Ubisoft Clarifies New Online DRM Scheme

[JaredXE]

Yup, not gonna buy a Ubisoft game anymore.


BG&E2...I will miss you.

 

[Carnagath]

Ah-ha. So basically they will still be fucking you up the ass, but just to clarify, they will occasionally stop to ask you if you are ok. Nice!

 

[Gindil]

I wonder if Ubisoft reads their DRM ideas or just throws darts at a giant board of shitty ideas.

Ubisoft, your DRM is retarded in every thought, if you thought it was a good idea, fire the team who developed it because no one will buy your game, it will end up pirated worse because of you're stupidity.

Can't fire the board of directors. They'll just give themselves a raise and two extra smoke breaks.

But Ubisoft? F U! I hoped you might understand the backlash and get your act together, sadly whoever took over recently is in the same boat as Activision because it's going to be a bumpy ride if you continue with the DRM that you're doing.

Sadly, I won't be there to enjoy it.

 

[Snotnarok]

I wonder if Ubisoft reads their DRM ideas or just throws darts at a giant board of shitty ideas.

Ubisoft, your DRM is retarded in every thought, if you thought it was a good idea, fire the team who developed it because no one will buy your game, it will end up pirated worse because of you're stupidity.

Can't fire the board of directors. They'll just give themselves a raise and two extra smoke breaks.

But Ubisoft? F U! I hoped you might understand the backlash and get your act together, sadly whoever took over recently is in the same boat as Activision because it's going to be a bumpy ride if you continue with the DRM that you're doing.

Sadly, I won't be there to enjoy it.

I'm exceptionally mad because I had gotten Farcry 2 free only to discover it's got DRM on it, how amazingly aggravating. Also all of the activations were used when I was trouble shooting my videocard (that it came with) and ram. Thanks for the free coaster ubisoft.

 

[Miral]

Since Steam have announced opening of pre-orders for AC2, I thought I'd post the important bit here:

A PERMANENT HIGH SPEED INTERNET CONNECTION AND CREATION OF A UBISOFT ACCOUNT ARE REQUIRED TO PLAY THIS VIDEO GAME AT ALL TIMES AND TO UNLOCK EXCLUSIVE CONTENT. SUCH CONTENT MAY ONLY BE UNLOCKED ONE SINGLE TIME WITH A UNIQUE KEY. YOU MUST BE AT LEAST 13 TO CREATE A UBISOFT ACCOUNT WITHOUT PARENTAL CONSENT. UBISOFT MAY CANCEL ACCESS TO ONLINE FEATURES UPON A 30-DAY PRIOR NOTICE PUBLISHED AT http://assassinscreed.com

Translation: The Steam version is just as infected as the retail version (undoubtedly forced on them by Ubisoft). And the game itself (no matter how you bought it) can be turned into a coaster (or waste of bits) at the whim of Ubisoft, since shutting down the "online features" would render the game completely unplayable. You have no guarantee the game will remain playable for any more than a month at a time (and even then, only if you very frequently visit a marketing-oriented site).

And is this worth US$60? No, Ubisoft. No it is not.

 

[SilentVirus]

Or they can register a code given in the game and a conformation will be sent back from Ubisoft. And I think the whole servers thing is a bit stupid...

 

[Olrod]

I'm exceptionally mad because I had gotten Farcry 2 free only to discover it's got DRM on it, how amazingly aggravating. Also all of the activations were used when I was trouble shooting my videocard (that it came with) and ram. Thanks for the free coaster ubisoft.

Free? So it wasn't a $60 coaster (or however much you paid for the game)?

 

[GeneralGrant]

Wow this is truly a retarded system. Not buying from Ubisoft again.

 

[Rollerskater]

that is kind of weird of them. Something made them do such a stupidity.

 

[brunothepig]

In my opinion; if you have a PC that is capable of running current day games you probably have it connected to the internet as well. I know mine is.

Yes I can acknowledge it is a bit of a nuisance, but I feel that's all it is. A leaf to be brushed off an apple before eating it.

Ahhh. But many of us have laptops, me included. Plus my friend actually takes his PC, and a cable to connect it to a TV, pretty much everywhere. His girlfriend doesn't have the internet, he doesn't have the internet. And I go to my dads, no internet, I'm taking my laptop to a school camp, no internet. Plus it's not just us we have to worry about. If the connection to the server is lost for any reason, for more than say five seconds, we die. Ezio, dies. Our progress, dies. And we are greatly inconvenienced. Besides, with our game we should be able to play it with no limitations except "will it run?" And, as I said last time, how is this stopping piracy at all?

