Can You Still Say DRM Is Effective When It Creates Security Vulnerabilities, Performance Degradation, Incompatibilities, System Instability And 'Other Issues'? [Update]

from the seems-like-a-stretch dept

Modplan alerts us to a developer at Wolfire games who wrote a blog post claiming that DRM can be "effective," and giving the example of StarForce's DRM on Splinter Cell 3: Chaos Theory, which supposedly took over a year to crack. But, for this to happen, there were all sorts of problems and even lawsuit threats over people reporting on those problems:

StarForce 3.0 used a plethora of controversial methods to achieve this, most notably, it secretly installed mandatory device drivers. This obviously was highly controversial and there were many reports of new security vulnerabilities, performance degredation, incompatibilities, system instability, and other issues. As an aside, StarForce actually threatened to sue BoingBoing and CNET for reporting on these issues.

Massive consumer issues aside, it worked.

Wait, what? You can't just toss aside those massive consumer issues. "Security vulnerabilities, performance degradation, incompatibilities, system instability, and other issues," does not sound like it "worked" at all. It sounds like the exact opposite. It pissed off and potentially put at risk tons of paying customers. That's not DRM "working" -- though, that is how DRM works. Anyone who reads about "security vulnerabilities, performance degradation, incompatibilities, system instability, and other issues," and thinks that's an example of a system to be emulated, is not someone who you should ever trust to do business with. I'd consider that fair warning to stay away from Wolfire games. As pointed out in the comments, we may have been too quick to judge on this one. Wolfire makes it clear they don't believe that DRM makes sense. The folks from Wolfire also reached out and pointed out that this post was actually a small "correction" to an anti-DRM piece written earlier. As for DRM, Wolfire makes it clear: "We have never used DRM, we hate DRM, and we never will use DRM!" On top of that, they "encourage all other game developers to remove DRM." My apologies for jumping to conclusions on that one. Ok, now go support Wolfire Games...

Filed Under: drm, effective, security, software, video games, vulnerabilities