99.8% of Gamers Don't Care About DRM, Says EA
arcticstoat writes "If you thought that EA might have been humbled by the massive Internet backlash against its use of SecuROM in its recent games, then you'd be wrong. Speaking at the Dow Jones/Nielsen Media and Money Conference, EA's CEO John Riccitiello claimed that the whole issue had been blown out of all proportion. 'We implemented a form of DRM and it's something that 99.8 per cent of users wouldn't notice,' claimed Riccitiello, 'but for the other 0.2 percent, it became an issue and a number of them launched a cabal online to protest against it.'"
amblin wrote:76.98% of all statistics are either made up, complete bollocks interpreted to reflect a desired outcome, or both.
Yeah, their data has probably been manipulated and spun. I wouldn't be surprised if they were basing this on the amount of people who bought the game vs the amount who contacted them to complain about the DRM.
I care about DRM, and my statistics* tell me that 90% of other people who do are against it.
It will when it actually fucks up a game in any way for me, but until then I don't see it as anything other than a buzzword that people love to throw around lately.
I do think it's a bit useless, though. If a pirate wants to crack dat shit he goes right ahead and does it. But I've not actually seen or heard enough cases of "legitimate buyers hurt" to get all up in arms about it.
Yeah, never had any trouble with Starforce games. Never knew anyone who did, either. Just lots of internet rage.
If you had any trouble with Starforce at any point then I guess that's one person I know. But still I just think stuff like this gets blown out of proportion a lot. THEN AGAIN EVERYTHING ELSE DOES TOO. AAAAAA.
Shada wrote:Yeah, never had any trouble with Starforce games. Never knew anyone who did, either. Just lots of internet rage.
If you had any trouble with Starforce at any point then I guess that's one person I know. But still I just think stuff like this gets blown out of proportion a lot. THEN AGAIN EVERYTHING ELSE DOES TOO. AAAAAA.
I didn't have any of the OMFG ITSS COOKED MI OPTICAL DRIEVS! from starforce, but it did hurt performance quite badly on one of my machines.
The real problem I have with DRM is that I don't like to be treated like a criminal, especially not when It'd be faster and cheaper for me to steal a game.
I've often considered not buying any games and just sending £30 the devs of any game I like. It'd give them a fair cut and me a game that doesn't piss me off.
If I want a game I'll get it, either with money or inter-broom. DRM? Couldn't care less really. Generally it doesn't harm me or my machine, so I pay it no thought beyond the occasional whinge*, just because I like grousing about stuff. If it does impact upon me at some point, then I shall do something about it, so far I'm not too concerned.
I moan out of principle, if I've bought a game, I expect to be able to install it on as many machines as I want and as many times as I need to at home. I've got no problem with needing to have a cd/dvd in the drive (well, in general anyway).
I resent being treated like a criminal and being given 3/5 installations PERIOD, or take spore for example, one account per user PER GAME.
I change my hardware, format the OS, suffer failures etc, I don't expect to not use software I've bought due to another part of my pc changing, I also resent them saying I can't use DemonTools or similar, they have no right to dictate what I can and cannot use on my pc outside of the use of their actual product.
I do patch my games though so I don't need to use the CD alot of the time, much less hassle, but I pretty much always own a retail copy.
buzzmong wrote:I moan out of principle, if I've bought a game, I expect to be able to install it on as many machines as I want and as many times as I need to at home. I've got no problem with needing to have a cd/dvd in the drive (well, in general anyway).
I resent being treated like a criminal and being given 3/5 installations PERIOD, or take spore for example, one account per user PER GAME.
I change my hardware, format the OS, suffer failures etc, I don't expect to not use software I've bought due to another part of my pc changing, I also resent them saying I can't use DemonTools or similar, they have no right to dictate what I can and cannot use on my pc outside of the use of their actual product.
I do patch my games though so I don't need to use the CD alot of the time, much less hassle, but I pretty much always own a retail copy.
Pretty much this ^
I've never suffered from any problems from DRM aside from not being able to activate Bioshock because I didn't have broadband at the time (which wasn't mentioned by Amazon when I bought it). That's beside the point though; legitimate customers are being potentially disadvantaged while the pirates just get a cracked version with no DRM. It isn't working, and it's a risk.
To use an exaggerated example, what if the government decided everyone must be GPS tagged by law? Criminals would probably still remove them and suffer little consequence because they're criminals anyway, while law abiding citizens have to put up with a plastic bracelet on their ankle.
99.8% of Gamers Don't Care About DRM, Says EA
This. Also, I can't help but think EA is talking out of it's arse.
