Ubisoft: DRM is Ineffective Against Piracy
- Thread starter Steven Bogos
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It seems as if they're bringing this upon themselves over time, as time passes they keep trying to create many games at the same time, remember Black flag and all the people they threw onto that game alone?, they need to lessen the number of games and really refine them to a point where they become excellent stand alone products on their own, but since they aren't going to do that they are losing quality and of course when it comes to Nintendo they're just being immature and childish on top of not really showing care for Wii U gamers even considering Watch Dogs on Wii U isn't even due until November which is a long time after it's release, I'm not expecting it to get patched or appear any better either tbh knowing Ubisoft.Aiddon said:
I think on top of all that's happened recently they're slowly becoming a new form of EA while EA itself is slowly trying to pick up the pieces and become good again even though that's going to be a slow and long process but at least they're trying, same with MS and nintendo at this years E3, they really knocked it out the park and for fans and some non fans too, I know I'm more than sold on a Wii U at this point.
Ubisoft, they really just ened to be completely honest to us, take down Uplay or at the very least make it like the upcoming Galaxy where it;s completely optional eyt rewards you with Uplay points for taking part with it, have sales on their games and drop their install DRM's from the past and the present, make less games and really refine them, toss in all of that and I'm sure they will look good and function normally once more, until then they're going down a slippery slope that might end up with them becoming like Capcom with the posability of being bought out and not being a separate entity anymore.
Chances are that with this they are just preparing to shove in Uplay even deeper: It is a service and gives you a lot of interaction! Now games will no longer be always-online to prevent piracy.
Instead, from now on every game will require to be always-online for crossplay with your friends, random invasions and other such great multiplayer features. Option to turn that off? Why would you ever do that?
I see it already: You're trying to climb Notre Dame, your cape blowing in the wind, trying to not get spotted by guards lest they shoot you down. "Player xXxaSSa55inxXx has entered your game! Find and kill him before he burns down your spotting tower location!" Then the invading player attacks everything, pulls a train of 100 guards everywhere and counters them to death. Meanwhile, you got shot down by one of the 100 guards and lie splattered on the cobbles.
Instead, from now on every game will require to be always-online for crossplay with your friends, random invasions and other such great multiplayer features. Option to turn that off? Why would you ever do that?
I see it already: You're trying to climb Notre Dame, your cape blowing in the wind, trying to not get spotted by guards lest they shoot you down. "Player xXxaSSa55inxXx has entered your game! Find and kill him before he burns down your spotting tower location!" Then the invading player attacks everything, pulls a train of 100 guards everywhere and counters them to death. Meanwhile, you got shot down by one of the 100 guards and lie splattered on the cobbles.
Pretty much, but this thread alone pretty much illustrates why that's a good tack to take. Just look at how many posters here are wanting Ubi to drop UPlay but making no mention at all of Steam. If you can pretty up the DRM enough and make it into what appears to be an essential service, gamers will find it more than acceptable.BrotherRool said:
StriderShinryu said:
If UPlay actually -worked- in any meaningful capacity... if it served a purpose in any kind of light similar to that of Steam or even Origin (which people also hate, but some are coming around as it improves)... then yeah, UPlay probably would be tolerable. The problem isn't that it EXISTS. It's that the whole damn system is worthless, and they layer it over the top of already-existing DRM-providing services like Steam anyway!
It's definitely a good position to take if they can figure out what it is that makes UPlay complete shit and fix it... but I'm pretty sure they don't have Valve-money to go and turn it into the Steam-Clone digital storefront and online gateway to Ubisoft that they really would like it to be.
*sigh* this is a blatant publicity stunt to try to distract gamers from the issue that much of the company leadership is blatantly sexist, most likely vehemently racist, and purposely gimps certain versions of games in order to create a false sense of parity with inferior systems. There was no mention about any actual cessation on the use of DRM in their games, or the scrapping of the UPlay service. In addition, their press release seems to be making the indication that they want to move more in the direction of the initial release of the newest Sim City, which forces the user to have a constant internet connection in order to be able to play the game.
