Crysis 2: Crytek defends DRM

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 21 March, 2011

"What are we supposed to do?"

Crysis 2 maker Crytek has defended the use of digital rights management in its games, claiming most fail to notice it.

"I know there's a lot of negative feelings toward DRM," executive producer Natham Camarillo told GameShark. "But, I mean, what are we supposed to do? The actions of a few are causing maybe a mild inconvenience for others.

"If I'm playing a game and it has DRM on it, do I notice? Not really. I just know that there's something going on, but doesn't really enhance my play experience. So, it's something that we'll have to look at in the future."

Crytek suffered the leak online of a one-month old build of Crysis 2 months before launch.

Crytek and publisher EA responded with a joint statement: "Piracy continues to damage the PC packaged goods market and the PC development community."

While most game publishers agree that piracy seriously harms PC game sales, the PC Gaming Alliance believes piracy is actually on the decline.

Last week Saints Row and Red Faction developer Volition told Eurogamer making PC versions of its multiplatform games is still worth the time and money required – despite the threat of piracy.

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (45) Latest comment 1 year ago

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  • menage #1 1 year ago

    And it won't help, so it's pointless either way.

  • space_ace #2 1 year ago

    "What are we supposed to do?"

    good games. no need to worry about the rest, as the accounting books prove.

  • CaptainQuint #3 1 year ago

    Whilst it does have an unsavoury feel about it, I can't say I blame them at all.

  • Mockerre #4 1 year ago

    "If I'm playing a game and it has DRM on it, do I notice? Not really. "

    That's exactly what pirates say ;)

  • dsmx #5 1 year ago

    Do nothing, How is DRM supposed to stop pirates? Every game that exists out there has a pirated version out there, all DRM does at best is slow down pirated versions existing for a few days.

  • Eraysor #6 1 year ago

    It's obvious DRM doesn't work, so why do developers insist on using it?! Though I must admit, I am pleased that there is not Online Pass for Crysis 2. It actually makes me want to buy the game more than usual.

  • actionfitz #7 1 year ago

    "But, I mean, what are we supposed to do? The actions of a few are causing maybe a mild inconvenience for others."

    erm no.
    Your actions are a mild inconvenience for determined pirates - one person finds a work around to the DRM - which there always is... then your vaunted piracy protection only serves to inconvenience the people who actually bought the game.

  • ISmoke #8 1 year ago

    As long as it's nothing additional to Steams DRM then I'm all for it. Just don't go down the dark road that Ubisoft went down

  • Optimaximal #9 1 year ago

    I find it actually really quite shocking that nobody but Valve seem to have made inroads into the 'make it a service that people want to use' model. Infact, EA & Ubisoft are just turning people off their attempts through a lack of faith/trust.

    In the long-run, it's not been about the resale market on the PC for 6-7 years now, it's just the disdain the companies have for PC gamers because of the lower profitability of the platform & the higher general standards PC gamers have (as a result of being shafted for years because of a lack of unified QA practices).

    Yes, Piracy *is* a fundamental problem, but the industry is developing issues much more endemic as it grows. Once you scratch the surface (and ditch the 'piracy = lost sales' mindset), it's revealed to be the scapegoat, perpetrated by low sales of substandard products that haven't been targeted properly.

  • ChthonicEcho #10 1 year ago

    This fabled threat of horrific piracy on PC is no less amusing to me than listening to people still talk about next-gen (which is to say this gen).

    By the way, Crytek, your game has already been successfully cracked and deployed on torrents, and played by pirates. On consoles. It's not cracked on PC yet.

  • Goodfella #11 1 year ago

    @actionfitz

    Indeed, every single PC game is cracked and doesn't take long at all, so it's pointless. The pirates get to play a hassle-free version while the paying customers get DRM

    @ChthonicEcho

    Lol yeah, that's the irony, 360 and PS3 versions have been 'out' since last week but not the PC version.
    Edited by Goodfella at 21/03/11 @ 09:18

  • jaguarwong #12 1 year ago

    Do you geniuses really think they would go to the effort and expense of putting it in if they didn't have evidence that it worked to some extent?

    For the tiny section of the PC gaming community that doesn't believe that piracy is their god-given right DRM at least means that the game cannot purchased second hand.

