Jeff Vogel: Some Kind Words About DRM

Spiderweb Software’s Jeff Vogel returns to his blog to point out why he thinks that Microsoft’s DRM for the Xbox 360 is better than anything we see on PC.

When Half-Life 2 came out, around eight hundred years ago, I vented to everyone who would listen about how angry its new rights management scheme made me. You had to sign in through a Steam account (which, at the time, did scary things to my computer). And, to me far worse, your game was attached to your account, keeping you from loaning or selling it. This new game future seemed to strip too many rights away from users, and I wanted no part of it.

Lately, though, I’ve been finding that this is exactly the future I am living in, and I’ve been extremely happy. I’m having a great time, buying fun games for fair prices. I’m just doing it on the XBox.

…

Compare that to the games I sell. I charge $28 for a new game. I would LOVE to charge ten bucks. But, to stay in business, I’d have to triple my sales, and that won’t happen. Would sales go up? Sure. Would they TRIPLE? Almost impossible.

I have minimal DRM. People can transfer their registration to someone else if they want. I even have a one year money back guarantee if someone is unhappy. I’ve tried to be ethical in all the ways I want as a consumer. The result? My games get pirated like crazy, and I have to charge a lot to stay in business. I have a situation where honest people have to pay lots of money to subsidize the people who rip me off. The good people pay to buy games for the bad.

This, of course, infuriates me.

I like Steam. A lot. As long as they never shut down the service and take away all the games I’ve bought, I have no issues with logging in to access a continuously patched-up version of whatever game it is that I’m playing.