There’s been so much talk lately about Portal 2 and the Steam platform coming to the Mac.

And before there was the announcement of a new map for Left 4 Dead 2.

And there’s a constant stream of substantial updates to Team Fortress 2.

But Half-Life 2 Episode Three has just kind of vanished…  Which is kind of strange, because Half-Life is really what put Valve on the map.

Granted, it took them forever to roll out Team Fortress 2…  And that turned out to be a kickass game…  But we’re not talking about a stand-alone title here – this is supposed to be Episode Three, not Half-Life 3.

Penny Arcade has a comic up today in response to Ubisoft’s new DRM…

And Tycho has some commentary…

Visit any thread regarding the topic, and I mean any thread, and it won’t be three posts until someone raises the Goddamned Jolly Roger and says they’ll pirate the game as a gesture consistent with some comprehensive ur-morality they’ve ginned up, one where stealing things is alright provided they were very angry when they did it. It’s entirely possible that you don’t like being spoken to in this way, but somebody has to get this done.  What Ubisoft is doing here is Draconian – I don’t mean those lizard dudes, I’m talking about laws which are characterized by their severity. Before they eventually dismantle it, and it will be dismantled, it will have achieved exactly the opposite of their intention. But what I won’t tolerate from rational beings is the idea that you don’t understand why they’re doing it.

Every avenue of convenience for the user is also a vector of exploitation.

They have given up.

As fiery rhetoric goes, this sucks. It doesn’t have that revolutionary quality that rallies the faithful. The trouble is that this dialogue between pirates and publishers, one which was always characterized by falsehood and ill-will, has ceased to exist in this case. A maneuver this extreme means that they’re finished talking altogether: this mechanism is their response, the final word. Only it’s impossible to get the final word here in The Cloud. Ever.

The problem, ultimately, is that the game publishers just don’t get it.

Video game pirates largely fall into three different categories…

1. Folks who’d like to buy the game, but can’t really pay for it right now.
2. Folks who aren’t going to buy the game because of some perceived slight.
3. Folks who wouldn’t buy the game, ever, and they’re pirating it just because they can.

You can convince the first group to buy your game by adding value.  Make them feel like their money is well spent.  Give some special perks to the folks who actually pay for the game.  The trick is to make them want to spend their money, rather than making them need to spend their money.

You can largely eliminate group two by not pissing people off.  Sounds stupid, I know, but it’s true.  If you don’t over-charge for a game…  And don’t virtually require your players to invest in tons of DLC…  And don’t restrict their ability to play with invasive DRM…  Then you’re more likely to have people who are willing to hand you money.

Group three isn’t going anywhere.  They’d probably pirate a free copy of Solitaire.  They’re just pirating the stuff because they can.  They may hide this behind some kind of anti-copyright screed…  But that’s bullshit.  They’re stealing stuff because it isn’t nailed down.

Obviously, from the publisher’s standpoint, they don’t want any pirates to exist at all.  So they try to implement some DRM…

Which will not eliminate anyone in group three at all.  They’re still going to pirate the stuff.  It might take an extra day or two to crack the new DRM, but they’ll pirate it anyway.  The guys in group three simply are not going to hand you money for your game – ever.

If your DRM is lightweight enough, that’s the end of it.

But if you’ve got some more substantial DRM you’ll probably pick up a few extra paying customers from group one.  Not because you correctly made them want to spend their money…  But because you made them need to spend their money.  It’s too hard to pirate the game, and they’d really rather be paying for it anyway, so they’ll go ahead and pay.

Of course now you’re annoying people with your DRM…  It’s invasive enough that people are being forced to do things that they don’t want to.  So you’ll lose some paying customers to group two.

And as you make your DRM more and more invasive, in an attempt to reduce piracy, you’re going to keep creating more pirates in group two.  Folks who normally would have happily paid for the game are going to pirate it as some kind of political statement.  You’ll pretty much eliminate everyone in group one just because they’ll be angry enough to pirate the game regardless of their finances.

The real solution is not to throw in even more restrictive DRM…  The real solution is to make people want to pay for your game.

You need to turn out a quality title that people enjoy playing.  You need to set the price at a point where folks don’t feel like they’re being ripped off.  You need to dangle some kind of carrot in front of the folks pondering piracy anyway – some kind of added value that only registered users can get.

And you need to realize that no matter what you do, you are not going to get rid of the folks in group three.  There are folks who are going to steal from you no matter what you do, just because they can.  And you need to just accept that, call it a cost of doing business, and move on.  Because the only way to get rid of group three entirely is to close your doors and stop making video games.