i think the jury's still out on that one.

TBH, considering all the money men at UbiSoft, Activision and EA insist on DRM kinda tells me it's paying off. developers usually don't comment on that, but one guy from Gaijin (Wings of Prey) did and he said that the sad truth was that DRM-games sell more than DRM-free ones.

i know some of us don't want to hear this but it may well be the truth.

considering SteamWorks titles like Skyrim and MW3 are breaking sales records left and right it's tough to argue in favour of your line.

While I agree that it is not clear one way or the other how much DRM actually improves or detracts from sales, that Skyrim or MW3 are selling well doesn't add any data because they are only sold one way - with DRM. Thus if one wants to play those games, one has to buy a DRM game. The developer's quote is more to the point but some publishers/developers say quite the opposite. The truth is there are very few numbers being bandied about. The Paradox guy was pretty adamant that buying DRM solutions only costs his studio money with bringing no return. It is possible it is also a case by case basis. The Witcher 2 was interesting example in that it was sold both DRM-free and with DRM. If one had access to all the appropriate numbers, one could try to see how many more or fewer units were sold versus pirated accounting for the fact that the larger distribution channels (retail and steam) are DRM and that retail went from DRM to DRM-free. Naturally as one data point, it alone would not be conclusive, but such analysis would be very interesting to see.

you are right, of course.

but The Witcher 2 doesn't necessarily help to argue against DRM from a business point of view. first of all, the game got pirated 4 times for every copy sold. and apparently, that's supposed to be a success... some 1.25 million copies were sold. out of those, only 200'000 were DRM-free. so the vast majority of TW2 sales came from physical copies and Steam, both of which contained DRM (SecuROM on the physical release). at the time of release nobody knew it would be patched out weeks later.

to me this shows that DRM-free isn't much of a factor when it comes to sales. at the very least, publishers and investors will see it that way and you can't really blame them.

Perhaps.

Much depends on what typical piracy rates are for that genre/size of game (which I freely admit I have no idea), what expected selling rates are in each distribution channel by size of channel, why people chose a particular distribution channel, how retail sold after CD Projekt announced it went DRM-free versus how it is expected to sell that many weeks after release, etc ... These are all things that would need to go into the analysis and sadly I, and I suspect no one for some of it, has access to all of it (some of the data surely is known by someone somewhere, but not all of it I suspect - particularly choice of distribution channel, one would need a scientifically conducted survey). Essentially we need a RAND/Pew/GAO/CBO-like organization (organizations with reputations for solid statistical analysis) or an academic group to do a real, thorough study examining all the factors financed by the government. Frankly this and other issues related to piracy are going to be increasingly important to the 21st century economy (as shown by PIPA/SOPA/ACTA/etc ...) and there is frighteningly little actually studied thoroughly and dispassionately about piracy, DRM, and the effect on the economy and the industries in question.

Music is actually a great example, since going DRM-free digital music has never been bigger and in fact iTunes is now the world's largest music seller in every metric. Now digital music was on the rise anyway, how fast (and maybe it would've gone faster) it would've risen in prominence if it had remained restricted by DRM should be studied. Now obviously that is a different market from the video game market by virtue of being different media. Further I can't say that it wouldn't be bigger (or smaller) if DRM were still in place, but I think it does point to the fact that it is possible to have a very successful, huge digital marketplace without DRM.