Ubisoft Abandons DRM for Steamworks With R.U.S.E.

[DTWolfwood]

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!!!! WOOOOO

Ok yeah im more than a little happy at this news! When they have the free weekend, I played the hell out of this game and thought it was an awesome RTS. i was only sadden by the fact its a UBISOFT product (and therefore NOT be buying it) but with this news! WOOOOO I CAN GET THE GAME YAY!!

XD

 

[SimuLord]

How well will Steamworks prevent piracy? No better than any other DRM scheme.

How well will Steam improve sales? Markedly. You see, there is NO overlap between piracy and lost sales---sales lost of games like Settlers 7, Assassin's Creed 2, etc. were due to...well, OK, Settlers 7 just sucked (61 Metascore), but lots of people heard that the DRM made the legitimate version unplayable and instead of saying "well, I'll just pirate it" it was more like "screw you, Ubisoft, I'm going to ignore your game."

Those customers will come back. They will spend money and positively impact the bottom line.

But the piracy rate? Won't change one whit. And Ubi needs to get through their thick skulls that the fact of rampant piracy does not impact sales. Still, someone needs to shoot the pirates, but that's because they're lowlifes, not because they cost anyone money.

 

[GeneticallyModifiedDucks]

Wait... so they're giving it up? I know they didn't say this, but it implies it. Honestly, while Steam is a bit of a hassle, its far, far better than what Ubisoft does.

I really hope this means they'll give it up. Because I really, really want to start buying their games again. You have no idea how much I want to play Red Steel 2, No More Heroes 2, Splinter Cell Conviction, and get Assassin's Creed Brotherhood.

I would still prefer no DRM at all though.

Playing Ubi games on PC has never been a good idea. It's just an even worse idea now. Consoles, my man. Consoles.

ruse is an rts =S you go have fun on your console,
i'll stick to good old mouse and keyboard.

Of course mouse and keyboard is better for most games and RUSE is best played on PC, but games like Assassin's Creed? Prince of Persia? I'll play those on my PS3 if you don't mind.

 

[Evil the White]

[HEADING=1]YEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSS[/HEADING]

*ahem*

I think that sums it up.

 

[imgunagitusucka]

I've always respected Ubisoft and this decision only consolidates my views. Some companies can never admit their failings, obviously Ubisoft can.

 

[GamingAwesome1]

Until they drop the silly DRM from ALL games (this just applies to the one game). I'm still not buying any Ubisoft games.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

Well, I have no interest in RUSE and don't know anyone who does, so with any luck it won't get pirated much. I know that's a foolish self centred view, but I'd suggest RUSE isn't as 'big' as Assassin's Creed 2, and also won't get the 'protest' downloads, and all the people who bought it and then downloaded it so they could play offline etc.

I assume Ubisoft, faced with low sales AND low piracy, will somehow blame it on 'piracy we couldn't detect' and then slap a whole new layer of DRM on top of the 'always online' nonsense.

Personally, I think if Ubisoft want to use my internet connection for the purposes of their security software, surely they should be paying me a monthly fee, perhaps in the form of free DLC for any game with ridiculous DRM?

Hang on, that's been done already, and it's stupidly successful, Valve support TF2 with regular free DLC and it means people want to buy the game, well, who'da thunk it?

In fact it's worked so well that they didn't even need to cram it full of DRM in the first place!

 

[SenseOfTumour]

Hang on, they've not patched the older games to remove the DRM yet?

Exactly what function is it providing now, when the vast majority of sales are in the first few weeks. Come on Ubisoft, get em on Steam and other DD services and let people buy them who don't have a reliable connection.

 

[cerebus23]

the vaunted uber drm was cracked on what 2 weeks for the first drmd game, a week for the second, and like 3 days for the 3rd? i mean their drm failed period.

steam games are often hacked but steam is generally liked by people that use it, steam also has great sales that convince people to pick up games that might not have.

and i agree single players games should be offline period. but hence why ubisofts drm was hacked to hell and back .

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

Beautiful. I personally wouldn't mind if Steam ate the entire AAA title market.

Monopolies are good things now?

If I'm going to be faced with a monopoly, I could certainly do worse then Steam.

"Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

 

[Motiv_]

I'm personally rather glad at this news. I do long for the days where you just double clicked the .exe file and the game booted up, no matter if you were on the internet, off it, or getting raped by a bear, but I realize now that those days have come and gone, and we are now in the digital age.

Everything must be verified, you need to sign up here, insert this CD, then sign in here and wait 10 minutes for this online verification to finish. Oh, what's that? Your activation code has already been used? You bought this game used? No gaming for you, you'll have to buy a new game! Ha!

 

[lacktheknack]

Beautiful. I personally wouldn't mind if Steam ate the entire AAA title market.

Monopolies are good things now?

If I'm going to be faced with a monopoly, I could certainly do worse then Steam.

"Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

You missed the other half of my post. Shame on you.

And also, having all AAA titles run in your cloud is hardly "Absolute Power". If they owned all game developers, that would be more worrisome.

 

[Anti Nudist Cupcake]

I, for one, look forward to the day Steam explodes without warning

AND the remaining debris gets eaten by sharks that are made of lava and have auto-targeting missiles dedicating to killing all survivors.

 

[Weaver]

Ubisoft has already stated that they still plan on using their DRM for future PC games:

http://www.vg247.com/2010/08/12/r-u-s-e-says-n-o-to-ubisoft-drm-but-most-ubi-pc-games-will-continue-to-use-it/

 

[Sightless Wisdom]

I approve of this decision, I hope they will eventually change their other games to use the Steamworks API as well. At this point I don't want to buy Assassin's Creed 2 or Splinter Cell conviction because of the crappy DRM.

 

[Plazmatic]

Ubisoft Abandons DRM for Steamworks With R.U.S.E.

Ubisoft seems to finally be clueing in to the fact nobody likes its DRM methods and is launching its next big game with Valve's Steamworks, instead.

It doesn't seem like anyone is actually in love with Ubisoft's DRM system that requires players to always be connected to the internet, including Ubisoft. The publisher has revealed that <a href=http://www.amazon.com/RUSE-Pc/dp/B0020KY02M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1281623242&sr=8-1>R.U.S.E., its upcoming strategy game, won't use their controversial DRM and will instead rely on Steamworks to verify a game's authenticity.

If you end up picking up the PC version of the game, you won't need to be connected to the Web whenever you want to play it. Instead, you'll only need to login to Steam once. A member of the Ubisoft team announced this decision <a href=http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums?a=tpc&f=4821071447&m=7471048678&r=7471048678#7471048678>via a post to the Ubi forums:

"When R.U.S.E. is released in September, it will benefit from Valve's Steamworks API to offer the best community experience to players. Consequently, a Steam account and internet connection will be required to activate the game, as per Steam policy. For this reason, R.U.S.E. will not use the Ubisoft protection. Single player can be played offline."

This is presumably a test to see how well Steamworks will protect Ubisoft games from piracy. Hopefully, Ubisoft will continue using it, since Steam is a much better system than the one that made games unplayable when <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/98927-Ubisoft-DRM-Authentication-Servers-Go-Down>DRM servers would crash.

Source: <a href=http://www.cinemablend.com/games/R-U-S-E-Won-t-Use-Ubisoft-DRM-26302.html>Game Blend via <a href=http://gamepolitics.com/2010/08/11/ruse-dumps-ubisoft-drm-steamworks>GamePolitics

Permalink

can any one say REALLY OLD news?

I mean they gave us the friggen beta IN STEAM!

Beautiful. I personally wouldn't mind if Steam ate the entire AAA title market.

Monopolies are good things now?

If I'm going to be faced with a monopoly, I could certainly do worse then Steam.

"Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

You missed the other half of my post. Shame on you.

And also, having all AAA titles run in your cloud is hardly "Absolute Power". If they owned all game developers, that would be more worrisome.

Lets hope Gabe Newell doesn't die from a heart attack and the left 4 dead team takes over the company 0.0 that would suck...

 

[Plazmatic]

EDIT escapist lagging again

 

[Yureina]

I, for one, look forward to the day Steam explodes without warning

I don't. Most of my games are on Steam now.

 

[Double A]

Beautiful. I personally wouldn't mind if Steam ate the entire AAA title market.

I would, my gaming computer isn't connected to the Internet at all. Just because it's good for you doesn't mean it's good for everyone.

And before you say "just connect it" I can't. I have a virus that survives even restarting from an earlier date, and if I connect to the net, something bad is definitely going to happen.

You can run Steam in Offline Mode... I do it all the time when I play games at work.

By not connected, I meant physically not connected.

Yep. You don't have to be connected. At all. I take my laptop into work sometimes and it has no internet connection at all and yet I can happily play some DoW2 for example. Fallout 3. Hell even TF2 offline practice.

EDIT: Oh I see what you're saying, your PC is never connected to the internet? Well that is stupid. How can you patch any games? How can you go to the all powerful gamefaqs.com? How hard is it to connect your PC to internet? Do you not have internet in your house? You are in a very small minority then. I'd be as bold as to say 99% of all PC gamers have their PC connected to the internet, in which case I cannot blame a company for not catering to such a small minority.

Yeah, it's not my fault. I got some virus, and it won't go away. I have literally tried everything short of buying a new HD, which is out of the question. And everything includes backing up to several months prior to the virus.

However, there really isn't any reason to not cater to them, if the only difference between doing so and not is needing steam for the game. Oh wait, Ubisoft and EA are convinced that people who buy the game are pirates. Never mind.