Ubisoft Challenges Gamers With DRM-Free Prince Of Persia

[Asehujiko]

What will they measure their succes by? Number of downloads? Number of sales? downloads/sales ratio? None of them will be relevant because of things like the lack of a demo, duplicate downloads and sales being very fickle anyway.

 

[Rochnan]

I think Grampy_bone and Veylon make good points.
Even if the number of pirated copies is equal to an average title with DRM, Ubisoft will have won a little by having to spend less on DRM. And we will have won because we're not being treated as toilet paper.

I think they started on this subject only after it's release because of the idea that most pirates will pirate games on the day it comes out. This way they might have tried to prevent this news from being too abused. If that's right, or even effective, that's open for debate.

On a very different note, DRM sounds a lot like 'dream'. DRM on EA...

 

[Alex_P]

Oh and by the way, good DRM is damn expensive to create, and yet PoP still costs the same or more than other games with DRM. Excuse me if I don't feel compelled to throw money at the company.

... So you feel like they're ripping you off by not wasting money to cripple the product?

It's not like all $50 games have an equal amount of work put into them, anyway.

-- Alex

 

[Andy Chalk]

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

Just that people who copy games do it because they're cheap and indifferent to the harm they're causing, and that their bleating nonsense about doing it because of the evils of DRM is nothing more than a weak excuse that's easily tossed out the window in favour of something equally weak the moment it no longer applies.

But hey, I'm pretty much already there anyway. This will just add a certain (well, further) smugness to my overall demeanour.

Really, there's not much you can draw in the way of iron-clad "conclusions" here because this is hardly a scientific approach to the matter. It's a fairly major mainstream release from a company known for its (bad) DRM in the past, and a community developer who's expressing his weariness with the whole thing. There are some interesting points in this thread about how it's a win for Ubi even if piracy levels remain unchanged - no licensing costs for DRM software, less tech support hassles, a generally high level of customer goodwill - and hopefully this will become their standard procedure. But from the gamer side of the coin, and with all the scientific rigour of a half-drunken conversation down at the bar, it could also put the lie to at least one of the reasons why people copy games.

Oh and by the way, good DRM is damn expensive to create, and yet PoP still costs the same or more than other games with DRM. Excuse me if I don't feel compelled to throw money at the company.

This is pretty much exactly what I'm talking about.

 

[orifice]

It may well work. Stardock decide to take this line a while ago, and seem to do well, with lower than average piracy.
Lets hope gamers don't screw this up. Otherwise DRM will be here to stay.

 

[Samurai Goomba]

I hope this works out for them. I don't know whether or not the game is any good, though, and it may well be that Ubisoft will fall back on piracy as their excuse for their game not selling well if it should become known (to gamers) that the new PoP sucks.

I know I won't like it, because I didn't even like Sands of Time. Sands of Time sucked!

*Is very aware his opinion is in the vast minority in this forum of Yahtzee worshippers*

 

[bkd69]

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

Just that people who copy games do it because they're cheap and indifferent to the harm they're causing, and that their bleating nonsense about doing it because of the evils of DRM is nothing more than a weak excuse that's easily tossed out the window in favour of something equally weak the moment it no longer applies.

But hey, I'm pretty much already there anyway. This will just add a certain (well, further) smugness to my overall demeanour.

Really, there's not much you can draw in the way of iron-clad "conclusions" here because this is hardly a scientific approach to the matter. It's a fairly major mainstream release from a company known for its (bad) DRM in the past, and a community developer who's expressing his weariness with the whole thing. There are some interesting points in this thread about how it's a win for Ubi even if piracy levels remain unchanged - no licensing costs for DRM software, less tech support hassles, a generally high level of customer goodwill - and hopefully this will become their standard procedure. But from the gamer side of the coin, and with all the scientific rigour of a half-drunken conversation down at the bar, it could also put the lie to at least one of the reasons why people copy games.

See, now I was going to go all Socratic on you until you saw that point about DRM, but you had to go and take all the fun out of it.

Now, where you say, above, that

Sales figures aren't particularly relevant here.

I would counter that sales figures are the only relevant metric here (the Brad Wardell position), and as noted, once you've taken the DRM costs out of your development budget, and the the resulting tech support costs out of your operational budget, you might even be able to stand losing a few points of net sales, and still come out ahead.

For x% of players who are playing your game from illicit copies, (100-x)% are suckers/paragons of virtue that have plunked down honest coin for your game, in spite of cracked copies of your game lying around the intertubes, free for the taking (less a coupla points for rentals and secondhand copies). It's that (100-x)% that you have to build your business plan and your budget around.

As noted upthread, when Chris "UbiRazz" Easton says "DRM is there to make it as difficult as possible for pirates to make copies of our games," that's not what's really happening, is it. What DRM really does is attempt to manage the speed at which cracked copies appear on the intertubes (which always happens before release day, doesn't it?), and cause tech support hassles and bad will among the (100-x)%.

As noted, as an "experiment," this is utter carp. For starters, it would be useful to know what metrics they're measuring success and failure by, and I would contend the level of copyright infringement is less useful than net sales. We're also looking at the initial title of a franchise relaunch, which offers no controls. More useful would have been a comparison between a DRM-laden second title of a franchise trilogy, versus a DRM-free third title of the same franchise trilogy. This would control for lack of interest and failure of execution. Also necessary of consideration is whether a title is a PC exclusive, or multiplatform.

 

[Satansixsix]

lets say that ubisoft, the french bar*tards, are all holy
(which there not and just want all the money they can get by bleeding PoP dry)
they can use the money not spent on DRM makeing the game better
but its a win if the pirate/legal ratio stays the same
and if the sales are up, then thats a plus

 

[Dectilon]

It may reduce piracy of the game, but probably not increase sales of it

 

[Seydaman]

since when was drm a problem never stopped me from pirating.

 

[MosDes]

I feel that as novel as this challenge may be, the damage has already been done. Torrents and P2P programs that have become most highly used to illegally obtain other software make getting the titles "too easy" and I feel this challenge will not deter those who already participated in such illicit activities.

I do feel that the time and money wasted by software companies in the attempt to enforce such increasingly potent DRM is entirely futile, noting how crackers/hackers will get past it one way or another...

 

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

Wow.

Well the gauntlet is thrown. I'm about as skeptical as Ubisoft is, to be honest. The new excuse will probably fall back on the tired, and full of crap, excuse: I'm downloading it to 'try it out'.

But I hope to be proven wrong.

Which sucks because I want to try a demo before I just buy it to say "thanks for treating me like a customer for once..."

 

[SilentHunter7]

[http://img114.imageshack.us/my.php?image=nicebn7.jpg]

hmmm

 

[Kaertserif]

I'm thinking about buying the PC version now instead of PS3 version just to help give this no DRM stuff my support

 

[jamesworkshop]

DRM has always been pointless why spend millions and EA do to curb pirate copys when it never works hell on some occasions the pirate copy hits before retail.
A penny saved is a penny earned

 

[strizzuth]

OMG I want to buy this game now just for that ballsy move!

*checks system requirements*

Crap! I can't run it!

 

[Caliostro]

I for one don't think the title is worth the money. But I won't rip it off either.