Ubisoft Challenges Gamers With DRM-Free Prince Of Persia

[Maruza]

A big corporation is asking for mercy?

That makes me want to pirate the game and not play it.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

As someone with limited resources and multiple interests I buy what I can reasonably afford. However, I refuse to allow my deference to glorious free market capitalism to factor into the lifestyle choices that I make. If I want to play a game and cannot afford to buy it in addition to the dozens of other games I buy in that particular year then I will seek out a version to play for free. I don't see this as idiotic or childish; on the contrary, it is extremely resourceful. Video games cost at least double what they should do and everyone knows it.

You buy multiple games, fine. Good, even, assuming your not overspending and depriving yourself of something more important. It could even be seen as being responsible if you decided to stick with freeware (or web-based games, supported by advertising) after your budget ran out.

But instead of just buying the games you feel you can afford, you decide to take more than you can afford. That's where your argument goes off the rails. You're not entitled to play these games just because you want to, any more than I'm entitled to sleep on your couch whenever I want to. This mad consumer idea that you're entitled to play games whether you can buy them or not is at least a symptom, and maybe even one cause out of many, of the economic shambles we see today; people are consuming far beyond their means, through debt or theft or piracy or whatever.

Your argument boils down to, "I'm greedy, but since they're greedy too it's okay to rip 'em off." Ethically, that's appallingly self-destructive.

(And that "cost at least double" figure you pulled out of your a... er, thin air needs some supporting documentation if I'm to believe it. Save for a few smash hits, I'd say most studios would go broke charging much less than they do today once you take into account production, marketing, and distribution.)

-- Steve

 

[SilentHunter7]

Day 2 of Pirate Watch

[http://img512.imageshack.us/my.php?image=97460307zi2.jpg]

I dont see any sign of it letting up

 

[SimuLord]

This is a brilliant gambit by Ubisoft. If the game is widely pirated, they've got permanent justification for every uber-restrictive DRM scheme they'll pull on consumers from here out. Judging from the large volume of assholes pirating it on torrent sites, it looks like this is where it ends as far as PC gamers ever getting to claim we're a decent lot.

Worse yet, by not buying the game because I have no interest in it and because it's simply not my kind of game, does this mean I'll be held responsible for the "low sales" and blamed for future DRM? If anybody needs me, I'll be over there buying games from Paradox and Stardock.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

1. You're not entitled to play these games just because you want to, any more than I'm entitled to sleep on your couch whenever I want to.

2. This mad consumer idea that you're entitled to play games whether you can buy them or not is at least a symptom, and maybe even one cause out of many, of the economic shambles we see today; people are consuming far beyond their means, through debt or theft or piracy or whatever.

3. Your argument boils down to, "I'm greedy, but since they're greedy too it's okay to rip 'em off." Ethically, that's appallingly self-destructive.

4. And that "cost at least double" figure needs some supporting documentation if I'm to believe it.

1. As I referred to earlier, we clearly have different perspectives on the free market (and property rights). I don't believe that personal wealth should guarantee a greater level of material entitlement since society's wealth is distributed in such a way that the majority are deliberately excluded. If I want to play a game and I have the means to acquire it safely, I will play it. I do not accept the belief that we should have ultimate faith in the free market when it comes to the acquisition of goods. My belief is that, so long as the current economic setup persists, I am "entitled" to play anything I can get my hands on. Millions share this view.

2. Blaming the poor for the credit crunch is a huge mistake. I am not consuming beyond my means; I am consuming within my means by making the most of available opportunities.

3. Greed has nothing to do with it. There are people my age who are wealthier than me despite having worked less and contributed nothing to society. Are they less "greedy" because they can afford to buy things and I can't? Of course not.

4. It's my opinion. Why should I provide "documentation"?

[And this doesn't even touch upon the rocky ground of whether or not art should be a commodity. It shouldn't.]

1. Marx isn't exactly the best model to follow for social equity despite his best efforts; neither is Robin Hood, despite his good press. If I extend your principle to it's logical conclusion, then I'm entirely within my rights to grab anything of yours I want at the time because I want it badly enough. (Since I'm not exactly wealthy myself.) If this was food or medicine we were talking about you'd at least have some sort of sympathy going for you, but we are talking about games. A lack of equity in toys and entertainments is hardly cause for revolution, comrade.

2. At no time did I blame the poor. I blamed everyone for spending beyond their means and making a mess of the credit markets. And you are consuming beyond your means if you decide to take something for sale without paying because you can't afford to pay for it.

3. Yes, it's greed we're talking about... unless we're talking about your envy of those who don't have problems paying for games, and your desire to copy-cat them.

4. An opinion isn't a free pass to say whatever you want and have others accept it. It may be your opinion, but you won't convince anyone without backing your opinion up with some facts. Also, you said "everyone knows" that video games cost double "what they should"... which elevates that out of personal opinion and into a (faulty) statement of fact.

-- Steve

 

[bkd69]

You're putting way too much thought into it. I agree that you have some very valid points, and if this was an actual experiment intended to be held to a particular level of scrutiny, fine. But it's really not. It's just a DRM-free game and a community manager who thinks that most people who use "evil DRM" as justification for copying games are full of shit. The most you can hope for is to look back at this in a few months and say that the level of copying was more, less or pretty much the same. Expecting anything more than that is expecting way too much.

Well, yes. That much is obvious. Doesn't stop me from wanting to try to construct something more useful, though.

