Ubisoft Says Always-On DRM, "A Success"

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I think Ubisoft are covering their ears and singing "La la la la!"

Perhaps by success they mean that the Always On servers have never failed on their end, oh wait...

 

[Continuity]

... and I want to know why.

Because it means we no longer have control over our property that we've bought legitimately. If your car refused to start without a successful internet connection (assuming the server is even up) I'm sure you'd be pretty damn enraged.... games are important too, thus those of us who love games the most are enraged.

And it doesnt matter if your internet is rock solid... its the principle. You bought the thing you should damn well be able to use it as and when suits you i.e. you should have full control... not ubisoft.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

but we can't haul out the usual 'And it doesn't even work!' arguments here unless we can back them up.

Why not? Ubisoft are hauling out "it worked perfectly" despite evidence to the contrary.

What they did was shaft their legitimate customers purely to stop some pirates. And it only stopped a few. And this time they've got the toolkit to break it easier.

And simply not everyone has a broadband connection. A good friend of mine upgraded from dialup last month, and he lives in a major city.

My machine here, with 18Mg Broadband, gets hiccups occasionally. With Steam, I lose access to my loadout. With Ubi, I lose access to my game, save and position.

And that's despite all the other people like Neil Gaiman, Team Meat etc. who don't even mind pirates.

If Ubisoft want to start "renting" their games, which is what they're doing, then a price cut is needed. If they're selling them, then they shouldn't keep demanding I prove I bought it.

BTW, Ubisoft made 1 billion euros in 2008/2009. I severely doubt that's the results of 90% piracy.

 

[Danpascooch]

Could they be bigger idiots? Calling your DRM a "success" (even if it is, which it's not) is like.....shit, I can't even find an apt analogy, Ubisoft just made itself the biggest target since Sony, and we all know how that ended.

 

[Zakarath]

So... its a success at deterring pirates (supposedly). Is it also a success at deterring potential customers? Because that's what it's done for me.

 

[Stalydan]

Fail.

That's really all I can say. If they consider their terrible, draconian DRM system a "success", Ubisoft clearly exists on some other plane of reality where consumers are treated like criminals and owls can juggle Honda Civics.

Apart from the DRM stuff and being treated like a criminal, I would love to live on that plane.

 

[BreakfastMan]

In other news, Scientologists claim that Dianetics totally works, and is not pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo.

EDIT: Also, why does it matter if it deters pirates? Shouldn't the goal be to increase sales?

 

[Blind0bserver]

Yes, Ubisoft, this is clearly a success. While we're at it, having "Mr. Caffeine" head your press conference at E3 was a brilliant idea, too,

 

[Radelaide]

Ooh, those are pretty rose tinted glasses, Ubisoft. If you had listened to your fanbase, who are also the consumers of your product, they are less than thrilled with the way you're approaching DRM.

You need to figure out a way of using DRM successfully (and it can be done) without harming your legitimate end user. The more you punish consumers who spent their hard earned dollars on your game, the more pirates you inevitably create. The vicious cycle then begins and you, as the developer, will always lose out to people who want your game, but want to enjoy it on their time. Not on yours or their ISP.

 

[Joos]

I'd say this guy is either the guy responsible for the idea and will lose his job if it goes to hell, or... No, actually, that's probably the only option.

 

[Weaver]

But did sales also increase?
If 100,000 people pirated a game that sold 6 million copies but 50,000 people pirated a game that sold 500,000 copies I wouldn't call it a "success" even though less people pirated the game.

I know I personally haven't bought a single Ubisoft game since they announced this scheme. Not just on PC, consoles as well. I just ignore everything they put out.

 

[Sixties Spidey]

I didn't know success was measured by provoking potential customers to pirate. Shows what these imbeciles know.

 

[JET1971]

Yay even the pirates are sick of Ubisofts DRM for avererage to sub par games. Yep thats something to be proud of. "Paying customers drove away in droves and finnaly the pirates joined them! we win against you pirates!!!"

