GamePro DRM Analysis - Interview with Brad Wardell

By Island Dog on February 25, 2010 4:26:40 PM from

GamePro magazine did an analysis of Digital Rights Management (DRM) in PC games, and among the people interviewed for this story was Stardock CEO, Brad Wardell. This analysis takes an in-depth looks at piracy from several different views, including those of industry professionals and “pirates” themselves. This is a must read for anyone who enjoys PC gaming.

“Every copy protection scheme gets cracked, it's just a matter of time," Stardock CEO Brad Wardell tells GamePro. Through Stardock’s online games distribution service, Impulse, the company has spearheaded new DRM measures that respect the rights of the player.”

Read the full story at GamePro.com.

+444 Karma | 5 Replies

Best DRM measure: LOWER PRICES OF PC GAMES !!!

This ^^

Well, they lost a paying customer out of me. Way to fail Ubisoft.

There is really no point in going beyond a simple CD key. Anyone that downloads a crack for a CD key, can just as easily download a crack for a more complex system like AC2 ( The pirated version will probably just save the game to your own computer, which means pirates will be getting the better end of things. )

I disagree only slightly on best DRM measure being to lower prices...for me the best DRM is being an awesome studio, always producing extremely high quality games that are actually worth that cost, etc....for me, the only company that currently sits there though is Bioware. I gladly bought the CE for both DA and ME2, more out of support for Bioware than anything else...and I can't wait for SW:TOR.

Other thing I would think about is giving out open betas or demos. I really would love to see the game before spending 80 or 100$.

Anyway many people also buy games after they download pirated version to unlock multiplayer features like Co Op campaing which Hamachi is not able to provide. And belive me many more people would if the game prices were kept under 50-40$ mark.

Avalibility used to be also an issue, but now thanks to steam and impulse its easier to download original copy of a game then pirate on torrent or file sharing servers .

There is one think i love aboout steam and i think impulse could use it too: Sectin with games under 10 and 5$. There is quite a fev games that you an dig out and still fully enjoy like Serius Sam HD and many others.

Well, I rarely buy games (I maybe bought 2-4 games in my whole life). The reason I bought Demigod is to get the updates, which Stardock is constantly releasing. So I think updating the game and adding new features makes a huge difference at least for me, and is probably the only way you'll get me to buy something. Basically I think for games that aren't like the most popular in the whole world, adding a few features in updates goes a long way. Crackers usually just crack the original 1.0 version, but you can't get the updates, at least not without serious efforts. So I think Stardock is doing the right thing here.

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GamePro DRM Analysis - Interview with Brad Wardell