There is no risk there, and nothing to factor. DRM has nothing to do with piracy, especially for older games which were and are widely pirated already. I.e. not releasing those games DRM-free means lost sales, point blank.
> Yes - pirates will still crack DRM and pirate games, however, that's a hell of a lot different than downloading a binary and having it run with no modifications whatsoever.
You miss the point. Once it's cracked - that's it. It's pirated forever since, and no further DRM would stop that. So again, not releasing it DRM-free means some sales will be lost and there is zero risk in such release.
> To suggest that DRM doesn't at least somewhat thwart mass piracy is ridiculous.
It doesn't. It actually is shown to increase it, especially for older games. Some most obnoxious DRM like Denuvo is shown to slow it down, just by the mere fact of placing draconian restrictions on usability, but even that is being cracked eventually. However such older games we are talking about don't use this trash most of the time.
> You miss the point. Once it's cracked - that's it. It's pirated forever since, and no further DRM would stop that. So again, not releasing it DRM-free means some sales will be lost and there is zero risk in such release.
I don't agree with this. To acquire a cracked version of something you have to research and understand the channels in which pirated material is released - this means having the basic technical competency to do things such as download a torrent or run a game crack.
I know people that cannot or will not put in the time to do this and will simply purchase the material instead.
If, however, it was simply a binary to download this would not be an issue.
To suggest that DRM is completely useless is inaccurate. Even if it is just a hurdle, it does have an effect.
> I don't agree with this. To acquire a cracked version of something you have to research and understand the channels in which pirated material is released - this means having the basic technical competency to do things such as download a torrent or run a game crack.
Which is trivial, since nothing stops first knowledgeable pirates from applying those cracks and releasing cracked versions ever since. Downloading such games is trivial, you can either accept the inevitable, or pretend there is no elephant in the room (pirates providing easy to use DRM-free versions).
Business wise however, you can get more sales by releasing it DRM-free, because not only those who avoided the game because of DRM would buy it, but some of those who pirated it before, would buy it as well. It's good there are sensible studios who realize that and release even their new games DRM-free.
> To suggest that DRM is completely useless is inaccurate.
It's not useless, but it's not used for increasing sales. It's useful in a crooked sense, i.e. its purpose is always bad.
> Yes - pirates will still crack DRM and pirate games, however, that's a hell of a lot different than downloading a binary and having it run with no modifications whatsoever.
You miss the point. Once it's cracked - that's it. It's pirated forever since, and no further DRM would stop that. So again, not releasing it DRM-free means some sales will be lost and there is zero risk in such release.
> To suggest that DRM doesn't at least somewhat thwart mass piracy is ridiculous.
It doesn't. It actually is shown to increase it, especially for older games. Some most obnoxious DRM like Denuvo is shown to slow it down, just by the mere fact of placing draconian restrictions on usability, but even that is being cracked eventually. However such older games we are talking about don't use this trash most of the time.