    The PC community are the only enthusiasts in the world that actively destroy that which they purport to love.

  • HL706 #13 1 year ago

    The only DRM that has never bothered me is Steam's DRM. Do you know why? Because I don't notice it at all, ever.

  • NotoriousR #14 1 year ago

    "What are we supposed to do?"


    Hint: look at Valve. But that's neither here nor there, considering their pathetic performance with the PS3 demo, I don't think I'd ever want to play this game. 2 days of failing to connect a match and then you just pull it out from under us, adding salt to the wound of hurrying together a demo only one week before release, opposed to the 360 and PC versions. Good job Crytek, good job.

  • ChthonicEcho #15 1 year ago

    Do you geniuses really think they would go to the effort and expense of putting it in if they didn't have evidence that it worked to some extent?

    Yes. You weren't ever called naive, by any chance? All DRM has been cracked - even Ubisoft's supposedly uncrackable DRM took two months. No DRM stops piracy, barring a no-LAN multiplayer Steamworks game. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood comes close, because it requires you to be online in order to access a lot of singleplayer content.

    Corporations want to - need to - maximise profits. Pirates undermine that effort. Nothing more, nothing less. All developers can do is either continuously support their multiplayer game with features that require you to connect to their servers, or create a singleplayer experience good enough that it will motivate pirates to buy it. Yes, believe it or not, those pirates exist - and in great numbers.

  • photoboy #16 1 year ago

    Bullshit. Assassin's Creed Brotherhood for the PC was cracked and on the internet before the game even hit the shelves, and that was using Ubisoft's "unbreakable" DRM.

    DRM does not prevent piracy, it never has and it never will. It doesn't matter how good your encryption is or how much you obfuscate your code, at the end of the day it still has to run on customers' computers and that means it has to be decrypted in order to be loaded into RAM and executed. As soon as that happens, someone with skill can easily identify and remove any DRM from the program.

    As far as I can see, only total idiots would believe DRM has any effect against piracy, and game devs aren't total idiots. So there must be an ulterior motive, and I think it's used sales. DRM is also very effective at limiting the number of activations on other computers, thus killing used sales. I don't know about you, but I rarely see PC games in the bargain bin in Game, but there's always plenty of PS2/PS3/360/Wii games on sale...

  • DrugCrazed #17 1 year ago

    Let us use game theory to decide whether DRM is worthwhile. Say we put DRM on the product. There are those who get inconvienced, or refuse to buy it because of the DRM and the pirates get it for free with no such inconvience. Say we don't put DRM on the product. People are not inconvienced and may buy it based solely on the DRM decision (like I have done several times) and the pirates get it for free with no such inconvience.

    My logic thus dictates that you shouldn't include DRM for the goodwill, since the pirates get the exact same product either way.

  • StooMonster #18 1 year ago

    photoboy: DRM does not prevent piracy, it never has and it never will.

    I think it stops 'casual' piracy of lending game to a friend, or one person buying and several sharing, but it doesn't prevent people downloading hacked/cracked versions.

    As to 'mild inconvenience', I agree. I've been a PC gamer forever and buy all my titles, and I can't saw that in the last decade I have even been 'mildly inconvenienced' by DRM. It's made no impact on me whatsoever. The only time it has was when Half-Life 2 suffered from overloaded servers, apart from that ... nadda.

  • PearOfAnguish #19 1 year ago

    The PC community are the only enthusiasts in the world that actively destroy that which they purport to love.

    Because only PC games get pirated.

    Slow clap for you, sir.

  • StooMonster #20 1 year ago

    ChthonicEcho: Corporations want to - need to - maximise profits.

    Which was jaguarwong's point. In simple terms profit is revenue (turnover) minus costs.

    DRM costs money to licence and implement, ergo it must have some measurable effect otherwise corporations would not use as it would simply decrease profit (and thus destroy shareholder value) for nothing.

  • GamesConnoisseur #21 1 year ago

    Maybe, just maybe that merely slowing down the rate of piracy is actually what these publishers and developers praying hars for? Just to see extra pennies rolling in compared to the boycott rate?

