Ubisoft Online DRM: It's Worse Than Expected
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
- Start date
Today a PC is nothing without internet but there are times when the net is out, since there's nothing you can do you want to start playing - oh wait no internet now you even cant even play ... just great ...
I was waiting for the PC version - especially since it includes the 2 DLC's - but damn I would break my keyboard in anger everytime it would dump me because somethings up with the internet ...
I was waiting for the PC version - especially since it includes the 2 DLC's - but damn I would break my keyboard in anger everytime it would dump me because somethings up with the internet ...
Well, I guess my personal buying choices are even more limited now. I'll just go throw some more money at Stardock and the few other companies that don't treat me like a criminal for wanting to buy their product.
Normally I try and take the company's view into account, try and keep a balanced opinion of the most remarkably stupid situations... but this? What the Hell, Ubisoft? Make some damn sense.
Hell, I don't even have internet half the time. I feel bad for anyone that doesn't hear about this or read it on the box that goes out and buys this game.
Normally I try and take the company's view into account, try and keep a balanced opinion of the most remarkably stupid situations... but this? What the Hell, Ubisoft? Make some damn sense.
Hell, I don't even have internet half the time. I feel bad for anyone that doesn't hear about this or read it on the box that goes out and buys this game.
This makes me seriously consider piracy, I gotta say. I hate to, but it really does. Because I hate to say it, but in this case, enough pirating could send a necessary message.
The real trick here is that game developers love shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to the PC. Yes, PC is not the biggest market out there. But it still makes a sizable chunk of money. And developers screw over PC gamers repeatedly for stupid reasons because there not paying attention, which makes less people want to buy the PC game, which makes developers put less effort into considering even the simplest of refinements to the PC version, or occasionally, to go out of there way to gimp the PC version and burn money. Then developers assume that they must be losing money to piracy, and put in DRM that makes people even less likely to get a PC version. Its so...stupid. Developers, we want to give you our money, and you keep listing off reasons not to. Stop it, for the love of god.
The real trick here is that game developers love shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to the PC. Yes, PC is not the biggest market out there. But it still makes a sizable chunk of money. And developers screw over PC gamers repeatedly for stupid reasons because there not paying attention, which makes less people want to buy the PC game, which makes developers put less effort into considering even the simplest of refinements to the PC version, or occasionally, to go out of there way to gimp the PC version and burn money. Then developers assume that they must be losing money to piracy, and put in DRM that makes people even less likely to get a PC version. Its so...stupid. Developers, we want to give you our money, and you keep listing off reasons not to. Stop it, for the love of god.
That's one way to look at it, but the problem is it's not the only way to look at it - massive pirating of a title and underwhelming sales figures may very well say "we thought the game was worth playing but not worth buying because of the extraneous crap you tacked onto it" to us, but it also says "Oh noes! Look at these massive piracy rates - they're negatively impacting our sales figures! I guess we'll have to keep on fighting piracy with DRM then!" to a company's investors once the suits making these decisions tell that to them, complete with figures to reinforce their point.Abedeus said:
Also pirating games, or urging people to go about pirating games, officially makes you a douchebag. Don't even pretend you have any moral high ground on your side, or that you're "sticking it to the greedy corporations!" - the only morally defensible reason to pirate is to combat lack of a demo equating to complete crapshoot whether or not this title will actually run on my computer issues, and then only if the pirate in question promptly removes the title once they confirm that it will work.
Pirating for any other reason? A douchebag is you.
So basically anybody that doesn't have flat rate connection (I know there's not so much of them but still), you can't play? Stupid is not a strong enough word.
Somebody mentioned - lower the prices. If a game takes 3-4 days to download (I saw that WoW had 15 gigs, that'd take a week to download if the connection is less than perfect) and it is sometimes too annoying to download, but still prices like $60 are too much.
In my country some new titles cost about 50 euros for pc games - but to put it in perspective, average wage monthly is about 500-550 euros. That seriously narrows the market and people who can afford it, not to mention that only about 20% have flat rate. If prices were lower, much more people would decide to buy a game, with a booklet, case etc. and play it when they come home than to wait days to download it.
Besides, scoreboards and similar (like Arkham) add options which are hard to come by or lower quality if they're pirated (for example TF2 or anyother multiplayer servers), it's just less of a hassle to have an original.
