Recently we've had a furor over the DRM measures implemented in Electronic Arts' Spore in an effort to deter the piracy of the title. The system the big publisher implemented was restrictive enough to cause issues for regular, paying users while the piracy on the title shot up as users also rated the game lower because of the DRM. It turned to be a public relations nightmare for the publisher and it quickly promised to offer solutions related to the strictness of the DRM measures.

World of Goo indie developer 2D Boy released its puzzler without any DRM and then, using the leaderboards and a bit of IP screening, tried to measure how much piracy affects its game. It came up with a piracy rate between 82% and 90%, depending on how you choose to count. Ricochet Infinity, which featured DRM, had the same piracy rate as World of Goo.

What could Electronic Arts learn from this? Pirates don't really care about DRM. Software based measures will always be defeated, given enough time and resources and paying customers end up financially supporting the development of more complicated DRM concepts while also suffering the collateral effects. After all, a pirated version of Spore is one that poses no problem, other than being unable to access the Sporepedia. Also, research seems to suggest that a pirated copy of a game is not actually a copy that would have been sold if piracy had not existed. Still, big publishers do not seem to understand the fact that they lose a lot when implementing DRM.

2D Boy is not biter. There's an understanding that fighting against piracy takes too many resources and is not worth it. Creating great games, maybe with lower price points, with better gameplay and making sure that a paying customer has an advantage over a pirate (a code, usable one time, to download extra content or a better multiplayer weapon) is the way to go. Not DRM.