Today, anyone with an Internet connection and satisfactory technology literacy can steal almost any piece of software they want. With over 52 billion dollars lost every year to piracy, there doesn’t seem to be an easy solution to this pandemic. Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies—which safeguard against illegal distribution put in place by software developers and distributors—have attempted to address this problem for decades, with little to no effect; if gaming companies put something valuable on the market, there are going to be people trying to steal it.
The problem may lie in the fact that the majority of consumers—over 70 percent according to a study conducted by the Rockwool Foundation Research Unit—find nothing wrong with piracy.
One new DRM scheme that has been adopted by some companies to combat piracy involves the concept of always being online. Formally known as Persistent Online Authentication, an “always online” DRM forces the user to be in a constant state of communication with the game’s servers, so as to prevent unauthorized play. The concept has not fared well, however, and has already produced disastrous results.
One such example of its use is in EA’s SimCity, released in early March of this year. Built with the restrictive DRM scheme, the game could only be played online with a continuous connection to EA’s server. The inability to play with an Internet outage, however, could have been overlooked if not for the fact that EA’s servers did not function correctly for weeks after its release. While never explicitly stated that the “always online” restriction was intended to combat piracy, there seems to be little to no reason for the company to do so otherwise.
At 60 dollars a copy, the game wasn’t cheap either. Senior Bruce Zhang explains, “They are just a business. Their goal is to make money. As someone who might want to go into the game development industry in the future, I understand why they might want to do something like this for money.” Zhang envisions the “always online” DRM becoming “the standard” for software.
However, the “always online” trend has not fared well with consumers. Earlier this year, when Microsoft released tidbits of information regarding its new “always online” Xbox 720, gamers were enraged. Only after the subsequent firing of an employee for telling gamers to “just deal with it” and continued protest from the gaming community did Microsoft decide to revise its original plans. In an internal email leaked from Microsoft earlier this month, engineers were instructed to make the new Xbox work “regardless of [the user’s] connection status.”
The negative response towards “always online” may discourage software manufacturers from implementing similar policies. As sophomore Quinn Manely puts it, “It’s completely unnecessary. I can understand if an online game implemented this type of system, but for games and products designed to be used offline, it’s just an inconvenience.” Being “always online” supposedly prevents a user from playing a game illegally, but the software for the game itself is still easily distributed. Manely says, “This allows people to just share an account if they [want] to. The only thing that they can’t do is play at the same time, which is just an inconvenience for the consumer.”
With the ease of restrictive software solutions, addressing the cause of the piracy problem is often overlooked. As Gabe Newell, the CEO and cofounder of the acclaimed game development company Valve, told The Cambridge Student, “Piracy is almost always a service problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24/7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country three months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.”
The new “always online” trend is unlikely to stop illegal gaming once and for all. In any case, the next DRM innovation, like this one, will likely only be part of the solution.
