I’ve been a fan of SpoonyOne for a long time – this guys a riot! His latest video talks about a rather touchy subject – Securom… Personally, I’m at a loss to understand why any company would use this program given the amount of ire its name conjures. Is it because these companies are so out of touch? It seems a little unlikely, since most of them employ gamers on many levels. Geeze guys, at least call it something else!! Something like awesomeware, or hotchickmagnet, something with a positive spin!
Ok, I kid, but really, I wonder how many babies are being thrown out with the bathwater these days. Is it worth the anger and potential sales loss to include this kind of software? I can hear the masses of gamers screaming NO! but clearly companies see some sort of upside.
I think it’s always hard when a company implements a solution that is all upside for them and little or no upside for its customers. Normally when this happens the customers move on (as in the case of DRM for the music industry…amazon mp3 FTW!) and find what they want elsewhere, but the game companies all use some form of DRM so there’s really nowhere else for us to go.
It’s also a little perplexing as a gamer because I see less invasive methods already in the market. In my DJ life I’ve used a program called Ableton Live – this thing is not cheap ($499) so presumably they are more worried about piracy than you might be for a $55 game. Their method involves a one-time online registration, and allows you to use the program on up to two machines at a time per license. They also allow you to deauthorize a computer so that you can load it up again.
Pretty simple, non-invasive and once you do it, you don’t have to think about it again. This program has been around for awhile, so why aren’t we seeing something like this for gaming? I suspect that this system is harder on the company, but if you are getting paid to make games, shouldn’t you take the hard parts and leave the easy parts for your customers?
