Limited Installs as DRM

Welcome back to my blog.  Please ignore the mess while I try to clean up the neglect.  It’s been a while since my last post, so long one might even call the site dead.  Well I’m back now and I’ll be giving the site more life from now one.  In this first post back we will be talking about a new trend in video game DRM, limited installs.  There has been a lot of contriversy about this form of DRM over the past year, but is it really wrong?  My answer to this question would be yes.

Lets take a step back for a moment to understand what DRM was and worked in the past and what rights the consumer and the producer that were being inforced by it.  Originally DRM came in the form of codes on the end of pages of the game manual.  These would have to be entered periodicly to keep playing the game.  This was annoying but due to expensive photocopying at the time it effectively limited it to one copy of the game per manual being used at one time.

Next came CDs.  With the invention of CDs and their massive amounts of storage there was insentive to run games off the CDs.  This was because Hard disk space was still quite small at the time and so CDs gave the game designers alot of extra space to work with.  It had a second benefit though as a CD was proof of purchase.  We didn’t have CD burrners then. When CD burners did come out and disk space reached the point that it was possible to store many CD images on a hard disk game companies began to rely on more and more complicated methods of figuring out if a disk was real or not.

Both CDs and Manuals have certain properties as a form of DRM.  First they limit the program to one copy per purchase.  This is the same as say a hammer in the real world.  When you buy a hammer you get one and you can’t really copy it easily.  Like the hammer you can sell it to someone when you are done with it hence a used market for games can exist.  These are the traditional rights and limits of a copyright system.  That is you control the number of copies but you don’t have control of the post use marktet.

This lowers sales though as while used hammers eventually wear out (although not very fast if used right) software can last “forever”.  So software companies created limited installs.  In addition they use forced online registration to make sure that games are only installed on X number of systems.  The numbers usually picked for this is 5 installs and 2 systems.  This is like a hammer that can only be used by two people and if it is returned to the tool shed 5 times it vanishes.

This is not how copyright works in the real world.  The limited installs DRM is simply being used as a way to destroy the used software market.  Who would buy hammer that looked like it was about to brake?  The same goes for software.  The system also creates disk clutter as people refuse to uninstall the games and risk running out of installs.

There is some idea that we are being punished because pirates don’t stop pirating software.  Another way of stating that is, “If it stops piracy then the game companies should use it as we have clearly shown we cannot be trusted”.  The problem with this is that limited installs DRM doesn’t hinder pirates in the least.  This is because software pirates modify the programs themselves to avoid the entire activation process.  This means that the limited installs DRM systems punish only legitamate users.

Why only aim for legitamate user one may ask.  The answer is simple; to make more money.  The limited installs stop the used game market. This forces people who want to play the game legitamately to buy a new copy. In addition it stops people from trading or loaning games t0 friends.  Should you run out of installs though you can call the game companies to try to get a new one, although from the stories I’ve heard they basically put you on trial and the process is anything but fun and games.  This results in people pirating games they already own.

So this brings me back to the question about if limited installs are right or wrong.  They are a practice that hurts consumers, encourgages piracy, and seems to be modivated only by a desire to cause the death of the used game market.  The first two things are bad for the game industry and all three are bad for the consumer, as such the practice is a bad practice and will end up hurting the industy if not stopped.

As a final note I would like to point out that game companies seem to be using the limited install system on over the counter game and then using systems like steam without it.  This seems to be designed to herd people to these new systems, which also kill the used market and also have to bonus of killing local game stores allowing more of the profit to goto the game companies, but that is a story for another time.