How much is bad PR damaging your company due to poor DRM or licensing technology?
I hate to think how bad "222 customer reviews, with 194 of them giving the game one star" is affecting sales?
Why is this? Well EA use SecureROM a very restrictive DRM system that only allows 3 activations and crazily enough no way to de-activate so install 3 times and then you have to call EA.
NOW THATS TOTALLY NUTS!
IMHO this has already lead to millions in lost $$s and also massive expenses in a call center to handle the calls for more activation rights when people have PC issues or want to change their machine.
I just don’t understand this type of policy – it’s ridiculous and totally uncalled for.
It does not improve the piracy rate. Easy and fast de-activation should be part of every system as should a simple and easy way to move your license around as you wish – anywhere and anytime you want, no questions.
Quotes from an interesting post (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080908-gamers-fight-back-against-lackluster-spore-gameplay-bad-drm.html) by Ben Kuchera show an amazing backlash and I totally understand why! A gamer’s blunt commnet says it all:
"The DRM on this thing is less friendly than my recent colonoscopy—you get three installs. That’s it. No install returned for uninstallation, or anything else. You install it three times, then you’re out $50," he wrote. "I won’t rent my video games, EA."
You know you have screwed up big time when you hear this type of comment and also people are making their bad feelings known on Amazon.
"Review-bombing Amazon is a particularly nasty way of getting the point across as well; casual gamers who aren’t aware of this campaign may not bother to read the content of the reviews and only assume the game isn’t very good.
For developers, the primary goal of DRM is stopping piracy. The problem is that it does that job poorly, and, as always, it’s the legitimate customers who get stuck dealing with the insanity of having to call EA to ask for more installations after their three are used up. And while they’re on hold with EA support, the pirates are enjoying copies of a game that works, every time they want to play it, no matter what they do to their computer."
My advice to EA and everyone else is stop fighting your legitimate customers, think of them first, build something they can and will use without hindering their use of your product – this can have DRM built-in that’s friendly and useful.
If you don’t you will pay a very high price indeed – Bad PR, increased costs, lost customers and even more lost sales than the pirated copies you are trying to prevent. In many ways this type of DRM product/policy simply drives users into the hands of the pirates where they can get DRM free versions of your product out of desperation and annoyance.
THAT’S A DOUBLE WHAMMY – LOST ILLEGAL SALES ASA WELL AS LOST LEGAL ONES!
Don’t do it folks it’s madness and even EA will not get away with if for long.
