Over my dead body.
Well, more like "over me no longer participating in mainstream gaming at all (rather than very little)", but that doesn't sound quite as decisive.
The good thing is that many of the games I care most about, especially those funded by Kickstarter campaigns, are moving in the opposite direction (with DRM-free releases).
Yeah, that's pretty much how I feel about it. The already tenuous grasp of ownership on digitally distributed software and licensing just puts more and more power in the hands of the publishers -- this is a good thing only insofar as it's an 'i win' button in court proceedings. For everyone else, though, digital distribution is a means of having a CAPTIVE MARKET.
For those unfamiliar with the term, captive market is one where the seller can put as many restrictions as they want on a product, and your choices are"buy them under my rules or don't buy at all." In the gaming sphere, it's "buy them under my rules, on my platform, with my DRM, or don't buy at all. Also, the DRM platform and secondary DRM could break your game or worse and we are not obligated to give you refunds, you agreed to the terms."
GOG is a great step for my side of this argument -- DRM free games that are also free of DRM platforms like Steam. Its platform allows you to play pirated games and gently reminds you that you can purchase it, and get all this nice stuff with it, if you do. The entire reason I purchased TW3 was because of this reminder, when I initially pirated the game to play it as a demo and suddenly realized I'd played it for 10 hours.
Where, sure, GaaS might allow us to trial a game before renting(likely for full price because captive market), it's been shown that demos DECREASE sales, not increase them, so there is literally zero reason to include them, anymore. Most people will buy into GaaS regardless, the world keeps spinning, and the publishers save more money than any diminished otherwise-sales would cost them.
In any case, I'll take up woodworking and redouble my efforts in electrical work before biting, there, I think.
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Can you point me to these studies, as they are pretty contradicting with the ones I've heard from a few research companies (unfortunately not directly, since any of my work wouldn't have benefitted from research of the kind). But realistically speaking, there's no way we could see any effect from the outside, but even a marginal conversion rate would definitely outset the cost of implementation. Denuvo's marketing team has seemed to be on-point, but the fact that their customers have also stuck with it should be an indication of it's value for publishers.
Sure, I'll look for them after I'm back from my doctor's appointment. I believe it was more strongly leaning toward international markets where these things were otherwise not available, Russia and Eastern European countries, and mixed with international piracy of domestic-only media, like movies.