 

[SimuLord]

Can we put a name to Ubi's chief idiot? We've got Bobby Kotick to direct our Activision hatred toward, we've got John Riccitiello at EA (although he's turned into more of a tragic figure over the past year), who's the guy at Ubi?

 

[Plurralbles]

No. BECAUSE IT IS STILL FORCING PLAYERS TO BE ONLINE. period. End of it. It's a shitty, stupid system and it's bullshit.

 

[Plurralbles]

Can we put a name to Ubi's chief idiot? We've got Bobby Kotick to direct our Activision hatred toward, we've got John Riccitiello at EA (although he's turned into more of a tragic figure over the past year), who's the guy at Ubi?

This... this is the face of complete assholeness, secon to Kotick.

http://site.video-game-central.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/ggn_yves_guillemot_q1_2010_releases_future_ubisoft.jpg

Yves Guillemo

 

[SimuLord]

Can we put a name to Ubi's chief idiot? We've got Bobby Kotick to direct our Activision hatred toward, we've got John Riccitiello at EA (although he's turned into more of a tragic figure over the past year), who's the guy at Ubi?

This... this is the face of complete assholeness, secon to Kotick.

http://site.video-game-central.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/ggn_yves_guillemot_q1_2010_releases_future_ubisoft.jpg

Yves Guillemo

This is like a double win---not only do we have a name to put to the evil, but he's French, which brings a tinge of Acceptable Targets to the hate-fest! Cheese-eating surrender monkey!

 

[Escapefromwhatever]

I'm just glad that I got AC2 for my 360. I wonder if this will apply retroactively though...it may cause issues with Call of Jaurez: Bound in Blood or Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.

 

[J0hnston]

Bit of a news flash for you. Crackers are smart. Almost all of them have day jobs where they make enough money to buy all the games they want. They see cracking these games as a challenging puzzle. They will absolutely LOVE cracking Assassin's Creed 2.

Spore had a similar "Must be connected" DRM (it wasn't nearly as draconian as this, but I digress). It was cracked and released to the web a week before it was released on the street.

All DRM does is cause problems for legitimate consumers. This is the worst idea in the history of DRM.

Don't even try and patronise me, I'm well aware there are individuals out there who's only purpose is to circumvent these failsafes.

These individuals also work for these companies implementing, said crackers are hired to aid them in creating new defences. Firewall manufacturers hire them, and now games companies do.

To find something succesful, many stages have to be trialed before hand. It's like saying my current relationship is destined to fail because all my previous ones have. There will be a point where DRM is succesful, and thus the issue (for the company, which is the only thing that matters in the grand scale) will be resolved.

Except the solution is to realize the entire idea is terrible and abandon it utterly - if any other industry was pulling the crap that the software industry routinely gets away with, you would have a world-wide consumer uprising on your hands. Software piracy is not a problem companies should be trying to 'solve' by foisting draconian systems on the people actually paying them for their products in a misguided attempt to "eliminate piracy".

Pirates are not your customers!!!!!!!!!!

If coders finally concoct a DRM scheme that is impossible to circumvent, companies will NOT see sales figures rise - they will probably remain exactly the same, or even fall, because the odds are good their 'perfect' system is highly annoying and intrusive, thus driving off some of the people who would have otherwise bought their title. The pirates? They weren't going to buy it anyways! So if you make it so they can't pirate your game, all that's going to happen is they won't be able to pirate your game. You cannot make honest paying customers out of a demographic that is defined by the fact that they steal your products routinely, something anyone with a modicum of common sense could tell you.

In the name of stopping piracy, publishers have been finding increasingly expensive and pointless ways to drive off the customers they have right now - this is by all metrics a terrible idea. They are spending not insignificant amounts of money to sell less games and not stop shit - all the while earning nothing but negative PR from irate former customers in the process.

So we can either conclude the bigwigs are painfully stupid, or piracy is just a straw man and the real enemy is the used games market, which nets them every bit as much profit as pirated copies of their games do, and those suits have wisely concluded that admitting this is the real reason they keep coming up with new forms of DRM would absolutely murder their public image. Fighting the dirty dirty pirates lets them take the moral high ground you see.

