Spore, SecuROM, and the failure of modern DRM

With the release of Will Wright's new masterpiece, Spore, my thoughts turn once again to the evils that are DRM.

SecuROM, bless it's flawed little heart, represents one of the fallacies of modern thinking about information properties - that producing a security layer for software will in some way curb enough piracy to offset the negative attention it receives. On the consumer side, opinions are strongly negative. In the front office, apparently, the opinion is positive enough that they keep using the product. As a game designer, my job is not affected either positively or negatively, but I have to admit a strong negative reaction to the paper tiger SecuROM represents.

And a paper tiger it is! Spore, released on Monday in Australia, was reported cracked within a couple hours, and is now pretty well distributed on the torrent circuit. Note that the game hasn't been officially released yet!

What does this mean? Well, obviously, the barrier to piracy has been hurdled without a second thought. Is there, then, a reason to not consider SecuROM a failure in terms of stopping software piracy?

The second argument for SecuROM and the benefit it allegedly provides is based on the concept of criminalization. Psychologically, according to this idea, the average person will encounter a crime deterrent and reconsider the theft based on the reminder of the possible consequences. This argument has value only based on the perceived risk of being caught, and the cost of being caught. Proponents of anti-piracy software bring up the "no one speeds in front of a cop" analogy - a person, upon sighting a police vehicle parked by the side of the road (or driving along in another lane), will not speed or otherwise break any traffic laws due to the high likelihood of being caught. The risk is high, and the reward (getting to the destination sooner) is low enough to deter the average citizen.

While a cogent thought, it simply doesn't work in terms of software piracy. A better analogy for the average user is equivalent to that of the average college student. In study after study, it has been shown that the average student will cheat on an exam or a paper to get a better grade. And why not? The risk of being caught is low, and the reward is well worth it! Further, the police officer in the next lane represents immediate punishment - if you speed, you are caught right away. Most of the time, when you cheat on a paper or even a test, the capture and punishment occur after the fact - when the professor compares papers, or sees a suspiciously well-worded response in a sea of poor responses.

A better comparison, I think, is DRM is an ineffective vaccine pushed too soon, and for the wrong reasons. In any given vaccine, the benefits of vaccination should greatly outweigh the costs - inconvenience, and sometimes harm in the form of reactions or death. In the case of current DRM technology, the vaccine (DRM) causes too much inconvenience (customer support issues) and harm (hardware issues and even failure). This isn't serving the customers, isn't serving the companies, is damaging the industry as a whole.

In closing, I'd like to necro a post by Brad Wardell of Stardock, who much more eloquently and effectively stated this case than I ever could...

Brad Wardell of Stardock, on the lack of DRM for Sins of the Solar Empire:

"Now, I don't like piracy at all. It really bugs me when I see my game up on some torrent site just on the principle of the matter. And piracy certainly does cost sales. But arguing that piracy is the primary factor in lower sales of well made games? I don't think so. People who never buy software aren't lost sales."

"The reason why we don't put CD copy protection on our games isn't because we're nice guys. We do it because the people who actually buy games don't like to mess with it. Our customers make the rules, not the pirates. Pirates don't count. We know our customers could pirate our games if they want but choose to support our efforts. So we return the favor - we make the games they want and deliver them how they want it. This is also known as operating like every other industry outside the PC game industry."

"Blaming piracy is easy. But it hides other underlying causes. When Sins popped up as the #1 best selling game at retail a couple weeks ago, a game that has no copy protect whatsoever, that should tell you that piracy is not the primary issue."

Oh, one final note to DRM proponents: I bought Sins as soon as I finished reading his post. I support companies that are good stewards to the industry and their customers.