Ubisoft Challenges Gamers With DRM-Free Prince Of Persia

[PsykoDragon]

I don't really know that stats on how many people pirate compared to the people who actually buy the game, but I believe 3 of the major reasons are:
1) The game being released for a long time before being released in their country,
2) The game not even being sold in their country, &
3) The country being very expensive or very poor, in other words, many people with low income cannot afford buying the game.

If my beliefs are right, then the lack of DRM will hardly affect the amount of pirating. There are HUNDREDS of millions, if not over a BILLION, people out there in the world who have good PC's but live in countries with no game shops, or in countries where games are even more expensive & the average wages are low.

 

[Lt. Sera]

If they'd have done so at release, they'd be throwing down a gauntlet. Now, they're simply putting it out there after initial sales have come and gone so they can claim it didn't work later on and return to installing hardware damaging rootkits on your system.

 

[TheEggplant]

I'm going to through with everyone else by asking,
What are they using to measure my lost sale due, not to piracy, but lack of interest?

 

[ThaBenMan]

Mr. Easton, I will meet you at The Whisky Cafe [http://www.whiskycafe.ca/] next weekend. And I'll bring my receipt ;D

 

[GoldenShadow]

Pirates will crack DRM, paying customers will buy the game. Not including DRM will not make pirates buy the game, but it will make the people who buy it much much happier. I haven't played this new PoP game, and I wasn't planning to either way. I'm not a fan and the gameplay isn't interesting to me. So, I wasn't going to pirate it or buy it. (I don't pirate anything anyways though)

As far as trying to sell it to me, maybe if there was a demo version or something.

 

[Cucumber]

It'll make zero difference. Same as always. It's a retarded experiment anyway, you can't compare the sales of a game to a completely different game and assume the difference comes from DRM or not.

I actually think it's a rather amusing experiment. People are going to copy it no matter the protection, so why not try it for the fun of it? And who knows, it might work!

And it's true, you can't compare sales to eachohter. But you CAN compare the sold copies/pirated copies ratio of PoP and another game!

 

[Blank__]

PC Gamers, don't screw this up by pirating this one.

Heehee... A bit more than 20,000 people are stealing the game right now (Isohunt stats + the Pirate Bay) with approximately 2000 people seeding finished copies. Yeah, it looks like those hypocrites who scream about only stealing things because of DRM are, uh, liars. And those of you who claim that you are buying the game now because you've learned it's DRM-free.. Bologna! Show some evidence.

The lack of DRM won't have an impact on the pirating, but will drastically reduce the number of people bitching in their forums about SecuRom issues and save them the money they would have spent on it.

Yeah, I'd agree with that.

 

[ChromeAlchemist]

chances are they are doing this now because their games are suffering in terms of sales after DRM was implemented, so they are doing it to boost them. I went on amazon.co.uk and checked games like GTA IV and Far Cry 2, and seen HUNDREDS of 1 star reviews due to DRM, and I am sure that has hurt sales.

But it wouldn't suprise me if they slapped DRM back on afterwards because their game didn't sell like 3 million copies in a month.

 

[Andy Chalk]

The thing to bear in mind here is that the absence of DRM won't necessarily boost sales - that's a function of the game's quality and user interest - but it will, if people who claim they pirate only because of DRM, reduce piracy. Sales figures aren't particularly relevant here.

If they'd have done so at release, they'd be throwing down a gauntlet. Now, they're simply putting it out there after initial sales have come and gone so they can claim it didn't work later on and return to installing hardware damaging rootkits on your system.

The PC version of the game was released three days ago. I don't think that's quite enough time for the marketing department to determine that sales have peaked and thus they afford to make a second DRM-free release with minimal impact on revenues.

 

[Lt. Sera]

The PC version of the game was released three days ago. I don't think that's quite enough time for the marketing department to determine that sales have peaked and thus they afford to make a second DRM-free release with minimal impact on revenues.

I'm aware of that, however, I bought it for the 360, since as always, it got released on the consoles earlier. Had there been a simultaneous release, I'd have bought it for the PC. Hence they already lost a PC sale in my case. DRM free therefore doesn't come into play.

What I'll say on this whole experiment though: At least they're not punishing legit buyers for a short period of time. If you ever want to buy a Ubisoft game without it installing crap without your permission, now is the time to do so. It's quite a fun game to boot.

 

[Dys]

Will barely influence my decision, as I was always going to buy it.
But now I can get it on PC over xbox 360

 

[HobbesMkii]

Didn't this get done by StarDock for ALL OF THEIR GAMES?

You shouldn't be advertising "DRM free on the PC!" as part of your campaign to attract sales. That should be something that's on the back of the box in that list of bullets no one ever reads that constantly overestimates a game's features. You bury stuff like that, you don't publicize it. When you go "We're gonna challenge you guys. Prove us wrong!" you set yourself up for defeat.

Imagine I walk into a large room full of people and place a tray of brownies down on the table with a change jar next to it. Then I go "It's a dollar a brownie! Don't steal any of the brownies! I'll be back in an hour." to the room at large. Then I leave. How many brownies do you think are gonna get paid for? I'll bet not as many as if I'd just walked in and set the tray down with the change jar marked "$1 per Brownie" and hadn't said a word.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

I doubt it will lower Pirating. It will stop people from saying OMG DRM CAUSES TEH PIRATES though.

 

[Veylon]

Lack of DRM will stop punishing their paying customers, which is the whole point.

DRM does nothing to stop piracy, people who download pirated copies do not have to deal with it. It's solely the people who put their money down to buy the game that get treated like criminals and have to prove they're legit. The real criminals get first-class service by comparison.

All I'm asking for is that companies treat me like I'm a valued customer and not like I'm some crook on parole.

If companies make the demos and kill the sneaky DRM, it will put them unambiguously on the moral high ground and reduce the pirates from heroes striking against "The Man" to parasites who rob decent hardworking developers.

 

[bkd69]

The thing to bear in mind here is that the absence of DRM won't necessarily boost sales - that's a function of the game's quality and user interest - but it will, if people who claim they pirate only because of DRM, reduce piracy. Sales figures aren't particularly relevant here.

Really?

Well, I hope that we can all agree that the structure of this "experiment" is flawed, and that Chris' lack of metrics is equally problematic, but let me ask you this:

What conclusion will you draw if the level of copyright infringement w/DRM == the level of copyright infringement w/o DRM?

 

[Royas]

The rate of piracy will likely be the same, no more and no less. Pirates will always pirate, and it's no more difficult to pirate most games with DRM than it is most games without DRM. The only difference is that when DRM is present, a couple of skilled people have to crack it first. That usually happens within a day of release, often less. To Joe Average downloading a torrent, there's no difference. They don't care if the illegal version was released by a team of crackers or any old owner of the game. The only difference they are likely to see is that there will be a lot less bitching about SecuROM interfering with their computers. They'll have to find something else to complain about.