And everyone should be worried, because frankly, at this point there isn't a used games market for the PC to kill (nearly ubiquitous online activation has all but killed it off entirely) - with the increasing shift of development focus towards consoles for various 'blockbuster' franchises, it's not an unreasonable suggestion that publishers are using their smaller and less profitable PC divisions to test things they plan to somehow incorporate into future console releases. We're already seeing not so subtle moves in that direction, with publishers tying launch day DLC into accounts that then cannot be transferred when a title is resold. The day where you literally cannot trade in your old games because they all require online account-based activation to play may not be all that far off.

Companies have a right to protect their products, but if that means screwing over us, their paying customers in the process, they need to learn that we will not put up with that. Digital Rights Management has always been about eroding away any rights the customer might have once had in favor of those of content provider, and as such are explicitly designed to screw you over to a greater or lesser extent. There is therefore no such thing as 'good DRM', just as there is no benevolent way to shove sharpened sticks under somebody's fingernails. All that differs from one DRM implementation to another is just how much it screws you over, ranging from mild annoyances at best to retarded bullshit like this one at the extreme end of the scale.

I don't know about you, but I think defending companies metaphorical rights to shove sharpened sticks underneath my fingernails when I pay them money for their products is something only crazy or grossly misinformed people would ever defend.

Bravo my good sir, Bravo. This sums up my exact thoughts on the issue.... In fact, shame on you for making it so I cant contribute anything to this topic but support to your arguement

 

[SimuLord]

Since Steam have announced opening of pre-orders for AC2, I thought I'd post the important bit here:

A PERMANENT HIGH SPEED INTERNET CONNECTION AND CREATION OF A UBISOFT ACCOUNT ARE REQUIRED TO PLAY THIS VIDEO GAME AT ALL TIMES AND TO UNLOCK EXCLUSIVE CONTENT. SUCH CONTENT MAY ONLY BE UNLOCKED ONE SINGLE TIME WITH A UNIQUE KEY. YOU MUST BE AT LEAST 13 TO CREATE A UBISOFT ACCOUNT WITHOUT PARENTAL CONSENT. UBISOFT MAY CANCEL ACCESS TO ONLINE FEATURES UPON A 30-DAY PRIOR NOTICE PUBLISHED AT http://assassinscreed.com

Translation: The Steam version is just as infected as the retail version (undoubtedly forced on them by Ubisoft). And the game itself (no matter how you bought it) can be turned into a coaster (or waste of bits) at the whim of Ubisoft, since shutting down the "online features" would render the game completely unplayable. You have no guarantee the game will remain playable for any more than a month at a time (and even then, only if you very frequently visit a marketing-oriented site).

And is this worth US$60? No, Ubisoft. No it is not.

This bugs me. Not just because Steam users get a DRM-infected mess of a game. I already knew I wasn't buying it just because I want to see Ubisoft go out of business or get bought out by EA or something (again, EA ain't what they used to be since the Spore debacle).

I'm more disappointed by Gabe Newell. Steam holds the cards in the new PC world order. If you want to get your product into the hands of as many customers as possible and you're in PC gaming, you don't deal with Best Buy or Gamestop. You deal with Steam. And if you eschew Steam? That's a real major kick in the ass to your profitability, since there are plenty of PC gamers (like me) who use Steam as their exclusive content provider.

As such, if Gabe Newell were to say "if Steam's built in anti-piracy measures aren't enough for you, WE WILL NOT SELL YOUR GAME. FULL STOP." then I suspect Ubi would either exit the PC market entirely (in which case, good riddance, you cheese-eating surrender monkey motherfuckers) or they'd fall into line because Steam's model clearly works for all their other corporate partners.

 

[Not Lord Atkin]

right.
sigh. that means spending 20? more on the PS3 version. I see where you're going with this, UBI...

 

[Straz]

Pissed off is the only description of my sentiments that applies.
I fucking hate all this DRM shit.
That being said, I am a console gamer, so this doesn't really affect me.
Yay.

 

[Miral]

As such, if Gabe Newell were to say "if Steam's built in anti-piracy measures aren't enough for you, WE WILL NOT SELL YOUR GAME. FULL STOP." then I suspect Ubi would either exit the PC market entirely (in which case, good riddance, you cheese-eating surrender monkey motherfuckers) or they'd fall into line because Steam's model clearly works for all their other corporate partners.

I wish. Interestingly, though, there was a bit of a scuffle a while back when some of the other digital distribution platforms basically categorically said "we will not distribute this game: it uses SteamWorks so it requires Steam, and we don't want that". So perhaps a precedent has been set?