In an interview with Shacknews, Bethesda spokesman Pete Hines has explained the company’s plans for DRM usage in the PC version of Fallout 3.  Digital rights management has been the topic of much debate recently, especially in regards to Spore, so explaining the plans for DRM in a major title like Fallout 3 makes perfect sense.  So is Bethesda joining the ranks of the oppressive, system-limiting oligarchy of evil?  Let’s see what they have to say, and how they’ll be keeping us lowly consumers reigned in:

"[Fallout 3 will be] pretty similar to what we did for Oblivion, which was--we basically don't do any [DRM]--we do the mildest form possible. I actually don't know if I even want to get into what it is that we exactly do, but we try to be really noninvasive when it comes to that stuff.  And it is a pain in the ass--it is a pain in the ass that we have to do it at all in the first place. But when you spend tens of millions of dollars, we don't think it's right to just put something out there and let everybody do whatever they want and pass it around…  But no, we're pretty mild about how we do it, and we try to do it in a way that prevents folks from exploiting and distributing our games that we worked very hard on... It's very important for us not to ruin the experience for the person who did buy a copy, so we try to be very careful... We want to remove anything that is a hindrance or an annoyance to the player, we're trying to just get to the game and have fun..."

Wow.  Never mind.  That’s actually pretty nice of them.  Essentially, it seems like they are eschewing DRM completely.  It kind of makes you wonder what they mean by “I actually don't know if I even want to get into what it is that we exactly do.”  Perhaps they’ll go back to the early days of PC gaming where you had to type in a certain word from the instruction booklet in order to play.  Let’s hope so, because that was cool.




Related Articles:

EA Addresses Spore DRM Issues, Has Fix Planned

Sony Says One Movie Download Is Enough

Drama Llama - Gaming Controversy Parade!