A question to Devs regarding consumers' behaviour and DRM

[rakenan]

Relatively few people object to DRM on general principles, IMHO. People object to DRM that screws up so they cannot play the game or otherwise gets in the way and makes the game worse. Steam may be mostly a glorified DRM wrapper for games, but it is a well developed, stable DRM wrapper for games, that at least in my experience never gets in the way of games. Steam also has the benefit of being a fairly lightweight game shopping and downloading venue, so it's DRM with a spoonful of sugar.

It's the difference between a store having those metal detector gates when you go in or out, and a store wanting to do a full body cavity search when you go in or out. They are both searching you for stolen property, but one is being, if not polite and respectful, at least unobtrusive.

[Loktofeit]

Also, with Steam, unlike most DRM, you don't need to be connected to the net to play your games. It's not intrusive and it doesn't affect playing the game. It's basically not the best gauge of acceptance of DRM because there are so many positives that come with it.

Here's a good article from Destructoid that explains the general feeling of a lot of Steam users rather well :
http://www.destructoid.com/why-i-would- ... 8410.phtml

[FanofGrimrock]

The convenience of Steam can't be understated, and at the 12.50-15.00 range the game is very much in "impulse purchase" territory. Also, I would imagine that seeing LoG featured on Steam's News or Store front page was many buyers' first time exposure to the game. It probably never occurred to them that they could go elsewhere for it.

This was exactly my experience and pretty much the reason i bought the game on steam. Although even though I'm now aware there is a stand alone version, I'm still not entirely sure I wouldn't have gotten it from Steam anyway. Steam's DRM as has been stated is really unobtrusive and I don't think they ask too much with it. Their DRM is as basic as it gets and it seems to be a straight forward way of managing the digital distribution of games, while as a customer I don't feel that they are compromising my gaming experience.

steam users are more likely to use steam, I guess also it's a better type of DRM than Ubisoft

This is very true, while i might be fine with Steam's DRM, that doesn't mean I'm ok with obtrusive DRM. I bought the game "From Dust" from Ubisoft (using steam) and I don't know why they felt they needed to add another layer on top of Steam's DRM. All my steam games I can play just by clicking a button, except for "From Dust" which is now a glorified screen saver. I doubt I'd be very inclined to EVER buy another game from Ubisoft unless they made some sort of public anouncement stating they're over the whole "support piracy by crippling legitimate customers use of software" stance so many big companies seem to advocate.

I'd be incredibly frustrated if AH had included such DRM with LoG, but unlike "From Dust" LoG is actually a good game, which is another matter.

TL:DR
- Unobtrusive DRM that doesn't cripple the customers ability to use their software is fine by me
- Steam has unobtrusive DRM
- Ubisoft is a great example on how to get it wrong

- It all depends on the type of DRM

[Red Wyrm]

My Legend of Grimrock was bought straight from the wonderful folks who made it, but I still activated my key on Steam. Admittedly, this was for the achievements and because I'm lazy and Steam is an easy way to keep my games in one place and sorted how I want.

On the other topic of discussion, I will not purchase any PC game that Ubisoft publishes until they do away with their paranoid, inconvenient, invasive, asinine, Neanderthalish method of DRM. If I buy it on Steam, you know it's legit, so take your DRM and shove it up your...

Sorry about the Ubirage. Anyway, I have no issue with Steam other than their entire lack of human customer service (an email with my hopes and prayers attached doesn't count).

Almost Human = Almost Perfect. You folks are one of the reasons I still have faith that good games can still be published, let alone without a giant publisher jerking you about.

End rant/ramble.

[Saice]

At this point I barely view steam as DRM and more as crazy easy way to buy and install games. Heck I can do it from my phone and it will be installed on my pc by the time I get home.

Steam is easy it does not muck up my pc or my game. Multilayer games it makes hooking up with my friends really easy even tells me when they start up a game. It has a decent chat system which is pretty much the only chat I use outside of Google chat.

Most games you can flag for offline play.

Sales.. sooo many sales. OH look 75% off heck yeah.

As far as DRM goes thats just something that comes along with the package and really does not phase me when it never has caused me a lick of trouble in the years Ive been using steam.

Oh auto patching... did I say that. Yeah games update on there own while I'll surfing the net doing other stuff. There is just about zero negative things to say about steam.

[Disasterrific]

I bought from AH but immediately registered and downloaded via steam. Achievements, auto-update, community chat and features, easy install, easy access to your game library from a second/new computer, convenient and secure shopping... It's everything legal online distribution should be and more.

I understand people may look at these things with suspicion but Steam does pretty much everything right in making it easy and fun to go digital. Maybe even too easy - there's an impulse purchase or two on there that I probably shouldn't have bought.

UbiSoft... after shelling out $50 for the pre-order of the ghastly bad Heroes 6 I no longer feel bad about having downloaded 4 and 5.

[clocknova]

Has anyone even checked to see if the Steam version even requires Steam to be running? A surprising number of games I've purchased on Steam will run just fine if you launch their executables directly from the steamapps folder. This tends to be more often the case with indie and older titles. For example, I recently picked up The Witcher: Enhanced Edition on Steam, and I copied it out of the Steam folder directly to my applications folder and I run it from there without even thinking about Steam. Someone should see if this works for Grimrock.

[lowzei]

I bought directly from this site because...

a) It's DRM free (if you want you can use the Steam keys on top).
b) The devs get more money this way.
c) It also gives me the opportunity getting an OS X version.

The Humble Store, like the Humble Indie Bundles, are great alternatives to all the hassle you can experience especially in a EA and Ubisoft driven world. I hope that more and more Indie-devs will be using it. There are a number of issues with DRM and also Steam isn't free of problems as for instance the OS X client demonstrates or recently the inability to play games via Steam in Germany due to some technical issues has shown.

So $50-$60 for some DRM mess vs. $10-$20 for a great indie titel, no brainer where i put my money.

Being digital distributed, DRM free and cross platform are great aspects of some games today.

[rmh]

I made it a principle to never buy anything with DRM.

There are several games I would legally buy RIGHT NOW if they were available without Steam, but well, if these people don't want my money...

Accordingly I preordered LoG from GOG to make sure Steam gets not a penny of my money (assuming that, had it bought directly from AH, Steam would still get some money for the Steam key).

[Lanessar]

I used to play the old EOB and Dungeon Master games back in the day. So, when I saw this game advertised on Steam two weeks ago, I was intensely interested. Luckily, I ran into a thread on the Steam forums while researching which stated that it could be purchased directly from Almost Human, giving more to the developer.

At this point, I hunted down the website and purchased direct. The extras were also nice. On Indie games like this, I'm very supportive of the developers, as without them, the gaming landscape is dull and very repetitive. While I enjoy titles like prototype or Darksiders, the gameplay is (on a base level) very similar. There hasn't been much revolution, really since FPSes have come onto the scene. I know people believe that the gameplay of many action games or RPGs are different because all of the abilities or pushing different keys to activate them, but quite honestly, they aren't. This throwback to the old days of gaming actually is.

As far as DRM, Steam's is almost negligible (save for the above-mentioned Ubisoft stuff), so I frequently purchase games there, and quite often, I can get excellent deals (saving some much-needed bucks). Had I not decided to look into the game a bit more to make sure it wasn't a bug-ridden PoS which should never have seen the light of day, I would have probably purchased it directly off of Steam without a second thought.

I have had to download a cracked/pirated game on three occasions to get by draconian DRM measures to play a game I had purchased, so I tend to be wary of DRM in general.