    I dont know, just these people arent thick about the anger and protests and they will calculate the costs eithet way?

    Also those that are successfully drm free and love in with the PC community could simply be adopting a position they can only best afford?

    Whatever this will not likely get resolved, if ever, anytime soon.

  • bad09 #22 1 year ago

    "But, I mean, what are we supposed to do?"

    Now I sympatise that they all believe piracy kills more sales than it actually does, and I except that of course some of that piracy is of course actual lost sales.

    Now I'm not a publisher, developer, investor. I'm a customer BUYING the product. People on these boards and many boards across the internet are BUYING the product. When you have so many people saying THEY DO NOT LIKE BEING RESTRICED IN THE PRODUCTS THEY BUY AND WILL EVEN CRACK AND TORRENT DRM FREE VERSIONS surely you know what you are supposed to do? Surely the customers needs and wants outweighs the piracy problem? I understand it needs controlling but at the expense of customer wants? REALLY?

    DRM has lost companies actual REAL sales from me and others but how many sales did they gain on the still torented games? Did Ubi save AC2 from the pirates? Was the huge negativity around that company on PC worth it?

    Look to CD Projekt selling The Witcher 2 DRM free, THATS what you are supposed to do...
    Edited by bad09 at 21/03/11 @ 09:48

  • Nithron #23 1 year ago

    "Do I notice?"

    Why, yes. So far Red Alert 3, Unreal Tournament 3 and the entire Orange Box have all become unplayable for me due to DRM issues, more than once, each. This is the one and only problem with DRM. Even if it didn't stop piracy, if it never went wrong, I wouldn't care.

    But it goes wrong all the damn time.

  • Ravenger #24 1 year ago

    DRM wouldn't be a major issue if devs and publishers promised to patch it out once peak sales had passed - like SEGA did with Alpha Protocol.

    The only DRM which does work is zero day piracy protection which prevents games being leaked before release, and even then that DRM should be patched out on release, and a stand-alone patch released too to allow install without contacting the authentication server.

    I regularly play 15 year old PC games - if they'd had limited activations back then the servers would have been offline years ago, making it impossible to legitimately install and play them. It's a massive problem when it comes to preserving our gaming heritage for the future.

    Edited by Ravenger at 21/03/11 @ 10:20

  • serpantdarius #25 1 year ago

    I remember TRYING to play heroes of annihilated empires but that annoying starforce drm wouldn't even let me install the game.

  • PearOfAnguish #26 1 year ago

    It's a massive problem when it comes to preserving our gaming heritage for the future.

    Yeah, this is my big issue with DRM. Can't remember the last time I had a problem running a new game because of copy protection, but it is going to prevent us playing games in 10-20 years. Recent example: Bulletstorm, unless I am mistaken, requires you to be logged into GfWL to play, even just the single player. Those servers are not going to be around forever.
    Edited by PearOfAnguish at 21/03/11 @ 10:27

  • MattyD #27 1 year ago

    Simple solution for EA: Stop pandering to old-school retailers by pricing at full RRP on Steam / downloads, and start pricing competitively instead. Just knocking a fiver off the price compared to retail would boost download sales.

  • brod #28 1 year ago

    "what are we supposed to do?"

    Implement Steamworks.

  • brod #29 1 year ago

    @PearOfAnguish

    You can create an offline GFWL profile if you want.

  • dingo75 #30 1 year ago

    "What are we supposed to do?"

    First of all you should just shut the fuck up and deliver a good game.
    Action speaks louder than words and based on all the shit Crytek has been spouting so far Crysis 2 better be the 2nd coming!

    Now concerning DRM:
    As a collector that expects his games to work in the next 10+ years (single player potion) DRM based on servers that might or probably are (in the case of EA) dead by then is unacceptable.
    So excuse me but I will continue to cheer for the crackers as they allow me to play these games whenever I like and regardless whether your company is dead by then or not.

  • drxym #31 1 year ago

    DRM does stop piracy. Period. People who claim different should look at the PS3 which has practically zero piracy thanks to DRM. Or look at Steam which has a low incidence of piracy too.

