The opinion that digital rights management doesn’t prevent videogame piracy but instead harms paying customers through limits on things like number of installations and provides an overall worse user experience is not new, but it seems more developers are finally starting to jump onboard with the idea.
As detailed in an article by Toms Hardware, Stardock CEO Brad Wardell and 2D Boy co-founder Ron Carmel have been saying that the people who illegally download games — in most cases — wouldn’t have bought the product anyway, so restrictions would only be hurting the actual consumers who did end up paying.
Carmel also brings up a very good point, saying publishers “know that DRM doesn’t work against piracy,” but use install limits in order to harm the used PC game market.
It’s encouraging to see some companies (even EA, to some extent) warm up to the idea that crappy, intrusive DRM is not the answer, and it seems like much of the change in attitudes has been the result of the grassroots movement that’s happening on the Internet.
