Ubisoft Clarifies New Online DRM Scheme

[Eruanno]

I hereby vow to buy no games from Ubisoft on PC. Also, I hope nobody else does either and they suffer massive losses and take a massive economical hit due to STUPIDITY.

(I will buy their games on X360, though... until they figure out some stupid DRM there as well.)

"Where exactly you are reconnected in the game may differ from title to title," the rep continued. "Settlers 7 reconnects at the exact point where the connection was lost, AC2 reconnects you at the last checkpoint (and not the last auto save, as indicated in the CVG article). There are many checkpoints so you're back to the point where you got disconnected in no time."

And I wonder how this is ANY reassurance at all. What they are saying is "Yup, you guys! This sucks if your connection is flaky and this is a steaming pile of shit! Woo-hoo!"
I bet they will have GFWL too, to make things even more full of sunshine and happiness. OH WAIT.

 

[Caliostro]

Relaaaaaaax Guy..

seriously andy, that should have been the picture, or at least the inspiration

Totally. My thoughts as I read the title: "Relax guy... yeah... We're legit guy, yeah..."


My current reaction to Ubisoft:

 

[luckshot]

as others have said: what about vacations without internet?

a new view: there may come a time where a player needs to cut costs, they can not resell the game, but they can cancel their internet service...which would make the single player game unplayable.

yes stable internet connections are numerous, but so are potholes and bad business practices, yet you dont see many taking advantage of those...oh, wait those crafty mechanics

edit: not to mention, at least in my area, weather can interrupt internet connections while leaving other services unaffected

 

[Loki892]

Yet another in a long line of DRM ideas that just increase the number of people pirating the game. I give it a week tops before there's a flawless crack.

 

[Gildan Bladeborn]

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.

 

[Rainboq]

snip

snip... snip

You forgot to sign it "-Summer Galu"
XKCD reference aside, that is the truth, ther is also another side, pirating for sampling purposes, which is FAIR USE, I have done this on occasion and it has helped me avoid some really bad games

 

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

Clarifies that it is exactly what we called it out to be? OK, thanks, I thought I was complaining about nothing.

 

[Imper1um]

How much do people want to bet the first thing 85% of the people getting this game will do is find the 'Anti-DRM Patch' that every Game Hacker and their Grandma will produce at Day 0?

 

[Hawgh]

Saying it twice doesn't make it better.

 

[Gildan Bladeborn]

Spoiler: -snippity-

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 your 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 content provider, and as such are explicitly designed to screw you over to a greater or lesser extent.

You forgot to sign it "-Summer Galu"
XKCD reference aside, that is the truth, ther is also another side, pirating for sampling purposes, which is FAIR USE, I have done this on occasion and it has helped me avoid some really bad games

Ideally companies would provide demos for that purpose (and so we can determine if games will run at all before we buy them and then cannot return them since they've been opened hate that so much), but yes, that's one of the few reasonably valid reasons to pirate a game, provided of course you then purchase yourself a copy if you determine you like it.

In a funny way, the misguided crusade against piracy has created a system that drives otherwise paying customers to engage in piracy - with a console title, if you buy it and determine you don't like it, you can at least trade it back in (at a substantial loss of course). With PC games, retailers have long ago assumed anyone trying to return opened software has already ripped a copy and is therefore trying to game the system, so they'll only let you exchange opened software - and since online activation came into vogue, reselling PC titles is increasingly less and less possible.

So because everyone assumes their customers are miserable pirates, they actually turn them into pirates. Irony, thy name is DRM.

-snip-

Your post was awesome. But theres one minor nitpick. The used PC game market was dead long before online activation was even a twinkle in a corporate shill's eye. The used PC game market was killed by piracy. People would buy the game, install it, crack it, then return it. Leading to every retailer of PC games to adopt a "no-returns" policy.

Well no, not really - what those policies killed was the customers ability to get their money back if something legitimately would not work/was found to be way more objectionable than they thought/other valid reason for wanting to return something goes here/etc. Trading in your used games isn't returning them, as companies like Gamestop don't offer anything even remotely approaching a full refund against the purchase price - you get a small fraction of it back at best.

