[p2p-research] BioShock 2, Loaded Up With Annoying DRM That Pisses Off Fans, Cracked Immedi...

[Kevin Carson]

  Sent to you by Kevin Carson via Google Reader: BioShock 2, Loaded Up
With Annoying DRM That Pisses Off Fans, Cracked Immediately Anyway via
Techdirt by Mike Masnick on 2/9/10
When will the video gaming companies learn that DRM really only pisses
off your legitimate customers? Despite having seen this happen over and
over and over and over, it's happening again. With the release of
Bioshock 2, the decision was made to include annoying SecuROM DRM. Did
it do any good? Nope, on the day of release there's a cracked version
available immediately (thanks AJ, for sending this story in). Oddly,
that writeup uses this to suggest that the use of DRM made sense, but I
can't see how you get from there to here. The DRM didn't stop it from
getting cracked and being made available to anyone who wanted it. It
didn't stop any unauthorized access whatsoever. If they hadn't put the
DRM on it (which cost money both in licensing the technology and in
additional Q&A and customer support issues) they would be in exactly
the same position today with the app being available for unauthorized
download (except they'd have a bit more money). Oh yeah, they also
wouldn't have pissed off a bunch of customers. So what good did the DRM
do exactly?

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