If they gave a damn to do some research, I'm pretty sure they'd not only limit piracy but maybe even make more profit by lowering prices. Having specific servers for DRM purposes just adds costs to Ubisoft and lessens the sales - you'd think that greedy people would be more cunning.
Somebody mentioned - lower the prices. If a game takes 3-4 days to download (I saw that WoW had 15 gigs, that'd take a week to download if the connection is less than perfect) and it is sometimes too annoying to download, but still prices like $60 are too much.
In my country some new titles cost about 50 euros for pc games - but to put it in perspective, average wage monthly is about 500-550 euros. That seriously narrows the market and people who can afford it, not to mention that only about 20% have flat rate. If prices were lower, much more people would decide to buy a game, with a booklet, case etc. and play it when they come home than to wait days to download it.
Besides, scoreboards and similar (like Arkham) add options which are hard to come by or lower quality if they're pirated (for example TF2 or anyother multiplayer servers), it's just less of a hassle to have an original.
If they gave a damn to do some research, I'm pretty sure they'd not only limit piracy but maybe even make more profit by lowering prices. Having specific servers for DRM purposes just adds costs to Ubisoft and lessens the sales - you'd think that greedy people would be more cunning.
What about if you can't play the game because of an unreliable internet connection?Gildan Bladeborn said:
or if you weren't given a CD key for a game you bought and got no response from tech support?
If you think that makes you a douchebag, then call me king Douche McDouchenstien.
That's actually what I was being sarcastic about. That being said, this DRM thing will actually take out a huge chunk of sales anyway.Credge said:
That must be why as promised, Left4Dead has amazing, functioning modding tools with a thriving modding community creating a stream of content.halo3rulzer said:
Oh wait, that other thing... Valve released buggy unusable tools and never bothered to fix them because they didn't want their own community to compete against the content of Left4Dead 2, and released all the toolset fixes they had been promising, in left4dead 2 so anyone who wanted to mod would have to make the transition.
Fuck Valve aswell.
The problem with this idea is that while completely fair, it sends the message to Ubisoft that their DRM worked, and they should put it in all future titles. Any game with DRM that prevents the user from playing at anytime they have the disk on hand should be avoided for this reason. Even if the DRM works for you and won't affect you, you still need to think of the people it will hurt.Gaderael said:
I own two games with limited installs, and I constantly dread losing them. Just last night I had one of my hard drives die without any sort of warning. Just *Click* and the computer was done. No DRM games were on the machine, but it makes me realize how vulnerable those games are. As much as I love those games, I regret buying them because now there is a chance I won't be able to play them in the future. And believe me, I play games in the future. Just last night I was playing Max Payne.
Now to see if Assassin's Creed II can break the piracy records that Spore set when EA tried their piss poor new DRM. When are publishers going to learn that DRM just pisses off paying customers? Pirates still find ways to pirate your games, so the DRM isn't working as intended. All you're doing is making life suck for the people who actually paid for a copy of the game. Leave them the fuck alone and let them play, because you sure as hell aren't stopping piracy.
That isn't pirating - that's utilizing the resources of the pirating community to render a game you legitimately purchased playable.Sebenko said:
It's pretty easy to see the distinction: Apply a No-CD patch to a game that you purchased? Not software piracy (violation of the EULA sure, but not piracy). Downloading the game via a Torrent and running it via the No-CD patch that the torrent doubtlessly included? Piracy!
I've had to break the copy protection on several games I bought at retail because it decided to randomly stop functioning with my hardware, and I've had retail copies of other games ship with invalid CD-Keys. Resorting to work-arounds rather than taking it up arse and shelling out for yet another copy of the game is 100% morally justifiable and the companies that created the scenario that drives you to do that should be ashamed of themselves.
If you've paid for the game, downloading a pirated copy/code to break DRM/what-have-you for any reason can't be piracy, because you've already paid for the game.
So no, you would not be King Douche McDouchenstein (unless you want to be called that).
Thge phrase Cutting off your nose to spite your face comes to mind.
It still never ceases to amaze me how publishers and developers think the way to combat piracy is to make it as difficult as possible for legitamte paying customers to use the products they have bought.