It's one thing to give customers their money back when you know they've doubtless still got their mitts on the product, and another to keep almost all of their money in return for a copy of the game you can now sell again. The used PC-games market was still around for quite some time after "No refunds for opened software" was a de facto industry standard - I used to pick up quite a few of my games that way.

 

[PhunkyPhazon]

Still a huge no. When my connection drops, it drops for a couple minutes, and it does this frequently. AC2 will be completely unplayable for me as long as this exists.

I don't suppose the Steam version might be void of this crap?

 

[Rainboq]

Spoiler: -snippity-

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 your 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 content provider, and as such are explicitly designed to screw you over to a greater or lesser extent.

You forgot to sign it "-Summer Galu"
XKCD reference aside, that is the truth, ther is also another side, pirating for sampling purposes, which is FAIR USE, I have done this on occasion and it has helped me avoid some really bad games

Ideally companies would provide demos for that purpose (and so we can determine if games will run at all before we buy them and then cannot return them since they've been opened hate that so much), but yes, that's one of the few reasonably valid reasons to pirate a game, provided of course you then purchase yourself a copy if you determine you like it.

In a funny way, the misguided crusade against piracy has created a system that drives otherwise paying customers to engage in piracy - with a console title, if you buy it and determine you don't like it, you can at least trade it back in (at a substantial loss of course). With PC games, retailers have long ago assumed anyone trying to return opened software has already ripped a copy and is therefore trying to game the system, so they'll only let you exchange opened software - and since online activation came into vogue, reselling PC titles is increasingly less and less possible.

So because everyone assumes their customers are miserable pirates, they actually turn them into pirates. Irony, thy name is DRM.

.... they need to let you write articles on this subject

 

[Rainboq]

Still a huge no. When my connection drops, it drops for a couple minutes, and it does this frequently. AC2 will be completely unplayable for me as long as this exists.

I don't suppose the Steam version might be void of this crap?

Maybe we'll get lucky and if your in offline mode it won't need to connect

 

[LordZ]

Brilliant! Turn your PC games into shit and blame it on piracy when it fails! After all, it's not like the very DRM that is supposed to stop piracy is driving away legitimate customers. I don't know why they don't just say "Fuck you PC gamers" and just stop making PC games.

 

[yoyo13rom]

Still shit, and now we're going to have to hope the game we're playing is one of the ones that resumes from where we left off. PC Gamer interviewed them, and they even admitted it'd get cracked straight away.

The benefits are (this made me laugh) that you can install as many times as you like, on as many computers you like. I used to be able to do that with every game, when there was no such thing as DRM.

That's the reason why people pirate in the first place. And the people who don't have a 'net connection can't play the game, but they can hardly download it illegally either. If you don't have a connection no one's going to let you borrow theirs for the hours it takes to download a torrent.

Petition here: http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?ew15dl94&1

I'd love a contact email address where we can send polite and informative emails to Ubisoft, telling them what we think. Maybe a member of staff working at the Escapist could provide this? Or contact Ubisoft who can then announce the address directly?

Keep up doing all the good work, dude!

OT: Even though I have internet on my PC, and it's pretty good(the youtube vids load up really nice), it's really unstable. Some examples: there are days when my net provider has problems(or does maintenance) and my connection's down for the day;this happens about once every 2 weeks.

+ Some times I can't even log on average sites like the Escapist(every 2-3 day's for about 2-3 hours I simply can't access The Escapist)

 

[Irridium]

When your connection drops about 5 times a day for no reason for varying legths of time, connection speed doesn't quite matter when you have no connection.

Its straight up bullshit, and I can't believe their trying to do this. Its like EA's "online check every 10 days" only worse.

 

[1066]

Said it before, I'll say it again: Used to be a PC gamer, but now a console gamer. DRMs are a big, big part of the why.

Truth be told, I don't like Ubisoft anyway (As a general rule, not an absolute one) So, really, all they're going to do is lose paying customers. Not really my problem.