‘Game Maker: Studio’ Cracking Down On Pirates Or Just Isolating Customers The On Going DRM War
The increasingly popular game development platform Game Maker: Studio has come under a lot of pressure recently, after its last update prohibited many developers who purchased the development software from using some of the sprites.
Game Maker: Studio and the other IPs owned by YoYo Games have been the platform of choice for Derek Yu’s original Spelunky release on Pc and Dennaton Games’ recent hit Hotline Miami. Due to its versatility and easy of implementation Game Maker has spawned many commercial successes.
Originally thought to just be an error with the odd person it later proved to be much more wide spread as YoYo Games development software’s latest update messed with the DRM, labelling many legitimate copies as pirated versions.
Digital rights management has long been a heavily contested issue within all digital media and with many companies starting to forgo DRM altogether is it time to just give it up all together. In the case of software used to develop games DRM problems like this can cause huge issues for the developers, especially due to the way YoYo Games implemented the system.
Game Marker: Studio upon detecting the software as illegitimate will replace many key textures and sprites with a skull and cross-bone motif. This is a novel approach and does send an interesting message to pirates, however when the system breaks due to a legitimate update many studios are left high and dry.
There does not appear to be any mention if this does effect the Steam version – although its save to assume it could do – and with the autumn sale putting Game Marker: Studio at a heavy discount on Steam this problem could not come at a more awkward time for the company.
The long term ramifications for YoYo Games from this are still to be seen and if it will end-up detouring people from the program altogether. Although unlikely it does raise the point in peoples minds if DRM is just more hassle than it’s worth.
Game Maker: Studio is currently on sale as part of the autumn sale on Steam seeing the Game Marker: Studio Web Collection boasting a 75% saving. This same discount can be found on the official site here.