The problem with game piracy is that no company is willing to attack the core reasons why people pirate games. The price point is too high, especially for digital copies of games, the games aren't good enough to warrant full purchase, and you're likely to find less spyware and malware in a pirated copy of a game from companies like Ubi or Activision/Blizzard than in a copy from retail or digital distribution.
The problem with game piracy is that no company is willing to attack the core reasons why people pirate games. The price point is too high, especially for digital copies of games, the games aren't good enough to warrant full purchase, and you're likely to find less spyware and malware in a pirated copy of a game from companies like Ubi or Activision/Blizzard than in a copy from retail or digital distribution.
That's a really positive way to see things.Steven Bogos said:
Or... how long has it taken Ubi to realise what most of us already knew back in the days of Assassin's Creed II.
Now if you just get your Uplay bullshit out of my face I might consider buying your games again, not multiplayer ones though, I still haven't been able to play the Assassin's Creed Revelations multiplayer because your shitty software keeps thinking I'm cheating for some reason.
Steam is DRM, so to switch to that would undermine their statement. They would have to go GoG style to follow through with their comments. Don't get me wrong I like steam but if their saying DRM is useless and their going to stop then swapping to steam technically isn't the correct action (although that doesn't stop them from selling on steam).Sigmund Av Volsung said:
I think what he was getting at was the fact that even if you buy ubisoft game through steam and launch it through steam, you still have to launch it again through Uplay to play, which is stupid. I'm already using Steam, why not let me play it through steam? Why add another layer of complexity and resource overhead to the picture?RicoADF said:
Not to mention Uplay's system of storing savegames is broken and, god forbid, you have to reinstall uplay and didn't realize you need to back up your saved games ahead of time, all your saved games are gone. Lost 7 hours of gameplay in AC:R because of that. Didn't even bother replaying them either. Just rage quit and watched the rest of the story cutscenes via youtube because Uplay is a POS.
If anything they aren't making enough games, or at least not enough types. A lot of their titles are starting to blur together, and it doesn't help that they aren't also considering stuff for the 3DS. 40 million users and year after year they ignore it for no real reason. Assassin's Creed is also bad considering that the reason they put 600 people on them is so they can churn them out yearly as fast as they can. It's like we have these companies who look to Nintendo's habit of getting new Mario titles out quickly, but forget that Mario titles tend to be spread over a WIDE variety of styles even within the same genre (Super Mario 3D World playing NOTHING like NSMBU despite being in the platforming genre and Paper Mario not being the same as Mario and Luigi) which is also helped by them switching between portable and console entries. Heck, last year we got a remake of Wind Waker, but this year we're getting Hyrule Warriors; again, they have Zelda on the name but play COMPLETELY DIFFERENTLY. They really don't get that they need to take time with games, not just fart them out as quickly as they can. That's a short time strategy that doesn't lead to longevity.Shadow-Phoenix said:
Nope.
Ubi hasn't learned their lessons. They'll push Uplay even more and then some more with forced and unnecessary mutiplayer modes.
Ubi hasn't learned their lessons. They'll push Uplay even more and then some more with forced and unnecessary mutiplayer modes.
Steam is not as much of a horrible DRM service than Uplay is.RicoADF said:
I have my suspicions that the piss-poor optimisation of Watch_Dogs was largely due to that service. Steam (so far) has never caused direct performance issues, which would be the best alternative.
Ubisoft will not go DRM-free, because I severely doubt that any investor would agree to that. They are people who have zero understanding of gaming, and see it purely as business. If they are convinced that Uplay doesn't work, then the least they can do is switch to Steam without pissing of their financiers.
If they want this statement to actually be taken seriously, maybe they shouldn't have said it while right at this very moment UPlay is still a broken mess of a thing that instantly puts games on my 'do not buy' list. Until I see them actually living up to that statement I'm going to interpret it as two-faced at best, and at worst as a threat that Simcity and Diablo always-on crap are going to become the norm.