I think we should change the DRM acronym to UBI.

 

[mjc0961]

Well, it's Ubisoft. I think we expect them to be in their own alternate reality where DRM that pisses off customers and doesn't stop pirates is considered successful. These are also the guys who think that casual games are a waste of time because their mountains of shovelware for Wii and DS didn't make money, and rather than figure out how to do it right they just decide that casual games don't make money for anyone.

It's like if McDonalds went ahead and took a shit on your hamburger after you handed over your money as a means of preventing theft. The thief who'd steal the hamburger would get it nice&delicious and you're the one paying to have shit shoved down your throat.

Well, that might work better if you picked a different restaurant. No one at McDonalds is getting a nice and delicious burger, shit or no shit.

 

[Zakarath]

I almost bought AC2 on a steam sale. When I read the additional DRM bit I torrented it.

Protip: Admitting to piracy is kinda frowned upon here, even if the DRM is terrible

 

[BlindChance]

but we can't haul out the usual 'And it doesn't even work!' arguments here unless we can back them up.

Why not? Ubisoft are hauling out "it worked perfectly" despite evidence to the contrary.

Yeah, true enough. I assume they've got some decent metrics worked out (I believed it when the 2D Boy guys claimed they could track piracy rates, so I don't doubt Ubisoft can work it out too) but they're not showing us those stats, are they?

 

[GrimSheeper]

I guess they're sort of right since I didn't see that much Assassins Creed Brotherhood among scene releases. The fact that someone could crack it if they felt like it of course upsets that sort of, just as much as the fact that they had to aggravate their fans and honest players and declare everyone criminial who buys their games.

But then again, how do you measure piracy? How does one quantify the amount of people who do not buy their game? Everyone who doesn't own a copy must be a pirate? I don't know how to measure the amount of copies that are 'stolen' like this. There are no missing copies after all. You just copy the game, remove the sometimes harsh and gamebreaking, sometimes borderline illegal (remember starforce?) DRM out and sometimes even remove unnecessary features, making it more convenient even for people who don't usually pirate games. I dislike the thought of damaging a small studio because I'm too cheap to pay 10$ for a game, which is why I usually rely on the older games I bought from friends, which is not the same as pirating the game, but almost as harmful to the publisher, isn't it? Are people who don't play games on release as bad as pirates? I didn't add to their sales, so logically I'm harming their profit margin, right? Of course I didn't get to experience their game either.
Going off into a rant here, it's hard to not go completely discussion crazy with this topic. The main point remains: how do you quantify the amount of copies lost when there's no data loss and no immediate effect on people who bought the game?
I didn't buy any Ubisoft Titles anyway because none of them seemed interesting and I don't like being online all the time, my internet connection is sluggish at best and I guess that could cause problems with it like losing savegames and being kicked from my own game.

 

[jonyboy13]

What's DRM? Oh, it's that thing that makes SKIDROW upload the games an hour later.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

Seriously, Ubisoft should set up a Paypal donation link on their site, so people can just go download a cracked version, then pay them anyway.

As in 'Here's your twenty quid, I'm a paying customer, I just don't need to deal with all the bundled shit you're inflicting on me as an honest gamer.'

There's a thread on the Steam Forums, after the Assassin's Creed series went on sale, got to about 600 posts on something like 'post here if you'll buy the game when they remove the idiocy code'.

I'm not saying all 600 would rush out and buy it, but I am damn sure it hurt the sales of the games during the Steam sales, I certainly backed off it. While not all of them would buy it, you have to factor in that only a small proportion of PC gamers use Steam and post on the forums.

Just saying Terraria sold 200,000 copies in a week on sale, how much damage is the DRM doing?

I'm not even saying scrap it, I'm suggesting disable it after a month, or 3-6 months, after 3-6 months most games are getting discounted anyway and the pirates have moved on, the torrents have died down, etc.

IF it keeps the pirates away for a few weeks, great, it's working, but after the early sales period, patch it out and let honest, paying customers own a version nearly as good as the pirated one.