Thursday, December 3, 2009

Bloodrayne 2

http://www.gamedaily.com/games/bloodrayne-2/pc/game-features/gogcom-adds-bloodrayne-2-to-drm-free-game-line-up/

It seems that the latest trend in video games is to be three letters short: no D, R, or M. Digital Rights Management has long been the standard of keeping goods that would appear to the public in a digital format, such as music, movies, e-books and video games, to the user who purchased it and only that user. While some forms of DRM have been stricter than others, ranging from a gentle suggestion that you kindly not share your iTunes downloaded music with all of your friends, to a very strict and nearly unhackable code that ads a digital watermark to music. PC games have been relying on DRM to keep them from being pirated at an even faster rate, but this has been slowly going the way of the flighless dodo bird.

More and more new media sources are recognizing DRM as obsolete, and an inefficient way of keeping users from sharing media over the internet. This is especially pertinant for PC games, which have a fanbase that dabbles in destroying anti-piracy measures for fun.

Mass Effect 2 DRM

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3177087

It was revealed on November 25th that the popular game, Mass Effect 2 will come to PC with barely any Digital Rights Management (DRM) at all. According to the article from 1up.com (which focuses more on the PC system requirements than this breaking news for the way digital rights for video games will be handled, but what can you expect from an online gaming magazine) Mass Effect 2 will continue in a recent trend of relaxed DRM, relaying the statement from Bioware community director Chris Priestly

"The boxed/retail PC version of Mass Effect 2 will use only a basic disk check and it will not require online authentication. This is the same method as Dragon Age: Origins. Digital versions will use the retailer's protection system."

The first new media company to begin recognizing DRM as a failed experiment and cutting back on it was Apple, but it seems that many other media producers are following this pattern. It seems that the question soon will be less "How much DRM?" and more "What will replace DRM to protect digital goods?"