    The problem is that many copy protection / DRM schemes are implemented in an obnoxious way. The worst DRMs install kernel level drivers, destabilize systems, spy on the users, imposes arbitrary limits on fair use, insist the user insert the DVD to play, refuse to play offline and generally hurt the legit owner. I believe DRM should focus more on what it enables than it takes away - online content, multiplayer, long term support etc. to reward owners who purchased a game.

    I think in Crytek's case they already sell their game through Steam. Don't ruin it by slapping in a second layer of DRM. As for the DVD purchase, well it could be a steam install again, or something similar. Also pledge to throw the DRM switches at some point so the DVD isn't required to play and so forth. Protect your window of sales and once you're out of it play nice with users who want to play without being inconvenienced.

    As for combatting piracy, I think Crytek should throw in some glitches just for the pirates. Checksum some files that contain the DRM and then glitch the gameplay to ruin the experience for people running cracks. Lots of ways to do this and I reckon most pirates would get fed up constantly downloading a 9GB game and / or patches just to make the game play the way it's supposed to.
    Edited by drxym at 21/03/11 @ 10:58

  • uknortherner2000 #32 1 year ago

    "What are we supposed to do?"

    Well, you could start by not leaking the console version to the pirates and blaming the PC community for it. Then, you can go and fuck off.

  • M1chl #33 1 year ago

    Crytek > Bunch of hipster kids. Seriously, make a good game and be quiet. Good games sells better, thats for sure.

  • Caimbeul #34 1 year ago

    "What are we supposed to do?"
    Look at CD Project and see how they are handling i and learnt. As much as i do not condone the piracy of games, You will not eradicate Piracy - as others have mentioned already all games are cracked day one anyway so i genuinely cannot see the point in wasting money on it and pissing off legitimate customers oin the mean time.

  • jaguarwong #35 1 year ago

    @PearofAnguish

    The point is that the MAJORITY of PC gamers pirate and believe it is their right to do so.

    Granted piracy exists in all forms of media - this is why 3D came back to theatres and why advertising at gigs is now a major source of profit - but I'd imagine only the PSP comes close to the user/piracy ratio that the PC is struggling to survive.



    @ChthonicEcho

    Starting a post such as yours by insuating naivity on my part is some carzy deep irony.

  • FortysixterUK #36 1 year ago

    "What are we supposed to do?"

    Release the game DRM free and at a nice mid range price, if the game is good it will sell, if not, it won't.

    Your DRM will fail ( if Blizzard can't stop Starcraft being hacked you can't stop Crysis being hacked )

    Look at how Witcher 2 is being sold...no DRM and its £24.99 with online retailers and £26.99 direct from GOG with loads of extras....I'll be BUYING one of those versions.

  • ChthonicEcho #37 1 year ago

    @jaguarwong

    If anything, my post was needlessly cynical. Do you even know what naivety is? Judging by your inability to provide counter-arguments or even to type, my guess is the answer is no.

    Unless you were referring to my statement that there is a vast number of pirates who actually purchase games they deem to be of sufficient quality. I'd provide factual information supporting that statement, but I don't think Eurogamer will approve of me linking to a tracker's forums. Alternatively, feel free to visit 4chan, where the majority of the community bashes those few who pirate a quality title.

    Sorry, but your perception of this issue is horribly skewed and terribly outdated. Piracy has the capacity to harm a corporation, that is correct, especially if it's a corporation of a smaller scale, or an independent developer. Otherwise, piracy - PC piracy, at that - has an abysmal long-term effect; a developer loses some profit, but not large amounts. Note how even mediocre games manage to sell enough copies to warrant a sequel. You'd think since it's mediocre and was presumably pirated or rented instead of bought, developers would be unable to follow it up with a successor.

    Look at Creative Assembly. Look at Valve. Look at Blizzard. Look at them and stop your asinine preaching.

  • teh_MBK #38 1 year ago

    jaguarwong: "The PC community are the only enthusiasts in the world that actively destroy that which they purport to love."

    Wake up. It's probably more prevalent on PC in terms of gaming, but don't think that console users don't pirate, what do you think chipping/console modding is for? Additionally, many movie/TV lovers will also pirate their media.

    As for the effectiveness of DRM, I'd say it causes some hassle for crackers who do the pirating, but some of the method they use to get around the DRMs can be too much hassle for the end-user pirate (Assassin's Creed 2 virtual server application for instance).

