Driver: San Francisco Dev Stands Up For Ubisoft's DRM Practices

[Irridium]

PIRATES ARE NOT AFFECTED BY THIS!

The fact that they have to crack the DRM means that, yes, pirates are affected by it, at least for a little while.

Remember the whole thing with From Dust? [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/112534-Ubisoft-Drops-From-Dust-DRM-In-Two-Weeks] That two week limitation is actually a clever calculation. Sales records apparently show that most money that devs make off their games is earned during the first two weeks of sales. If they can maintain the DRM for that long, they've probably made all the money they need to in order to cover costs (and hopefully make a decent profit). After that, any sales are a bonus.

If a game has DRM, and the DRM takes two weeks to crack, that means for those two weeks piracy is not part of the competition: and that's really all the game publishers need. The small amounts of sales they lose from the anti-DRM scene are balanced by the fact that pirates are forced to purchase/rent or wait to play the game... and there are plenty of impatient people out there.

The game was cracked and on torrents at launch, or very close to launch. This DRM did nothing, pirates were not bothered at all. It has been broken. The hackers know how to break it, and will just get faster with every game with this DRM.

The best it could have done was make people wait a few days. In which case, they'd simply wait a few days. Or just go pirate another game.

 

[paketep]

Financially and morally?. What an idiot.

Financially, you're losing sales of customers fed up of having to deal with their BS useless DRM, plus developing that DRM costed them money.

Morally, if he can justify making his customers jump through hoops in exchange for absolutely nothing, he deserves to go broke with his company.

I'm boycotting Ubi completely until they drop this stupid DRM. If he can't understand why their DRM is both WRONG and USELESS, then probably he should find another job developing plugins for Excel or whatever.

 

[Zhukov]

Uh huh.

And I have every right to avoid your game like the fucking plague.

Funny that.

 

[DarthCaine]

What morons. That DRM is easily cracked

 

[scotth266]

The best it could have done was make people wait a few days. In which case, they'd simply wait a few days. Or just go pirate another game.

Which is the whole point. I don't LIKE DRM in the least, but as far as accomplishing its objectives goes, if it frustrates pirates for even a few days it's a success (for the publisher).

 

[Irridium]

The best it could have done was make people wait a few days. In which case, they'd simply wait a few days. Or just go pirate another game.

Which is the whole point. I don't LIKE DRM in the least, but as far as accomplishing its objectives goes, if it frustrates pirates for even a few days it's a success (for the publisher).

So... a DRM is a success if it just frustrates people a bit?

Not if it brings in more sales, not if it completely stops pirates, but if it just frustrates them a bit?

So they're treating their customers like ass just to annoy pirates?

No matter how many times I say it, it's still sounds really, really stupid.

 

[Furism]

The developer should probably complain to Ubisoft. They are the ones making the huge profits off of their back, paying them just enough so they stay. It's the same with the music industry really. Being the producer/editor and "taking the risks" means you can keep a huge margin of the benefits for yourself, and fuck those laborers, they should be happy to have a job in this economy.

"Sweat and blood", Jesus. Programming is not coal mining, leave the hyperboles out of this.

 

[Asehujiko]

PIRATES ARE NOT AFFECTED BY THIS!

The fact that they have to crack the DRM means that, yes, pirates are affected by it, at least for a little while.

Remember the whole thing with From Dust? [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/112534-Ubisoft-Drops-From-Dust-DRM-In-Two-Weeks] That two week limitation is actually a clever calculation. Sales records apparently show that most money that devs make off their games is earned during the first two weeks of sales. If they can maintain the DRM for that long, they've probably made all the money they need to in order to cover costs (and hopefully make a decent profit). After that, any sales are a bonus.

If a game has DRM, and the DRM takes two weeks to crack, that means for those two weeks piracy is not part of the competition: and that's really all the game publishers need. The small amounts of sales they lose from the anti-DRM scene are balanced by the fact that pirates are forced to purchase/rent or wait to play the game... and there are plenty of impatient people out there.

Correlation =/= causation. People boycotting ubishit aren't going to break down and fund that which they hate over simply having to wait 2 weeks. Especially not when ALL pc gamers get shafted by a bunch of delusional shareholders, including the ones that were planning on buying and not just the file sharers.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

I'm tellin ya, Ubisoft simply want out of the PC market, and are trying to bring all their fans with them to consoles. I'm hearing(reading?) more and more people say that they will 'boycott' the PC version, just to buy the console version. This is exactly what they want you to do. I made a thread about this a while back, and many people said that's not the case, if they wanted to get out of the PC market they would just stop making PC games. But by doing it this way, they are trying to migrate their fan base gradually. Ok, given the fact that I cited Blizzard as a proponent of always-on for a single player game, who make primarily PC games, but still.

I can't help thinking that people who refuse to buy Ubisoft and EA games are simply not going to have anymore PC games, let's just pray this doesn't affect the rest of the industry. Although I play both, I would be very sad to see PC gaming and all its wonders (KB+Mouse, Mods, hi-detail graphics) disappear.