For people who have money for games but don't want to pay, the presence of DRM matters very little. 99% of games are usually trivially cracked, especially if you are willing to wait for some days or weeks after launch (an important sales window for the publishers).

For people who have money for games and are willing to pay, DRM turns out to be maybe an inconvenience, but definitely a guarantee that they don't actually own the game. The game can be taken away or even just modified in a way that invalidates the reason people paid in the first place.

“Important” is an understatement. Even for long-term success stories, the first three or four months often accounts for half of a game’s revenue.

And, despite so many people theorizing that “pirates don’t have money and wouldn’t pay anyway”, in practice big publishers wait in dread of “Crack Day” because the moment the crackers release the DRMless version, the drop in sales is instant and dramatic.

We've been exposed to what seems like FUD about piracy killing sales since approximately forever - you wouldn't dOwnLoAd a cAR - but seemingly zero actual evidence to date.

The best public report I can find is https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S18759... which shows a median difference 20% of revenue for games where Denuvo is cracked “quickly” but also no significant difference if Denuvo survives for at least 3 months.

What I’ve observed from internal reports from multiple companies is that, if you don’t assume an outlier blockbuster game, major game studios’ normal plan is to target a 10% annual profit margin with an expected variance of +/-20% each year.

So, assuming you have a solidly on-target game, DRM not just being there, but surviving at least a couple months is the difference between “10% profit moving the whole company forward on schedule” vs “10% loss dragging the whole company down” or “30% profit, great success, bonuses and hiring increases” depending on the situation.

Outside of games, I have seen many personnel reports on Hacker News over the years from small-time ISVs that they find it exhausting they need to regularly ship BS “My Software version N+1” just as an excuse to update their DRM. But, every time they do, sales go back up. And, the day the new crack appears on Pirate Bay, sales drop back down. Over and over forever. Thus why we can’t just buy desktop software anymore. Web apps are primarily DRM and incidentally convenient in other ways.

As an aside, I find this kind of behavior on the part of companies rather irritating. It's like, if you want people to believe that something affects your sales, you need to publicly release the sales data (and do so in a way that people will trust). Otherwise there's no reason for anyone to believe you're not just making stuff up.

They just need law makers to support IP/DRM laws that allow them to continue to operate. (I made games for a while at a small studio; I understand some of the pressures that studios are under and don’t support piracy of games.)

And they can get that support without publicly releasing detailed time-series sales data.

What change would their CFO see on their spreadsheets from this massive benefit?

I've been saying that for decades at this point. Web apps trade post-release support issues with slightly higher development costs upfront (dealing with browser compatibility), but the real kicker is that the company is now in complete control of who gets to use what and when.

MMOs show the same thing. There are plenty of multiplayer games with centralized servers that are effectively impossible to pirate. But subscription based MMOs score a clear win in terms of revenue.

(It turns out free to play gacha is even more lucrative than subscription, but I digress.)

So how did they measure the difference? They released one title with Denuvo then erased everyone's memories about it and released it again without?

Because if you compare different titles I don't know what you base that percentage on.

Notice that GP amounts to "well I can't actually provide any evidence, but if I could then here's what it would look like".

They have very high unemployment among young people, might be related.

then i had some money and i bought more games than i had time to play.*

now i neither buy or play games.

*the point is that at this point, there is no point wasting time trying to pirate games. every humble bundle. every steam sale. u just click and its yours. you dont even have time to play. why waste time pirating?

Yes, but if it was impossible to pirate, you'd still have no money to buy the games, so in the grand scheme of things nothing would change.

I’m a Diablo and StarCraft fan because of pirated games played during my childhood when I couldn’t convince my parents to let me buy them.

Not making that mistake twice. I imagine this is one of the reasons that Steam is so successful. No surprises and near zero friction. Why risk going elsewhere as a consumer?

Later I chose to provide my credit card for convenience. As far as I know I could have instead used gift cards or prepaid cards.

Regardless, there's also an issue of trust. I might choose to provide PII to a large central marketplace that has a good reputation but providing it to each individual producer seems highly questionable.

Really? When we were pirating games off each other as teenagers in the early 80s, we absolutely knew we were getting games for free that the publishers wanted us to pay for.

Can you share some examples of instances where the legal route is too difficult? I haven't felt this way in a long time. What are the changes necessary for you to purchase?

Not having to deal with Ubisoft/similar game launchers frequently forgetting my login, nagging to update itself, etc. is one reason I might choose to run a cracked copy.

I'm totally in the same boat; I've not bought several Ubisoft-games I was interested in playing because their launcher is such a cancer (if anyone from Ubisoft is on HN: What on earth are you guys smoking?).

I'm too lazy to bother with pirating games these days (I have more games than time to play them anyway), but younger me would've certainly went to the high seas to circumvent their ridiculous insult of a game launcher.

Alternatively, the card is rejected because "fraud prevention", see e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46424584

Or the game is not available in my "account's region", which is chosen arbitrarily based on God knows what.

In 2017/2018, they were in the position where MPAA and RIAA were saying: "Piracy costs us billions; Google must pay" + they had European Parliament on their ass.

