Ubisoft: DRM is Ineffective Against Piracy

[alj]

Who are you and what have you don't with Ubisoft's VP ? IN all seriousness this is a good move and its nice that somone from a major publisher is talking sense. Lets just hope they don't make everything an "MMO" so it always has to be connected to a server, but for now i will give them a chance to redeem themselves.

Good show ubisoft but don't rest on your laurels there are other things in your organisation that need sorting but this is a good step in the right direction.

 

[Flammablezeus]

At least they're finally saying something that makes sense. I do wish they'd at least acknowledge the fact that they've acted in absolute opposition to this statement though. An apology wouldn't go amiss either. It's very frustrating to know that thousands of us gamers have been telling this to them for years and that when they finally acknowledge it, they make it sound like an original idea.

 

[FoolKiller]

Early stated that while Bethesda's recently released Wolfenstein: The New Order was reportedly pirated over 100,000 times, it was a mistake on Bethesda's part to say that these were all lost sales, because some number of people were always going to steal the game.

Some people download a pirated game because they are not sure if they will like it,and want to protect themselves from a bad investment.Not all of those who download pirate copies fully play the game they download,so not all pirate downloads are lost sales.
Thing is the market had its own ways of satisfying that consumer need,the "try before you buy".
There where sharewhere versions of games,and there were demos too.
Today people who want to try before they buy,download the whole games because there aren't short demo versions to try out.

The other problem is that people want to try the game. A demo is a controlled experiment that is basically the company's best foot forward. I don't trust them because they have burnt me before. I like PS+ for their full game trials in that respect.

As for Ubisoft... 2 steps forward 1 step back.

 

[DTWolfwood]

when they get rid of UPlay i'll believe this man. Talk is Cheap! I want to see some action!

 

[dynath]

You know everyone is complaining about UPlay and hoping it goes away but if you actually read what Early said he went on about "SERVICES" of which UPlay is one. It's a garbage service created only to deliver Ubisoft's DRM with vestigial purchasing, achievement tracking, and communication sections. He isn't even hinting that UPlay will go away, he is blatantly saying achievements and multiplayer are becoming the new DRM. Expect every Ubi game to require constant online connectivity for realtime profile updates and multiplayer/online single player constant online modes.

This isn't a step forward guys.

 

[RicoADF]

Steam is not as much of a horrible DRM service than Uplay is.

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.

Agreed, steam isn't as bad when it comes to DRM and generally I'm happy with it, just saying that going by their statement they would need to drop DRM to follow through with what they have said.

As for investors, if they can show proof that they've made more profit without DRM than with it you can bet you ass they will follow through and you can bet that Ubisoft would have said evedence before such a statement.

 

[mrdude2010]

Finally, they realized what other major publishers realized years ago.

I wish we could filmmakers on board, though. I hate having to sit through that stupid piracy warning on a disc I've already purchased.

 

[trlkly]

They've "come a long way" in realizing that not all pirated games count as lost sales. They've come a long way in realizing that offline DRM doesn't work. That doesn't mean they'd get rid of Uplay or DRM in general.

The most realistic thing they could do is make it seemlessly transparent. Get rid of Uplay as a launcher, and just have the features built into the games themselves. Have it be done in a standard way, with at most a small announcement when starting the game (like "Press tab to access Online features." I say "Online features" because the Uplay brand is so tarnished that they need to go away from it. You'd also have explicit multiplayer options in game that would just work, and perhaps even a built in chat window that you can pull up.

You'd still need an Ubisoft account, of course, but you can make that an easy part of the installer for offline copies, and just rely on Steam for online copies, allowing users to acquire and log in to their Ubisoft account when they try to use online features.

 

[MXRom]

Sounds a bit 'do as I say, not as I do' thing to appeal to gamers. Still not getting Uplay...