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Gaming: New DRM to combat piracy, drive away customers

ITWorld, February 18, 2010, 10:41 PM — There’s no question that piracy is a big problem in the video game world, but what’s the solution? More DRM? That seems to be the direction we’re headed as evidenced by a pair of recent stories.

Sony’s PSP has suffered greatly thanks to an enthusiastic modding community that isn’t shy about ripping UMD games and distributing them digitally to anyone with a BitTorrent client and a “jailbroken” PSP. So now Sony is trying something new. This week it released SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo 3 both digitally and on UMD. Both versions require online registration through the Playstation Network. SOCOM is primarily a multiplayer game so presumably most purchasers will have their PSPs online-ready; at first glance this system isn’t too big of a deal, at least for purchasers of the digital version.