Why Most DRM Sucks, and How Valve Got Steam Right (sort of)

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management if you don't know what I'm talking about). Gaming DRM has been in the news with the release of Spore and its draconian 3 install limit. But it has been around for as long as you've had to have a CD in the drive to play a game, even though you did the full install.

I'm not going to get into whether DRM is morally right or wrong. The fact is it's here, most likely to stay.

So why exactly does most of it suck? Because the better it is at stopping unauthorized copying, the more it encourages piracy. This may seem counterintuitive, but consider that a cracked version of the game won't require a CD in the drive. It won't require you to authenticate it online, or call to beg customer support if you've already installed it several times. The cracked game won't require other software to run in the background. It won't suddenly stop working if some piece of software decides it doesn't like another installed program. And so on. DRM asks you to pay for a product that is inferior to the cracked, free version.

So to make DRM not suck, it has to somehow be part of a scheme that adds value instead of subtracting it. This is why Valve got steam right. Steam, despite some early growing pains, is a very cool platform. It creates a centralized community for playing a ton of different games. It allows you to buy games from the comfort of your own home (and often at a lower price than a boxed copy) then have them delivered as fast as your connection can handle it. No more rifling through massive collections of optical disks searching for the game you want to play, it's right there in the internets! No more crawling through poorly designed official websites for patches, steam will update games for you. No more CD keys to get lost!

In short, steam adds value and convenience, which is enough (imo) to make the steam version of a game worth the price premium over the cracked version.

This isn't to say that steam is without problems, however. Chief among these is that you do not actually own a steam game. Your "rights" to play it are contingent on Valve's servers being online, which is not a guarantee. You also cannot sell a steam game once you're done playing it.

The other issue is that other companies can still include their own DRM on top of steam. I was initially thrilled to find that bioshock was available through steam: here was a way to enjoy a great game without putting up with the draconian DRM included with the retail version of the game. Unfortunately, the securom shit still came with the steam version.

However, despite these problems, steam still serves as a great model for how a DRM scheme can be implemented without pissing off customers.

UPDATE (9/28/08): Holy shit, I really should refrain from writing posts late at night at the end of a sleep-deprived week. The horrible abortion of a second sentence from the third paragraph has been put out of its misery.