Is DRM Helping Or Hurting?

 Nintendo claims to have lost as much as $975 million USD in 2007 due to video game piracy. It is no surprise then that companies are scrambling to come up with newer, more effective preventative measures to combat piracy. However, some believe (myself included) that they are going about it entirely the wrong way.

Ubisoft's title Assassin's Creed 2 is slated for release on PC this March, and with it a new form of Digital Rights Management (or DRM). This new DRM will require everyone who purchases the title to be connected to the internet at all times in order to play the game. If the connection is interrupted, the game will pause itself and the player will not be allowed to continue until the connection is restored.

While perhaps not as big a problem as it would have been had it been released ten years or so ago when there was still a very large number of dial-up internet users, the voices of angry gamers have begun to erupt across the internet. The general consensus appears to be that such measures which are meant to protect the companies and the consumers is actually hurting their consumers, which in turn hurts the company. If you have any concerns pertaining to in which and how to use DRM video protection, you can get in touch with us at our web site.

The average gamer knows little to nothing about coding or programming. However, it is in the pirates' job descriptions to take gaming software and dig around so that they are readily available to be distributed across the internet without the original copyright protection they were originally included with. This means that the pirates will most likely be able to work around the necessity to stay connected to the internet, while paying consumers will be forced to deal with the inconvenient new DRM.