Google financed that 'independent' study to support the view "Piracy is not harmful and encourages legal spend".

So the credibility of "independent" studies, is something to consider very carefully.

I am cautious about the conclusion, though. It seems clear there is a spectrum from “unscrupulously pirate everything” to “consume legitimately after pirated discovery”, and quantification is necessary.

You really need something way better than some shoddy survey to counter the obvious fact that price matters

And then much later being a university student, I had money of my own and have bought games I liked. Never pirated to save money. And you know, GOG came along, and I was thrilled having the old games from my childhood again as digital legal copy. With manuals and addons. I bought 20+ old DOS games I already knew. Better late than never.

A: I pirated a game 25 years ago and played it after school

B: I didn't

which cases do you think will make me more likely to buy more versions of that game later?

C. You didn't pirate, but played because your friends were deeply into it, so you skipped buying lunch to save money and pay for the game (pirating was hard for this specific DRM). You bought it at a discount on sale (remember, the price isn't fixed?). That feeling of overcoming hardship and friendship fused into a very positive experience, making it 10 times more likely for you to buy the next version than in A. or B. The overall likelihood still was tiny because now you have a family and don't have time to play, so that and

D. Considering the amount of uncertainty (your game company will go out of business in 25 years) the value of your "more likely" is $0

Edit: missed a word

I don't think it's required to be making some universal point when you clearly respond to the argument put forward in the post you reply to, do you?

When a product is providing value, and it's easier and more convenient to buy than pirating it, then people will buy it.

Netflix killed piracy until the platform fragmented and now you need half a dozen subs to watch everything. Expectedly, free streaming sites are now better than ever.

There used to be (maybe still is?) a period where a small number of publishers had DRM for the first few weeks, and removed it once it was cracked.

Just make your games a donation model if you really believe this. Or lets put up a version of Steam where all the games are free cracked copies of the game and see how it affects sales.

People pay precisely because they dont want to deal with the hassle pf pirating

Half the time I try to sign up for any of these services I get blocked for fraud because I’m in one country, my billing address in another and my bank in a third. Oh, and when something does work, it only works for a while until they lock the whole account with a bunch of paid content on it.

I've not had issues with Steam, though my Steam journey was early into online purchasing adventures

Yes, now imagine if we just removed the barrier to piracy completely. An easy to use client just like Steam, except all the games are free cracked copies.

There is no way thats not going to drop sales.

A free Steam full of certified pirates games with official games updates would obviously drop sales but this is moot as it will never exist.

Without those, you'd have sites full of pirated game downloads easily found through search engines. DMCA takedowns force those sites into shady corners of the internet, making them harder to find and riskier for the average user. And (effective) DRM makes users have to wait for a crack which may take weeks or months.

The result is that it's easier for the average person to just log into Steam/Epic/PSN/eShop and spend $60 to play immediately.

I'm sure there are exceptions but the usual claims take the observation about a minor speed bump and add a bunch of made up BS to justify consumer hostile practices.

Notice that there's nothing stopping a centralized darknet platform that vettes torrents from popping up. But as far as I know no one feels like bothering. That should give you some idea just how low the bar is here.

That's literally the situation today. It is that easy. People still mostly don't pirate games though.

You spend $60 on games? I just add them to my wish list at launch and buy them when they're 30, 20...

I have more unplayed games than time anyway.

Almost all games these days are basically like a work in progress, so if you pirate them then the game doesn't stay up to date.

Pirating games is just really inconvenient compared to tv/movies/music.

Which, as a mod author and consumer, isn't always a bad thing. More than once, I had to drop just enjoying a game, to patch my published mods because some update that is automatically pushed out, and people have to accept in order to even boot a single-player game. Why? I don't know, but it's really annoying sometimes.

Besides, nowadays cracking groups release smaller patches too, so while you might not get the update the same hour it was published on Steam, usually within a week or two the same group that uploaded the original release, has released another patch.

If the deal is providing entertainment for a price then why the publisher feels entitled to keeping the money if the entertainment didn't happen?

That's the basis of most of the Steam's business.

i don't pirate anymore because i have a job now.

Now I'll pirate if providers make it hard to do things right. I know I never "have" to pirate, but my wife once "bought" a movie on Amazon. A few years later, she was no longer able to access it. And she didn't get refunded for her purchase. So guess what? Screw you Amazon, I downloaded that movie and saved it on my home media server.

Another example, I was playing a mobile game that allowed me to watch ads to get a bonus. I'd always say no because they use one of the shittiest ad provider in existence. Then they started showing me ads even if I elected not to get the bonus, with a fun "pay $20 for ad free forever!"

Well screw you game dev, I'm pirating the ad-free version of your game.

> Consumers are pissed at the lack of value.

I think this is true, but I don't think this is necessarily causing piracy. Why would people want to pirate a shitty game?

My tolerance for software like that is very limited. It’s almost an immediate long-press and uninstall.

They're all free to play and their design is fundamentally affected by this. You end up either paying with time or with money.