It's fine in theory, but we've already seen with Modern Warfare 2, Bioshock, Mass Effect and many, many others that the pirates take a mere matter of days to break all these systems, giving the thieves a superior and free product. This is the wrong fucking way round, if Ubisoft really wants to try and combat piracy they should make it advantagious to be honest, not as inconvenient as possible.
Shame really I quite wanted to buy this game.
It still never ceases to amaze me how publishers and developers think the way to combat piracy is to make it as difficult as possible for legitamte paying customers to use the products they have bought.
It's fine in theory, but we've already seen with Modern Warfare 2, Bioshock, Mass Effect and many, many others that the pirates take a mere matter of days to break all these systems, giving the thieves a superior and free product. This is the wrong fucking way round, if Ubisoft really wants to try and combat piracy they should make it advantagious to be honest, not as inconvenient as possible.
Shame really I quite wanted to buy this game.
Yet every time someone has downloaded a Pirated Version of the game to work around a scratched disc, a dodgy cd key, bad drm or poor tech support... is yet another number added into the big pile of "OMG peoples R stealing our game111111 Die PIRATE SCUM DIE!!!"Gildan Bladeborn said:
It doesnt matter what your individual intentions are, or if you have already paid for the game... publishers see every pirated copy as a 100% lost sale.
In the eyes of Ubisoft and other publishers there is no difference between:
1: Buying the game, and downloading the ISO if you damage the disk.
2: Downloading the game as a demo, seeing if it works, if you like it and then deciding to buy it.
3: Downloading an overpriced game on release and buying it once the game falls to a price point you feel is fair.
4: Downloading a version after purchasing a copy because the publishers tech support has failed you in some way, be that DRM error or other.
5: Downloading a game you would never buy yourself, but want to try because you can and its free to torrent.
6: Outright stealing the game.
It doesn't matter what the individuals intentions are, it all gets thrown into the same pile and has the exact same effect on how publishers see the numbers.
This is beyond "potential". I'm pretty sure this is the equivalent of screaming "Thief!" at everyone who buys it. I'm sure this will kill pirating forever. I mean look at well Spore did.Furburt said:
Hahaha awesome, I like acronyms!wordsmith said:
Way to go ubisoft, lets make people hate our new flagship game and defile our decent name!
So...who's idea was it anyway? Developers or some sort of management decision?
While I don't care about AC2 at all and love my 360, wii and soon to be born ps3 (sssssssssoon...) I wont go through this crap with my pc. I refuse. As long as they release 3rd person games I will probably buy the ones I like for whichever console (Although auto aiming and crosshairs the size of the screen kinda kills it for me). But if they do this with some fps or strategy game I want. That shit will not fly...
I still prefer my pc!
So basically this is a big stuff up for anything that plays better on the pc
Wasn't Beyond Good and Evil 1 a Ubisoft game? That means when 2 comes out it... NO GOD WHY???
I still prefer my pc!
So basically this is a big stuff up for anything that plays better on the pc
Wasn't Beyond Good and Evil 1 a Ubisoft game? That means when 2 comes out it... NO GOD WHY???
Oh, this is hilarious! ?I?m pretty glad none of the games I like are made by Ubisoft. *shrug* But it?s still pretty spectacular (and a shame) to see a good studio do the copy?protection equivalent of driving their brand?new Ferrari into the lake.
Did they talk to anyone skilled in the art before deciding on a ineffectually draconian scheme like this to see whether it would actually be worth anything at all?
Did they just fundamentally misunderstand the advice they (presumably) got that only online games (like, say, an MMO like WoW) can have strong authentication schemes (because the random, unique authentication key to the online services that present an inseparable?the key word in this context, inseparable?part of the game cannot be duplicated or generated)?
In this case, it?s not an inseparable part of the game. It?s a single?player game on which they?ve bolted protection.
The real irony, then, is that this obnoxious, controversial, loud, obvious, distinctive, hair?triggered copy protection scheme is actually going to be relatively easy to break for those exact reasons. Even the very best they could do, a continuous connection streaming sentinels and watchdog timers until the cows come home, won?t save them from a complete realtime run log?which would be quite doable to produce and later analyse on computers these days (commonly used to analyse malware?quite apt for this particular system I?d say!). One skilled cracker could (and presumably, especially given this much attention and demand, quite certainly will) eat this scheme for breakfast, and potentially even spit out a reusable method to break the system quickly for the next time Ubisoft use it. Probably not what they were hoping for. In return for massive user inconvenience, they get no security at all. Not a great tradeoff.
