Ubisoft Makes Tiny Tweak to Driver DRM

[Kagim]

I really hope the people who are pissed off about this will do the right thing and not come in contact with the game in any way shape or form. The answer to a company pulling crap isn't to spray paint the word fag on it's wall. The answer is to steer clear of the company and ALL of it's products, not just the offending one, and advise others to do the same.

When a company loses profits and can't blame illegal downloading for it they will feel the wrath of investors pulling out.

If you give them "WELL IT'S PIRATE BAYS FAULT!!!!" as an excuse investors won't be so quick to pull out of the company.

I wonder if that offended someone.... Probably... Gonna go back to planning out the order I'm going to devour all the legal, free, drm-less games that are pouring out of the woodwork...

 

[AzureRaven]

Ubisoft don't seem to be the brightest minds out there, eh?
Well, I've only ever been interested in 3 games they ever published anyway.
2 were Splinter Cell games which I don't think I want another of.(I liked Chaos Theory and Conviction, I just want the series to die now though, it's gone long enough.)
And the other is Armored Core: For Answer....and that's the only AC game they published, Namco Bandai is handling the next one.
So given that...I honestly don't care what they do at this point. If they want to dig their own grave, let them. They'll have to figure it out sooner or later.

 

[duchaked]

well I guess that kind of helps...

guess it really depends on the game. there are only some worthy of being played when I'm in a situation where I am away from home and don't have Internet (traveling at some airport where I don't want to pay for theirs or something)

 

[Nurb]

They don't understand that this pushes people INTO piracy because they will be looking for a crack to turn off the "always on" DRM and when they're looking they'll figure they don't need to pay for it at all if it comes to all this hassle. People here have even said they'll buy a game and download a crack to turn it off. They shouldn't have to rely on pirates to have a better gaming experience

This is bullshit. If this requires some sort of internet tether that prevents you from playing if your net is out, then you're basically renting the game and it shouldn't be full priced.

If two people are playing a game, and a pirate can still play if their connection is down all day while the paying customer can't, that means the pirate has a the better gaming experience and not the customer, which is very wrong.

But then I don't care, I don't have any sympathy for the big companies anymore when it comes to pirates.

There is really no reason for this ammount of backlash. If you disagree with what the companys doing, posting about how much you dislike it on the internet won't do jack. Put your money where your mouth is and don't buy the product.

They do this style of DRM because PC versions of their game get pirated ALOT more than their console counterparts. While its not a system that will stop piracy, it does take them quite a while to crack, and increases profit margins on PC games. Believe it or not, the people outraged by DRM are often louder than those who aren't - and more than likely the lack of your sales is going to be made up for by a whole host of others who dont care

Just to point out, there hasn't been a single company that produced numbers showing how much piracy hurt them. It's all guesswork and this "potential sales" crap. They might as well call bad reviews theft because it would disuade customers from buying a game and therefore cost a publisher a potential sale.

They use it as a scapegoat whenever their sequels don't don't sell, like those Prince of Persia sequels that were horrible enough it kept people from playing them but they blamed piracy for not selling as many as they thought they should/

 

[infohippie]

I still raise my middle finger to Ubisoft. Fuck them. I haven't bought anything of theirs since Assassin's Creed (the first one), and I still don't plan on buying any of their products until they stop treating their customers like thieves.

 

[teebeeohh]

so they basically covered their asses in case their server are down again?
the only good thing is that i got hawx out of it.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well thank god they don't make anything I like.
But as a PC gamer there you have many cracking/hacking options, they may not think I own the shit I buy, but I beg to differ.

 

[samsonguy920]

I think Penny Arcade said it best. Lets all ***** about Always On DRM, despite the fact that most of us have been connected to the internet continuously since 1999.

Its getting kind of pathetic. Most of the people posting will not be effected by this issue AT ALL. Most of us have dedicated internet that runs all the time. "But I can't play it on planes/trains, etc.". Then don't purchase the game. Its that simple. This DRM system is far from perfect, but they wouldnt be doing it if a vast majority of their users didn't have a steady connection thats almost always running. I really have no sympathy for people who try to sob it up, saying they can't play this game for reason XYZ. If you're in a situation where you dont have internet, its because -

A. You put yourself into a position where you cannot access the internet. Be this because you cant pay your bills, you want to save money so you siphon internet from neighbors, or if your enlisted in the military. In these cases, I honestly don't think gaming is a priority.


B. Its temporary. Plane or Train rides can be long. But theres plenty of other things to do - not to mention that this system of DRM hardly effects any games. Zomg what am I gonna do? Oh yeah, I have an ENTIRE library of steam games.

