Ars: What do you think the problem with DRM is today?
MK: The problem is very simple. It's fear and panic on behalf of big companies who can't define the source of their problems, and most of all, can't find the right solutions for them. Some solutions they've come up with are so repressive that they seem absurd. I stopped buying music CDs when some record companies implemented protection that prevented me from listening to them on computers. I was listening to most of my CDs on my laptop at work, so for me they became useless. Whenever I saw the protection logo on the CD cover, I didn't buy it even if I really wanted to listen to it.
I don't know what the people behind this idea were thinking when they implemented such a stupid protection scheme. For me, it just means that the decision-makers sometimes lose touch with the reality their companies find themselves in. They just seem to not understand their customers. The decisions are made by some calculations in Excel that say such protection will reduce piracy by X percent and will increase the income by Y percent. Afterward, it appears that the projections weren't quite right, and instead of solving this issue another way, they go back and add more restrictions. And after that, it all becomes so absurd that people start to boycott, protest, and make fun of it. Then the companies realize what they did, and they give up on that crazy solution.
For me, the idiocy of those protection solutions shows how far from reality and from customers a lot of executives at big companies can be. You don't have to be a genius to check the internet and see all the pros and cons of those actions. In my opinion, management spends way too much time in business discussions and not nearly enough listening to customers' comments. I think it would help a lot if people who decide to implement those draconian DRM schemes would use them themselves and see how they can be a pain in the ass. I think that would be a new experience for them, and not necessarily a pleasant one. And the money for those people's salaries comes from gamers who pay their hard-earned money. That's something they should always keep in mind.
It's a little bit easier for us at CD Projekt, as we are a young company where gamers work at every level of the company. So it's natural for us to understand and feel most of the gamers' problems, and not just those related to DRM. I also had some issues with activating games (strictly technical, but still very frustrating) or with buying games through digital download, because they weren't available in my country. For me, as a customer, such obstacles are very hard to understand and to accept.
Luckily there are more and more very reasonable initiatives that attempt to meet customers' needs. I believe that the future will bring more good things in that regard. The Internet and the dynamic changes of the market provide opportunities for new companies that bring with them new models of activity. If the "old" companies stay with their absurd solutions, sooner or later they will lose their customers to those who listen to what customers have to say, like Valve, or Stardock, and hopefully, someday, GOG.com.
Ars: If there was an old game that you absolutely had to have for GOG, would you be willing to accept one that had some sort of DRM?
AO: We would do everything to make the game available at GOG.com without DRM. The DRM-free aspect of GOG.com is one of our main features and we're really proud of it. The games we offer are probably already easy to get on torrent sites, but we believe gamers would prefer to buy their products legitimately than pirate them. They just need a good reason to buy those games and we give them those reasons by selling games at low prices, optimized to run on modern operating systems and adding great bonus materials.
