This what a friend of mine posted on FB. It brings a new perspective in what Microsoft may be trying to attempt. It is a long read, I know. He pretty much tried to explain why Microsoft is trying this approach and how it can become the "Steam" of consoles. Starts here: Hate it, or tolerate it, DRM is here to stay. First things first, if you don't know me well, you might not know that I am a gamer. I love games, I make games, and I work for a major mobile games developer (GREE Inc. And no, my opinions do not in any way reflect theirs. I don't even know what GREE's opinion on DRM is...). With the massive, raging hate getting pile on Microsoft for their DRM in the X1, and all the calls that "Sony won" because the PS4 doesn't implement any, I figured I'd give a little in-industry perspective for people who care to read. I'll admit, a lot of this is "everybody knows, but doesn't think about" kind of info, but I think it's important to step back and look at the bigger picture. I know it's a long read, so I really appreciate your time, and would love any feedback you want to give. DRM is a nasty little phrase. It's rife with emotion, and evokes a feeling of being denied because essentially, that's what it's all about. Players despise it because they feel like their rights are being taken away. They bought the thing, they should have control, right? So, if gamers HATE DRM so much, why does it persist? Is it just greed? Well, sort of in a round about way. I haven't been in the industry all that long, but motivations become very apparent pretty quickly. Everyone complains, oh they're just being greedy, DRM isn't necessary and doesn't do anything. Then you hear about games like Crysis 2 getting leaked early and it gets downloaded almost 4 million times. A simple google search comes up with results like these: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/10-pirated-games-time/ Now, as gamers we know a fair amount of this is files getting bounced back and forth, or people who could never afford to pay for the game in the first place, or even people intending to buy but who want to check out the game first, or finally people who paid for the game but for some reason need another copy (disc broke or some-such). However, I guarentee you that an executive or a shareholder seeing those numbers would shit a brick. That's important. It's more important than most gamers realize. I've seen managers shut down and lay off entire teams simply because a game doesn't seem to be selling well enough, so they put it on the back burner. For companies that only have one major franchise, they can't do that, so seeing things like this are very alarming to them. I feel confident in saying we've all pirated a game or two (or possibly more :D) over the years, and I know I've met a few people who exclusively pirate. It's something people do, and it's not going to stop by whining about it. The general gaming community despises DRM, and has a tendency to bash on any company trying to implement it (Read: EA). So why is it still growing? Why do companies, especially big ones, insist on it, despite the bad press? Well, the consensus is money, but the reality is security. Executives want to KNOW that they have control over the product their company is producing, and honestly that's not unreasonable. We're not dealing with traditional goods here, but digital media. And digital media (movies, games, some other software) naturally incentivizes sharing. If someone buys a $60 game, then lends it to a friend, the company received effectively half value for that product. And to them, there is no difference between a consumer selling their game to GameStop, and just giving it away to someone. If it happens a couple of times, no big deal. When half the games sales are used, that is a big deal. Sure, it won't sink EA, but it can really impact a medium or small studio. So what to do? Well, there are three prevailing strategies in the industry right now. First is Free To Play (F2P). It started on mobile, and is becoming more main-stream every day. The new Command & Conquer is implementing it, and we all know how successful it's been for League of Legends. This model ensures the developer gets full value, since the pirate would have to pirate every little micro-transaction to steal the full value. Considering how much more difficult that is than just downloading a cracked version of a game, it's pretty rare. Second strategy is in game DRM. Login accounts, server syncs, only online play, things of that nature. These are the things that piss gamers off the most. We feel like we're being punished for someone else's jack-assery. On top of that, none of these DRM schemes have really been proven to work. Pirates pretty universally find a way around it, remove it, or spoof it. Anyone who's pirated games has seen DRM heavy games up for download, so what was the point? These schemes rarely work, and most developers implement them reluctantly, hoping for some kind of control. Third is to use a DRM locked platform to host the game. Now, there are good and bad examples of this. We have platforms like the iOS marketplace, which offers pretty restricted access. It has a single point of entry (their app store), it checks the device itself for content you don't have rights to, and can sync and wipe your pirated (, or even home-brew) apps. We have services like Origin and Games for Windows Live that allow direct download of apps, but are generally disliked because they're clunky and they get in the way of the games. And finally we have Steam, which sits in an interesting place in the market. Steam offers extremely restricted DRM. You have to be logged in to your account, you cannot share games in any way, you cannot sell games, you even have restrictions on refunds. So, I was thinking about this, why is Steam so beloved, while Origin is so hated. Especially considering that when Steam first launched, people raged at how restrictive it was. No one that the service could last with how DRM heavy it was. And it comes down to a couple things. Firstly, ease of use. Steam is very, very easy to use. It handles most things for you, and is simple and unobtrusive. Origin is none of those things. Second, is library. The Steam library is massive. Origin understandably is just EA games. And finally, sales. Steam is constantly giving away deals. The first and last are the critical ones. If developers are so worried about getting their monies worth, why are they so willing to host on a platform that is likely to sell their games for less? Well, to be honest, it's because there IS drm. A developer who sells a copy of his game on Steam knows that it's not going to get lent out. If he sells his normally $60 game for $45, but knows only the payer is playing for it, he feels a lot better than selling it for $60 when that copy could go to several people. It puts the developer in control, he can manage everything. Executives know where game sales are going, and they know that they can actually sell to their market. They feel safe because they KNOW each game sale is going just to the intended party. This shouldn't come as a surprise, developers like DRM. If they didn't, it wouldn't exist. DRM makes a developer feel secure. Sure, small devs often don't care, since they don't expect their game to sell enough to warrant DRM. That or they use a service like Steam while ironically decrying DRM. For big developers though, it means the difference between feeling secure in being able to pay your employees next month or not (and we all know how those fickle engineers, artists, and designers like getting paid). Within this mercurial industry that bucks and shifts at mere rumors, any stability is a haven. I feel that the X1 platform has the chance to offer that. To be the Steam of the console industry. Now, we all know how gamers hate change, so a bad reaction was expected, and in some cases fairly deserved. The 24 hour sign in thing? Dumb, unnecessary, over-bearing, and it sets a bad precedent. That's an Origin style move (and no doubt something like it was lobbied for by EA…). The licensing policies though are fairly broad and allow for quite a bit. It gives developers security. They know where their used games are going. They can choose to shut that channel off (that's on the devs head, not MS). You can read more on those policies here: http://news.xbox.com/2013/06/license.