There is really no reason for this ammount of backlash. If you disagree with what the companys doing, posting about how much you dislike it on the internet won't do jack. Put your money where your mouth is and don't buy the product.

They do this style of DRM because PC versions of their game get pirated ALOT more than their console counterparts. While its not a system that will stop piracy, it does take them quite a while to crack, and increases profit margins on PC games. Believe it or not, the people outraged by DRM are often louder than those who aren't - and more than likely the lack of your sales is going to be made up for by a whole host of others who dont care

It is easy for someone like Penny Arcade to afford internet service that is a lot more dependable, given their long time career. I don't begrudge them that. They earned it. But it is also easy for such to forget where they came from. High bandwidth is much more prevalent, but it still comes with its issues, especially with more providers trying to leech their customers of more money with "internet caps." Having to be online all the time for those who have to deal with caps on their service turns into a very expensive proposition, one that shouldn't even be a consideration. But when you get a game that demands you be on all the time, it forces you to choose on that basis alone whether it is worth getting the game.
There are a large number of these same people stuck with "cap" policies that don't have another choice in internet service. Either there is another that also carries their own cap or there just isn't another choice because the current buys up the competition or otherwise forces it out of business.
Consider someone who doesn't pirate, and appreciates the games that Ubisoft has delivered before. And yet because of circumstances beyond their control, they can either buy the game and either play it on an extremely limited basis, choose to pay more out of their budget that might otherwise go into savings, or they just don't buy the game. Games aren't that important in the long run and the wisest choice would be not to bother. It is in this case that Ubisoft is being ignorant and unsympathetic to their customer's needs.
Consider also that their Always On service is a system of servers having to serve each and every customer for every time they log in. That is basically the same service as what MMO games provide. Servers don't run on happy thoughts. They run on electricity and maintenance and the people to service them. MMO games can support that with subscriptions and microtransactions. I look at Ubisoft's model, and all I really see supporting maintenance of their servers is the one time payment people make to purchase the game. Consider that is money that is probably not going to the developers who put many months of work into the game. No matter how I look at it, this Always On system is a deficit budget that could already be hurting Ubisoft more than piracy ever did, and to me that just strikes me as moronic.

 

[DTWolfwood]

gotta love it when you force upon your paying customers so many draconian digital rights management protection software that being a little bit lenient one time is considered a godsend and good will gesture. Well fuck that, UBISOFT will still never see a dime from me.

Lucky that they don't have a single game coming out that i give a damn about.

 

[Daemonate]

Still not buying any Ubisoft games.
For the record of course, you all realise that that Blizzard games all have the same requirements now?

Not buying their shit anymore either.

 

[Yopaz]

I don't know if you can even call this a real change. Unless I read it wrong you have to be online in the first place and you can't save it properly without being online?

On the other hand, I'm not buying it so I guess I don't care yet. Maybe that is why it is driver they are using, a lesser brand to float the always-on stuff again to see if Ass'creed Revs will be that badly affected by it.

You can play and save normally without having internet, you just can't launch without it. So if your internet connection disappears while playing you can still enjoy the full experience. Considering that some of their earlier games suffered from problems on Ubisoft's (their servers crashed because hackers attacked them because of their always on DRM thus making everyone lose their data since last save) side this is an improvement.

OT: I think this is an improvement and wont complain. Most of the time I can get a connection strong enough to get me on the escapist and that should do to launch a game too. Still... I'm not that interested in Driver though I enjoyed Driver 2.

 

[Royas]

It's the same DRM as was originally proposed by EA for Mass Effect on the PC, only more. That DRM threatened a "phone home" check every so often, but not every time. This is a phone home check every damned time.

And for those who seem stuck on this whole "everyone has the internet" thing, you are completely missing the point. Not only are you wrong, and not everyone (even every gamer) has reliable internet, but the mere fact that something like this is required is the sticking point. Supporting this DRM is supporting bad design, a deliberately engineered point failure that serves no purpose related to the actual function of the game. It's crappy design, any engineer will tell you that. You try to remove point failures, you don't add them. Bad design shouldn't be rewarded, simple as that. That's not even getting into the consumer rights issue, which is even more important.

 

[Redout9122]

Baby steps, eh? Oh well, haven't played Driver since the first one on old, grey PlayStation...and not really looking forward to new one. Plenty of more interesting way to spend my money.

After careful consideration of E3 I have to call bullshit.

To each of their own. I got DEx3, HOMM VI, Skyrim, Arkham City this year, ME3, TSW and hopefully GW2 next year. More than enough for me, and that's not counting all the possible indie productions that lately make up 60-70% of my gaming.

Eh, okay.

I admit I liked Skyrim and BF3. Arkham City might be okay as well.