Worse, bad press like this going around the web (and annoying reviewers, who review the game they get, which right now is the game that crashes and plonks them back to the last save checkpoint every few minutes) will?I would hope?negatively impact the review scores, and the sales of the game very greatly. (For that reason, they shouldn?t even be delivering this DRM system to reviewers?let alone retail?)
Quite understandably, people may not want to buy a game everyone knows is horribly broken. And now, everyone does know it?s horribly broken, and all their future games might be too. Those who wanted the game on the PC may naturally turn in their millions to the obvious way to get that same thing without this stupid copy protection, because they?ve now heard about this, and prefer their games to not throw them back to the last saved checkpoint every time their DSL hiccups.
Let?s not even get into what might happen if the master servers get DoSed. Presumably that didn?t come up in the meeting.
That is to say, they?ve just spent lots of good money developing a great way to shoot themselves in the foot, lower their sales and raise their piracy rates. Whichever Ubisoft executive decided this was a great idea is either a blithering idiot, secretly on the payroll of their competitors and sabotaging them from within, or Ubisoft is in fact desperately searching for any excuse they can get to drop the PC platform completely, and is thinking of this as a convenient excuse to do that.
?but, again, not my problem, thank goodness. Were I to be considering their games for purchase, however, that would have cost my sale. Plenty of other games out there with none of this garbage, thanks.
?I?m pretty glad none of the games I like are made by Ubisoft. *shrug* But it?s still pretty spectacular (and a shame) to see a good studio do the copy?protection equivalent of driving their brand?new Ferrari into the lake.Did they talk to anyone skilled in the art before deciding on a ineffectually draconian scheme like this to see whether it would actually be worth anything at all?
Did they just fundamentally misunderstand the advice they (presumably) got that only online games (like, say, an MMO like WoW) can have strong authentication schemes (because the random, unique authentication key to the online services that present an inseparable?the key word in this context, inseparable?part of the game cannot be duplicated or generated)?
In this case, it?s not an inseparable part of the game. It?s a single?player game on which they?ve bolted protection.
The real irony, then, is that this obnoxious, controversial, loud, obvious, distinctive, hair?triggered copy protection scheme is actually going to be relatively easy to break for those exact reasons. Even the very best they could do, a continuous connection streaming sentinels and watchdog timers until the cows come home, won?t save them from a complete realtime run log?which would be quite doable to produce and later analyse on computers these days (commonly used to analyse malware?quite apt for this particular system I?d say!). One skilled cracker could (and presumably, especially given this much attention and demand, quite certainly will) eat this scheme for breakfast, and potentially even spit out a reusable method to break the system quickly for the next time Ubisoft use it. Probably not what they were hoping for. In return for massive user inconvenience, they get no security at all. Not a great tradeoff.
Worse, bad press like this going around the web (and annoying reviewers, who review the game they get, which right now is the game that crashes and plonks them back to the last save checkpoint every few minutes) will?I would hope?negatively impact the review scores, and the sales of the game very greatly. (For that reason, they shouldn?t even be delivering this DRM system to reviewers?let alone retail?)
Quite understandably, people may not want to buy a game everyone knows is horribly broken. And now, everyone does know it?s horribly broken, and all their future games might be too. Those who wanted the game on the PC may naturally turn in their millions to the obvious way to get that same thing without this stupid copy protection, because they?ve now heard about this, and prefer their games to not throw them back to the last saved checkpoint every time their DSL hiccups.
Let?s not even get into what might happen if the master servers get DoSed. Presumably that didn?t come up in the meeting.
That is to say, they?ve just spent lots of good money developing a great way to shoot themselves in the foot, lower their sales and raise their piracy rates. Whichever Ubisoft executive decided this was a great idea is either a blithering idiot, secretly on the payroll of their competitors and sabotaging them from within, or Ubisoft is in fact desperately searching for any excuse they can get to drop the PC platform completely, and is thinking of this as a convenient excuse to do that.
?but, again, not my problem, thank goodness. Were I to be considering their games for purchase, however, that would have cost my sale. Plenty of other games out there with none of this garbage, thanks.