As someone who's job involves months of of travel and infrequent, as well as unreliable internet access. Some games have DRM requiring one time online activation, I can deal with that. Constant access? Not an option 6 months out of the year, so fuck them, and fuck their DRM.
Ubisoft Clarifies New Online DRM Scheme
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
- Start date
Hmmm. While the cracking / pirating will indeed happen, what I want to know is...what happens when some hacker puts it into his mind to take down the ubi.com servers? Because you know damn well that will happen as well with such a tempting target out there.
What'll happen? The only people who will be able to play the games will be the pirates.
What'll happen? The only people who will be able to play the games will be the pirates.
*feels sorry for PC gamers*
Ubisofts paranoia knows no bounds does it not?
oh lord what if the rest of the video game industry actually think this is a good idea and implement it in ALL their games.
And what about people who don't have Internet? Some people tend to forget that not everyone has constant access to it, or access to it at all. And what if they have the game on their laptops so they can play on Flights and long train rides?
F'oxx il-ubisoft!
Ubisofts paranoia knows no bounds does it not?
oh lord what if the rest of the video game industry actually think this is a good idea and implement it in ALL their games.And what about people who don't have Internet? Some people tend to forget that not everyone has constant access to it, or access to it at all. And what if they have the game on their laptops so they can play on Flights and long train rides?
F'oxx il-ubisoft!
The only way to make DRM that is uncrackable by software is to remove Turing-completeness from the processor. Of course, then it will likely be unable to run a game. Of course, even then you can crack it by hardware, like on consoles.
The concerns about second-hand market and a hypothetical DDoS attack on the auth servers are also very germane, too...
The concerns about second-hand market and a hypothetical DDoS attack on the auth servers are also very germane, too...
Yeah... no. Seriously, what are they thinking? Do they think this will cause anything other then more people resorting to piracy so they can, you know, play their games when they want to?
It's funny how if you don't buy it, Ubisoft will just stop making games for the PC all together.
Unless you manage to convine every person in the world who would buy AC2/Settlers7/inert ubi game here the lack of a few hundred people not buying and turning to piracy won't really matter that much to them.
On the other hand what would get on their nerves would be something like oh say a continual attack on the authentication servers that causes them to be unable to allow anyone to play at all, including those who wouldnt care about being hooked up whenever they want to play. Imagine the chaos erupting from that. Tens or even hundreds of thousands of people trying to play across all of the games they have with this uDRM. The customer complaints would be flooded and you know that someone in the US would start up a lawsuit against them.
But of course this all conjecture as we all know that people don't do things like that at all do they?
On the other hand what would get on their nerves would be something like oh say a continual attack on the authentication servers that causes them to be unable to allow anyone to play at all, including those who wouldnt care about being hooked up whenever they want to play. Imagine the chaos erupting from that. Tens or even hundreds of thousands of people trying to play across all of the games they have with this uDRM. The customer complaints would be flooded and you know that someone in the US would start up a lawsuit against them.
But of course this all conjecture as we all know that people don't do things like that at all do they?
Thanks, I endeavor to contribute something useful on serious topics like this (the frivolous ones, not so much, heh).Random Bobcat said:
There are certainly individuals with that mindset out there, but I really don't get the sense that CEOs of publicly-traded game publishing companies are adopting DRM as a matter of principle to spite freeloaders, not as a general rule anyways. With them, it's either a case of caving in to their investor's misguided demands to "do something about piracy", a straw man argument to justify developing ways to shut down the used games market, or genuine stupidity in which case the board of directors really needs to boot them.Random Bobcat said:
And as much as I use hyperbole to insult their intelligence when a system like this one is unveiled, I rather doubt they are unaware of just how ineffectual and poorly received DRM tends to be, or the negative impact it has on their current customer-base, so I tend to believe they either have to stick with DRM thanks to stakeholder pressure, or are confident that dismantling the used-games market will make up any lost sales from irate customers.
It never even crosses my mind that they're sticking with DRM as a matter of principle, as that doesn't make much business sense and you don't usually get to their level without having a good deal of that.
