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Chris Delay, co-founder of Introversion Software, made public some very interesting thoughts about Copy Protection DRM (Digital Rights Management) and piracy. First of all, Chris believes that one of the most important things to have in mind regarding this delicate problem is separating the developers rights to protect themselves, and the low quality of current DRM
solutions.
Regarding the first issue, developers' protection rights, it is indeed something most of the people should agree on - everybody has the right to protect their work, no matter if it means music, movies or video games. And that is not the problem.
The actual problem is the second issue, regarding the low quality DRM or bad implementation - things that might, at worse, mess up your system. This means that people who buy original products want an almost-invisible DRM, unlike most of them, which are extremely visible.
One thing Chris points a finger at is the DRM of single player games. Unlike with the multiplayer ones, he believes these games should have no DRM and not rely on retail releases, but on digital distribution through channels like Steam. Because game piracy is, after all, a big problem everybody knows about and it is hampering sales all over the world. For example, Chris declares that there were 10 times more pirated copies of Darwinia than those legally sold. Which means, as he explains, at least double the amount of income from sales (not 10 times because it is very possible than not all the pirating players would have bought the product, anyway).
Unlike other game developers, Chris has a neutral attitude regarding game-pirates and things like that, considering that it is needed to "rename 'pirate users' to 'customers who've yet to be convinced', and consider the pirate copies that will inevitably appear as extended demos of our games." Of course, that is still related to multiplayer gaming, because the pirated games can't be fully enjoyed (multiplayer, that is) but it is still a delicate problem. Because, even though, nobody likes it and encourages it, it still exists. But according to Chris, this problem can be solved.
And piracy, after all, is something to be dealt with as a whole, not on separate battlefields: "We can't complain that people copy our games, then go home and comfort ourselves by watching series 2 of the West Wing on DivX", Chris said.
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