    On top of that, DRM can sometimes delay a pirated release. Now, I realise this isn't the case 9 times out of 10 and normally pirate releases come before actual releases, but this is more down to release dates being off-set across the globe, hows about releasing it everywhere at the same time publishers? I'm sure that would help slightly.

    As for the quote from the article "If I'm playing a game and it has DRM on it, do I notice? Not really.", I think he is a VERY lucky man. The example that sticks for me is that the SecuRom (I think) protection on Batman: Arkham Asylum didn't like my DVD drive. I installed the game fine and then DRM says it cannot detect the disc in my drive. I spent AGES looking for a solution before I decided I'd try swapping out my drive for a spare I had kicking around and it worked. I was furious. I have had other issues on top of this.

    Something I took to doing for a while was buying the game and downloading cracks/DRM free versions so I could play without the hassle. I always wonder how many others do this as it will badly skew publisher statistics.

  • Machiavellian #39 1 year ago

    good games. no need to worry about the rest, as the accounting books prove.

    Yeah, because people do not pirate good games.

    PC gamers will continue to state that piracy is not a concern. That it doesn't effect sales, that developers should just be content with piracy because you can never stop it. People forget that Crytek use to champion the PC before Crysis was pirated to hell. I remember Crytek didn't even want to code for consoles during those glory days but PC gamers showed them the error of their ways. Now Crytek had to par down their tech to include consoles because coding for the bleeding edge PC gamer proved very costly.

    PC gamers can blame Crytek all they want be we didn't get here because Crytek doesn't love the PC, we got here because PC gamers loved getting things for free. Is DRM the answer, yes it can be but it will probably be something like what UBI tried to do but more aggressive. The game you buy will have to be played online. The game will not be complete, certain pieces of code will have to be downloaded from the server in order to continue to play. It will be encrypted of course and it would be almost impossible to break.

  • saku_luk #40 1 year ago

    Sins of a Solar Empire didn't have any DRM and it sold really good for the type of the game it is.... deliver a good game and you get your sells EA/Crytek ~_~;;

  • Matfink #41 1 year ago

    My DVD drive certainly noticed the Crysis DRM - sounded like someone was twatting it with a hammer when I put the disk in FFS - can't be healthy for it!
    Still, cracked it straight away so no more crap like that TYVM.

  • meanmrmustard #42 1 year ago

    "What are we supposed to do?"

    Ask CD Projekt, http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/publis...
    Edited by meanmrmustard at 21/03/11 @ 14:02

  • number3son #43 1 year ago

    "What are we supposed to do?"

    Leave the DRM in your game for a few months, maybe a year, if you really think it helps deter piracy for a little while. Then, after said game has been ripped, cracked, and torrented to death (see: Crysis 1), patch out the now-useless DRM so the good people who paid for your game can finally feel like they actually own it. Done. Everybody wins. Why is this such a difficult concept?

  • davisorle #44 1 year ago

    Post deleted at 20:44:35 16-04-2012

  • subedii #45 1 year ago

    @uknortherner2000 :

    It's pretty amazing that they did what was a spectacular foul up and then managed to blame it on other people. Strangely enough, most other devs, even the PC specific ones, manage to get their games to release without dumping fully working pre-release code on the internet.

    That was their mess up, no two ways about it. They weren't hacked, that was quite simply astonishingly bad control on their part (or I'm guessing, on the part of publisher EA). I'm not going to single them out for it, the same thing happened to Doom 3, and heck even Half-Life 2, but that doesn't change the fact that they were the ones that screwed up.

    If they had leaked the PS3 version or the 360 version (which ironically, are in the wild right now. Full versions, completely working, not pre-release dev versions), that would have still been an incredibad situation regardless. The issue wasn't anything to do with the platform. The issue is that it was even leaked in the first place.

    If you really insist on it, keep blaming the platform for what happened. Fine, whatever. But for crying out loud, please, try to see what you actually did WRONG there, and learn from it!

    Because that? That was a colossal mess up on their part. It shouldn't have happened, and the vast majority of studios (bigger or smaller, doesn't matter) don't see this happen to them.