Darkspore was one of those always-online games with a single-player campaign; its tendons weaved through EA’s servers so as to make it virtually impossible to separate the two. You could call it a hybrid designed so that it can’t be pirated.
Youtuber Accursed Farms did a video on the Darkspore closure, and he said something that struck me like a thunder bolt with its bluntness:

‘This game had enjoyed a 0% piracy rate. No-one has ever pirated this game, and now, it’s going to die.’

Rather than see piracy as intrinsically bad, I see it as a tool that can do good or bad things. After all, who else is going to ensure the survival and historical preservation of games? It’s sure as heck not going to be multi-million dollar publishers making up the Entertainment Software Association who deemed all preservation illegal.

Here is the article about the results:
http://www.pcgamer.com/pc-piracy-survey-results-35-percent-of-pc-gamers-pirate/

One slide's obviously missing: the overall reasons for "piracy" one. They just put the split ones.
Sad to see DRM and company issues so low though.

Looks curious for the result, although they should have added a lot more reasons and options to fill out, even if it took 3-4 pages of what and why.

Still the majority of it looks fairly decent and there's obvious trends. Assuming none of the data is doctored, then it's probably the model that should be viewed overall. (Ignoring the 60+, $150,000+, trolls)

It would be a lot higher if people got burned really really bad. Unfortunately a lot of people tend to be way too forgiving. They'll curse Blizzard for their Servers being down, and then praise how good Diablo 3 is the next week when they can play, forgetting the DRM.

Which goes right back to too few taking issue with it in itself, and that's what I was saying.

I too was shocked at how low DRM was as a reason.

I'm guessing too many people don't see Steam as DRM.

To be honest, if you're a single gamer then Steams DRM is near invisible. Its only when you want to do unfathomable things like let your children play your games at the same time does it appear in full force.

Well, it's just raw data, and we don't really know what it means. Theoretically, there is a certain possibility that the rare mentioning of DRM as a reason for piracy could also mean that the people who take issues with DRM are mostly the honest paying customers and not the pirates. ;)

Speaking from my personal experience and social circles, most "hardcore" gamers (ie: people who've played videogames for years and still play often) are against DRM.
I'd associate people who don't care about DRM to these groups:

- People who play MMO's or usually just play multiplayer games.
- People who usually play games, but just for a few hours each game then grow tired and leave them.
- People who will only play a videogame once every few days or weeks.

Again I'm just talking from my personal experience. The question is much more complex than that, surely.


I was a pirate for many years until I started earning my money. Began pirating again when games started to require always-online activation. Stopped pirating when GOG appeared.