I think I’ve evangelized enough about World of Goo on this site. If you didn’t pick it up when it was only $5 a few weeks back, there’ simply no hope for you. Another thing that there’s no hope for is trying to stay one step ahead of piracy. 2D Boy’s Ron Carmel has an interesting take on the issue: don’t bother trying.

In an interesting counterpoint to Microsoft just having announced better anti-piracy measures for their Games For Windows – LIVE platform, Carmel, speaking at GDC, took a bit more cynical, yet far more realistic angle on a subject he has a fair bit of experience with: World of Goo, despite it’s low entry cost, famously suffered from a 90% piracy rate upon it’s release.

“Don’t bother with DRM–it’s a waste of time. You just end up giving the DRM provider money. Anything that is of interest gets cracked, and the cracked version ends up having a better user experience than the legit version because you don’t have to input in some 32-character serial number,” he said.

Readers will certainly remember the protest that was sparked around Spore‘s launch and the attached SecuROM software. A number of people I know personally stated that even though they had purchased a legit copy of the game, they planned to download a cracked copy, just to avoid dealing with the troublesome DRM software that came attached to it.

Carmel continues:

“Anybody who wants the game is likely to find it on BitTorrent sites. It’s going to get cracked even with DRM, it’s going to be available very quickly, so we don’t see the point in having DRM. Piracy rates have been released before, and there’s no difference between World of Goo and other games.”

In a time when companies cry that DRM is required for a quality end-user experience, it’s nice to see someone in the industry, who’s been a fairly bad victim of the piracy he’s speaking of no less, being flat-out honest and acknowledging what most sane gamers have known all along.