Not long ago I had the pleasure of having a long talk with one of my all time favourite game designers, Al Lowe. The godfather of sleazy adventure gaming had plenty to say about the past, present and future of his famous polyester protagonist, but also had some very interesting thoughts about the way we protect our digital rights these days.
According to Al, the whole system of DRM or digital rights management that gamers seem to be getting so up in arms about over the last few years has been a flawed concept since he first saw in introduced way back in the 80s!
I refuse to buy products that have DRM. Ya know I’d rather pay for a CD and rip it than download protected music. To me it’s just misguided and it has been misguided since my first involvement with it in 1982. It never was protected from those people who wanted to break it. It was always breakable. All it did was hassle people who paid for the product. And those are the people that you want to be nice to! Be nice to the people who pay and ignore the pirates, because they do what they’re gonna do anyway.
I couldn’t agree more.
As for what Al has to say to the people who are going to pirate his upcoming remake of Leisure Suit Larry 1?
“You Suck!”
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