Witcher 2 Devs say they’ll never use DRM again
Over on joystiq, there’s an article about the Witcher 2 developers and the future, non-use of DRM. They get it, for the most part. DRM is restrictive crap and isn’t necessary. It’s also a complete turnaround from CD Projekt’s former stance on the situation.
“Every subsequent game we will never use any DRM anymore, it’s just over-complicating things,”
“DRM does not protect your game,” Iwinski told Joystiq after the presentation. “If there are examples that it does, then people maybe should consider it, but then there are complications with legit users.”
This is what people have been saying for years. Every single time you stick some sort of DRM bullshit into your game, it’s the legitimate users that get screwed over, not the people who pirate the game.
What CD Projekt Red CEO Marcin Iwinski doesn’t understand, however, is exactly how pirating works.
“We release the game. It’s cracked in two hours, it was no time for Witcher 2. What really surprised me is that the pirates didn’t use the GOG version, which was not protected. They took the SecuROM retail version, cracked it and said ‘we cracked it’ — meanwhile there’s a non-secure version with a simultaneous release. You’d think the GOG version would be the one floating around.”
While GOG don’t have any kind of DRM protection, this is not what release groups are about. They don’t take games, crack them and then re-upload them. Scene groups are about being the first to release a game and cracking a game for the fun of it. The “oh no the game fell off a truck and we have a retail version to crack” is how the scene operates and Witcher 2 was actually released by the scene groups a week before the official release date. GOG may not have DRM, but it was also only released on release day.
Every single NFO that is included with a cracked game says, “If you like the game, support the companies that make them. What every developer, studio, and publisher needs to learn and understand is that cracking games is far more about pride and recognition than anything else. Once the understand this, they, too, will know why DRM is garbage and only hurts the paying customer.
