the number of pirates deterred and persuaded into buying their games is greater than the number of potential customers which refuse to buy the title because of DRM. They are quite mistaken in this, but its a numbers spin with a typical corporate lack of long-term vision. In other words, they are making a bad name for themselves, never a good business move.

Ideally, EA could cut their prices in half and make more money, but only if every current pirate bought all the games they now steal.

As I said earlier, pirates are not a factor. Some people will pirate a game just because they can or because they really do not want to buy that game. You CANNOT sell your game to them - they won't buy it! So they are not a factor, they do not exist as far as your sales go. Forget them.

But, if you lower the prices, you bring your product to a wider audience. Even to people who might not have bought your game but now decide to give it a try because the price is affordable. Furthermore, you allow people to buy more than one or two games a month. Most kids have enough spending money to purchase one game. Only adults have that kind of cash, and they tend not to have as much free time or interest in games as kids do. This creates a fierce competition between publishers, and if your game isn't on top, you lose money. If you lower the price of your product, you stand to gain a lot more money because the volume of your buyers tends to increase disproportionally.

Anyway, there are many healthy business practices out there, both to maximize your profits and to combat piracy. EA is not employing them at the moment. Their lack of vision is disturbing.

That is not a fair method of evaluation. Those big sales numbers come from already established games, so the "try before you buy" barrier has already been passed - people know what they are getting. Quite a few of them probably do come from the people that pirated it new, then went legit on a game they had already played. Most of those people are irrelevant, as they would have tried before they bought at $10, just the same as they did at $50.

I'm certainly not convinced they are wrong, it could be the extremely vocal DRM opponents skewing perception the other way. The real problem is that there is no definitive information available; it's a common problem when trying to gather data on illegal activities. Even if you could come up with a definitive number of people who pirated a particular game, you would not be able to get accurate data on what factors contributed to their decisions. Price point is another unknowable; you can't expect good data asking people after the fact. A lot of people will SAY they would have bought at $20, or $10, but you can't really know unless you actually offer them that decision. There is no control group for experimenting this way.

Also, look at the massive gamble involved in radically dropping prices. C&C4 probably had a huge budget, I'll say $20 million just as a ballpark guess. Keep in mind that is just *production* costs, not including the per-box manufacturing cost. At $50 a box, they need to sell 400k to break even - in reality, even more as that doesn't include the store's cut, manufacturing the box, etc, that is only development cost. At $20 a box, they need to sell a million boxes to break even. Are you willing to bet dropping the price will generate 2.5x the sales? Are you willling to bet $20 million on it?

If you are willing to take a bet like that, I'm willing to bet you'll never be CEO of anything

Some good points here. But this is why I believe including these draconian DRM measures is a faulty business practice.

1. DRM doesn't work. Its a piece of useless coding touted as a perfect solution for protecting your product against illegal distribution. In reality, the so called "protection" lasts for 48hrs at maximum, even for titles involving sophisticated systems like Tages, which does not prevent the user from starting the game, but introduces game-breaking alterations at various points if it detects that the copy is an illegal one.

2. DRM software licence costs, quite a lot. So essentially you are spending a lot of money on something which does not work.

3. DRM damages your reputation. It does not deter piracy, in fact as some have mentioned, the real brains behind the scene eagerly await your latest investment into DRM to try their skillz on. And they WILL crack it. It's called reverse engineering. You can do it with any piece of software available to the public, because such software cannot be encrypted using current top methods. If it was programmed, it can be circumvented.

If I were in charge of making a game, I'd first dump the bloated budget requirements. 20 million dollars for a game? Are we making a game here or a Hollywood blockbuster? And for what? Most of it goes for voice acting, renderfarms and expensive l33t engine licenses. It can't be that all that money goes to the artists and programmers out there because as far as I know they are not uniformly filthy rich.

You do not need a bloated budget to make an excellent game. Look at Sins of a Solar Empire, or GalCiv II. Check out some of the excellent indie games like Mount&Blade with the best damned horse combat I've ever seen in a game, or indie games in development like Natural Selection II or Infinity: Quest for Earth. The latter boasts impressive physics, and a universe which could shame the original Elite in size and the newest space sim engines in appearance. All done largely by ONE guy.

So yeah. Spend money and effort on innovation, true innovation, not assigning different controls and calling it "next-gen" like they did with the Assassin's Creed. Spend less money on stuff which does not make a great game, such as Hollywood actors doing the voices, or CGI movies requiring more rendering power than a Lucas movie with lightsabers. And then you can drop the prices and sweep the floor with the competition. DRM? Just a key check and multiplayer exclusivity. Or even keep the prices as they are, because what do you care, your profits will be enormous compared to a company which spent 20 million on making their game.

And you won't worry about piracy as much either.

 

You think you need millions of dollars to create good visual solutions for your game? Again, take a look at Sins of a Solar Empire. Does the game look ten years old? Or if you want a shooter example, take a peek at Natural Selection II. Or Mount&Blade - a game made with a virtually zero budget which has good gameplay. It does not look like Crysis, but its far more fun and has tons of replayability. And a zero budget - it was made by a couple in their free time. Then there is the Infinity - a game coded mostly by one guy who created a brand new procedural engine which can drive the potentially largest gaming universe ever. As far as I know, he is not spending millions of dollars on game production either. Let me ask you this - would you rather have a good, fun game with outdated visuals, or the latest render engine demo with crap gameplay? Visuals aren't the alpha and omega of what makes a good game - a fact lost on the crazed mainstream publishers which won't even tough anything which doesn't look impressive - nevermind if it actually is. As for DRM, I would never invest in something which is guaranteed to fail me within two days. The law doesn't help either - you can have all kinds of laws against reverse engineering, but it will not do you any good if you cannot catch whomever is doing it. And you can't. So the law is impotent. And the hackers know it. The trick is in having a new approach. Make a business model where you work *with* the pirates, not compete against them. I see the Internet as a big advertising board. Hell, you could even give your game away for free and charge extra content and features. Use the peer-to-peer networks as a free publishing service, not rage when people put your game there. Then they can quit trying to maximize their profits by restricting game selling by regions. Or at least have a simultaneous release. What do you think happens when you release a game in USA, but not in Russia? Do you think the gamers are going to just wait when they know they can get the game NOW and for free from pirates? I don't know how many times I saw popular games have a staggered release. And so on. There are many things you can do to combat piracy, creative and adaptive things, instead of focusing on being purely reactive and, basically, inert.