DRM-free games no worse off with piracy

2D Boy has decided to estimate the piracy rate of its DRM-free PC game "world of goo" to try determining what impact DRM is having on game piracy.  This game provides an optional checkbox to submit game scores to 2D Boy’s online server.  Each submitted score includes an IP address and unique player ID, so by dividing the number of sales by the number of unique IP addresses in the database, they found that there were around 10 unique IP addresses to every sale of the game.  This gives a rough piracy rate estimate of 90%, excluding those who chose not to submit scores online.

As some users have dynamic IP addresses, multiple PCs behind a gateway using one exposed IP address and so on, the game maker carried out more calculations to try improving the accuracy of their piracy figure.  By looking at the number of unique IP addresses and unique player IDs, they found that there was an average of 1.3 unique IP addresses per player and that each player has 1.15 average profiles per installation.  76% of players contacted the server from only 1 IP, 16% from 2 IPs, 5% from 3 IPs, 3% from 4 IPs and around 3% from 5 or more IPs, which shows that most game players have a stable IP address.  They estimate that an average user installs the game on 1.25 different computers with different IPs.  With all these figures, their calculation brings the piracy rate to 82%, which still does not take into account users who chose not to submit scores to the online score board. 

So, it’s not really a surprise that game makers think that the best way to turn pirates into paying customers is to add DRM to games.  However, a previous study by Russell Carrol (marketing director at Reflexive) found that its game Ricochet Infinity has an estimated 92% piracy rate despite using DRM, slightly her than 2D Boy’s original estimate.  Like 2D Boy, they based their estimate on those who used the game online.  When Reflexive tried strengthening its DRM to stop cracks, keygens, etc. from working, they calculated that for every 1000 piracy attempts they stopped, they got one additional sale, so it turns out that the vast majority of users who pirate the game would not buy it even if they were unable to get the game without paying.

In Reflexive’s study where they carried out 4 DRM upgrades, they found that the biggest improvement in sales came from their first fix that made existing keygens obsolete and plugged loopholes in shareware games where users were able to use exploits to turn off the DRM or restart the trial usage clock back to day 1.  Their second DRM fix involved just making existing keygens obsolete, which had no impact on downloads, but sales decreased slightly.  In their third DRM fix where cracks were made obsolete, there was no effect on sales or downloads.  Finally, when they carried out a DRM upgrade to make keygens game-specific, sales went up 13% and downloads fell 16%.  In the end, it worked out that for every 1,000 pirated copies they stopped, they got one extra sale.

It would be interesting to see what improvement DRM brought to sales with other game makers, since going by the piracy rate in these two reports, it seems like DRM is only a waste of time and money, which could have been spent on improving the games themselves, since better quality games are likely to attract more sales than stronger copy protection.