As far as the anti-DRM copying crowd goes, I believe the phrase should be, 'statistically insignificant.' And I'm sure some small fraction of them are even honest enough to buy a copy of the game before they download a cracked copy.

I actually can't see the presence or absence of DRM making a difference, except, as I noted above, in the speed at which copies appear. I mean, are there really people who say to themselves, "I would download a copy of Fallout 3, but it's copy protected"?

 

[bkd69]

I was a little curious about this, so I did some digging. (Truthiness alert: "Did some digging" = quick Google.)

Hard numbers are pretty much impossible to come by because SecuROM licensing fees vary depending on all sorts of factors, but I did come across some promotional material from Sony DADC that provides an example of SecuROM implementation, including pricing on a hypothetical product. You know what the license cost for that DRM worked out to on a per-unit basis?

20 cents.

That's not so bad.

For a product that doesn't work. But they have to decide if that 20 cents is worth the cost of alienating the (100-x)% of suckers/paragons of virtue who feel that their product is worth the price.

And I wonder just how much the publishers of DRM software are on the hook for, for titles under their protection that get cracked, hmm?

 

[Hevoo]

People are going to totally fuck this up...... Yeah I said it...

I will say it worked for Sins of a Solar Empire.

 

[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.

A billion? Hahahah
Good pcs are a luxury item. If you think 1/6th of the world is middle class or over, you're insane. I'd say 1% of the planet's population can afford a decent pc.

When I say good PC's, I'm talking any PC that can run, even barely, some of the latest games. Not some quad-core SLI with 4 GB RAM. I'm saying more like Core 2 Duo's with a 512MB video card & 2 GB RAM. Low-end, but good enough to run games. & trust me, people in countries like mine play games like crazy, & such a PC is actually very affordable.

In any case, even with a worse PC you can still play slightly older games, which they will get a cracked copy of. I'm not speaking subjectively, I'm speaking from experience. In Iraq, there's a whole building filled with PC shops, for getting new PC's & upgrading old ones. It's always packed. There's even a whole street called Shara' Al-Sina'a (lit. Pioneer Street) which is a street mostly dedicated for PC shops, & it's always crowded.

Even over here, in Jordan, where everything is very expensive, affordable gaming PC's are sold in just about every PC shop (of which there are alot), & believe it or not, many people put their gaming rig at a higher priority than their income.

In any case, I said "if not over a BILLION", so I was thinking of that as an extreme maximum. If it bothers you, forget the billion & think only in hundreds of millions.

 

[HyenaThePirate]

Pirating community = pwned

Hold those plates up high gentlemen because you just got served.

Nobody really believed DRM was the real reason for piracy being so rampant. It is and always will be because people want things for free rather than pay for them. Thats just life. Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free?

Because you CAN.
You can remove DRM all day long, you can upload in depth playable demos, you can even cut the retail price of games in HALF, and if it's as easy as a few hours of downloading from home you will NEVER move your product because it's just too damn easy to get the whole thing for free.

Something for nothing always, always wins.

 

[soulsabr]

All I know is that if the gaming populace screws this up then it will serve as an infinite supply of ammo for the gaming companies whenever they need to defend their DRMing of games and other software. Here is to a bleak future, my friends.

 

[SavingPrincess]

I already bought it via Steam a long time ago. Eff you EA/Ubi, If I want a game I'll buy it; if I'm not sure, I'm going to try it out; if I tried it out and didn't buy it, that doesn't mean I would have bought it in the first place.

Games I have bought for PC:

- Assassin's Creed (yours)
- Mass Effect (yours)
- Crysis (yours also)
- Mirror's Edge (again, yours)
- Prince of Persia (... yours)
- Splinter Cell: DA (... sigh)
- PoP: SoT (yours)
- PoP: WW (yours)
- PoP: TT (and yours again)
- Far Cry 2 (notice a running theme?)
- Far Cry (... la la la)
- Beyond Good and Evil (Make more games like this please)

And that's just PC... I always get games through Steam to avoid your nastified DRM...

 

[SovietSecrets]

I'm gonna take him up on that drink someday.

 

[Davrel]

I wont be buying it anyway as I don't like the franchise.

Also, this is a simultaneously clever and very stupid move by Ubisoft:

If its heavily pirated then they have the excuse to use DRM in all upcoming titles they produce (clever).

DRM does fuck-all with regards to stopping piracy; any DRM system can and will be worked around within a few weeks (max) after release (very stupid).

I.E. - They get what they want (probably) but what they want surmounts to nothing more than a meaningless, consumer alienating Pyrrhic victory.

 

[Citrus]

You're right when you say that when people want to pirate the game they will, but DRM is there to make it as difficult as possible for pirates to make copies of our games.

He talks about it like he thinks everybody makes illegal copies of the game on their own. All it takes is one pirate/hacker to crack the game and put it up on torrent sites and everybody who wants it can download it, and have to do very little work of their own to get it up and running (many torrents come with detailed instructions). And no matter how secure your game is, there is always going to be at least one hacker who will prove you otherwise.

So what is this nonsense about "making it harder for pirates to make copies of our games"? If you know they're just going to find a way to put it online anyway, and if you know that it only takes one pirate to leech millions of copies of your game, then what the bloody hell is DRM for? Pirates are bad and whatnot, but it's a fruitless battle; all that will come of it is much more hassle for real buyers and thus more appeal to turn to piracy.

And even if this DRM-less PoP venture fails, gets pirated to hell, and Ubisoft starts dancing around and screaming "I told you so", showing them how compltely ineffective and self-defeating DRM can be is just as easy as pointing to Spore.