A possible setback for DRM in Europe

Posted Feb 6, 2014 16:34 UTC (Thu) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198)
In reply to: A possible setback for DRM in Europe by osma
Parent article: A possible setback for DRM in Europe

The funny thing is that as long as the purchasing process is convenient, people will pay by default. Look at a PC game store like gog.com which is always DRM-free, sure people who like collecting files put stuff up on bittorrent, but people who actually play the games pay for them and they make plenty of money. Most people are basically honest unless you give them a reason to think they've gotten a bad deal, like the world of MP3 file sharing before iTunes.

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A possible setback for DRM in Europe

Posted Feb 7, 2014 0:20 UTC (Fri) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

That may be true in some cases, but very much not true in others. In particular, the US military doesn't seem to have bought any games for their supercomputer, let alone 1700 copies of any games. This may be due to the difficulty of buying games, but it's more likely that simultaneously playing more than a few hundred video games while working in a government lab is not really a very desirable plan.

The "sell razors at a loss, charge a lot for blades" model works fine when the market wants to shave, but not so well when someone figures out how to build a house out of a million razors and no blades.

People who want games will buy them, despite being able to get them without buying them, but people who don't want games won't buy them no matter what.