Oh no, I absolutely agree that they're free to do whatever the hell they want and capitalism will determine if they're vindicated or go down in flames. And I get that you're not defending it from a consumer standpoint, but rather attempting to illustrate why companies stick with systems so clearly onerous to their customers - where we disagree is whether they have any real reason to justify doing that, not that they should be allowed do.Random Bobcat said:
Invasive DRM should absolutely fail - companies need to learn just how much their customers hate being treated like thieves from the word go, and that we really don't enjoy being rather transparently screwed over by ridiculous restrictions.
But companies shouldn't be trying to foist DRM on us to "combat piracy", even prior to a resultant backlash that convinces them to stop, as it's a "solution" to a problem that never make any real sense to address at all - software piracy isn't analogous to traditional theft, ergo you do not incur a loss for ever pirated copy downloaded! Never mind that it does nothing but drain your company of resources, drive away potential customers, cause PR nightmares, and completely fails to 'solve' the issue you're telling the world led to it's implementation in the first place [small](I of course posit that you were lying, but that's me)[/small].
Companies should stop trying to cram down DRM down our throats not just because we the consumers really hate that, but because there are much better uses of their time and money. Spite, genuine hatred of your customers, or the mythical El Dorado of receiving payment for every copy that changes hands are the only reasons to stick with it, and none of those are very good reasons at all [small](the first two are impractical or stupid, and the third is a pipe dream - it's not like video games are the only market where the original seller sees no profit when items are resold, but you don't see auto dealerships trying to make used car sales impossible, do you?)[/small].
As it does to me - it's a sad reality that, because of this presumption that every customer is a pirate, I'm shackled with games I paid for that treat me like a criminal. And while I think the people downloading games are almost universally douchebags, I've come to rely on the output of the crackers, the very folks making those illegal copies available to the douchebaggy pirates, myself, since I've run into situations where DRM rendered my (legitimately purchased retail copy!) of a game unplayable, or become annoyed with entirely arbitrary disc checks when no data is even being read from the disc. I wouldn't need to track down No-CD patches for stuff if publishers just stopped requiring them, but since they do, I'm glad the pirate community exists to provide those patches to me.Random Bobcat said:
It's pretty easy to see there's something wrong with this scenario wherein I need the output of 3rd-party crackers to render games I paid for playable/less annoying (hint: it's DRM, that's what's wrong).
[hr]
Just in case somebody reads my lengthy rants on the evils of DRM where I make the point that piracy isn't a compelling reason to implement DRM, please keep this in mind: I think everyone that has posted in this thread announcing they will be pirating Assassin's Creed 2 now is a jackass. Ubisoft's decision to screw you over and treat you like a criminal bugs you so much that you won't pay for their games anymore? Don't bloody pirate them then!!
You realize you've just said "Screw you Ubisoft for treating me like a pirate! I shall now be pirating all of your games!", right? You've just MADE THEM CORRECT ABOUT YOU, and handed them more ammunition to keep waving that damn piracy straw man around. You are NOT "sticking it to the man!", or "sending them a message!" - you're just a douchebag. So don't pirate AC2, and definitely don't tell anyone I told you that you should.
I have two computers in my house. One is connected to the internet - and it's not my gaming computer. I wasn't going to buy the game anyway but the art of selling things is supposed to remove all barriers or hesitations the consumer may have. I can appreciate why they've done this but they seem to be handling it poorly.
To paraphrase:
"... But don't worry, even if it is as bad as you thought, it works about as well as you would expect too! Just remember that you must be connected to Ubisoft the whole time."
That sounds... Orwellian actually. Are they going to be monitoring what we are doing in the game as well? So we don't do anything bad like... Murder?
"... But don't worry, even if it is as bad as you thought, it works about as well as you would expect too! Just remember that you must be connected to Ubisoft the whole time."
That sounds... Orwellian actually. Are they going to be monitoring what we are doing in the game as well? So we don't do anything bad like... Murder?
So if I just happen to be away from my Internet connection for whatever reason, maybe I'm on vacation and the resort has no Internet (true story), I will be unable to play a game I legitimately payed full price for. Wow, that sound completely unfair. I'm sorry, but there is no practical reason for me to connect to the Internet to play a single-player game, so why should I? Because some bad apples out there decide to pirate the game, everyone must suffer.