Ubisoft Says Always-On DRM, "A Success"

[ResonanceSD]

Ubisoft Says Always-On DRM, "A Success"

Ubisoft hasn't detailed exactly where it's getting its numbers regarding game piracy (though it warms my heart to imagine idiot pirates filling out questionnaires. "Do you steal our games? Y/N")

Thanks man, I just snorted coffee all over my desk. =D

 

[Bob_F_It]

Stopping pirates is the means; getting people to buy the games is the ends. In that respect, it's a big fat failure.

 

[ResonanceSD]

Actually, buggrit. I support the DRM measures. Steam does exactly the same thing for TF2 and counterstrike. No steam logon? NO GAME FOR YOU, MY FRIEND. It's unintrusive, and it protects their sales figures. Sure, I may be speaking as someone from a first world country with a reliable net connection, but honestly. They are a business. They have to answer to shareholders. Not you people.

 

[Akytalusia]

wasn't this covered before? it's allready been pointed out by EC ages ago that this kind of DRM only hurts legitimate users.

 

[TheAmokz]

Funny guy that Ubisoft eh?

 

[samsonguy920]

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.

They have to pay for those servers somehow. They are basically running a F2PMMO system with zero separate income to pay for server maintenance. The money to pay for that comes from everything else, including game sales.
How they manage to keep this going as long as they have I have no idea, but I would have to think it is going to hit a wall soon.
This latest comment alone is stupid as it is, but I have to wonder when they come up with the next stupid idea of charging subscriptions to pay for their online DRM. Outright suicide, there.

 

[geizr]

Ubisoft Says Always-On DRM, "A Success"

The rep, talking to PC Gamer [http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/07/28/ubisoft-our-drm-is-a-success/], went on to say that Ubisoft has seen "a clear reduction in piracy of our titles which required a persistent online connection."

Reducing piracy by eliminating sales. Sounds like a pyrrhic victory to me. I know I haven't bought a single game from Ubisoft as of late precisely because of the obscene DRM, and I don't plan on ever buying an Ubisoft game as long as they continue to use such DRM(but I don't pirate it, either!).

BTW, Escapist admins/moderators/etc., are the kanji characters in the captcha really necessary? Had to try twice to post this comment.

 

[Dogstile]

You know what I want to see? an actual discussion of what this DRM means. I've seen lots of people who instantly sputter a gut reaction and condemn it immediately but that's incredibly short sighted. There are lots of issues to discuss here, not the lest of which is why people hate it so much (and don't give me that crap about you just hate DRM or your internet connection sucks there is more to it and you know it). I want to know why people keep blasting DRM and why stories keep getting put it. Its not about simply hating the thing, this is on the level of a zealot crusade and I want to know why. As far as I'm concerned though, it's never going to happen because people are just too angry to talk all they can do is yell. Ah well, maybe DRM should treat use like means spirited children, we sure act like it.

Maybe people don't like the possibility that one day they won't be able to access their games. My command and conquer games from years ago? I can still play those. I will NEVER lose those unless i destroy the disk.

This DRM? I lose my game when the servers go down. I don't get a say in it. I'm renting the game until they tell me that they're shutting the game down. I'm not buying it.

Fuck that.

 

[fragmaster09]

a "sucess" at keeping me from playing Settlers 7 to pass the boredom while on holiday... with no internet... ah well, just build in MINECRAFT(using Yahtzee's voice in his review)

sure, it protects against piracy, but the game is £5!!! it's not even worth pirating if you can get it for washing a bloody car!!!

 

[samsonguy920]

Actually, buggrit. I support the DRM measures. Steam does exactly the same thing for TF2 and counterstrike. No steam logon? NO GAME FOR YOU, MY FRIEND. It's unintrusive, and it protects their sales figures. Sure, I may be speaking as someone from a first world country with a reliable net connection, but honestly. They are a business. They have to answer to shareholders. Not you people.

You just named two games that are multiplayer only, and therefore require an online connection to play. Bad argument there.
And yes, they have to answer to shareholders, but shareholders only stay such as long as there is money being made. Where is the profit when Ubisoft has to divert money from sales to pay for their server maintenance which gives nothing in return?
With more internet providers putting caps on and reducing their service, more people are going to be wanting to reduce their online time wherever possible. Buying the latest Ubisoft game is not going to be one of their choices.
It is quite possible sales have already taken a dip, and this is damage control in the denial fashion. Ubisoft is already releasing a game soon without their DRM, and they have been showing a trend of not keeping it on their games for very long. If anything this is becoming more a measure to "prevent piracy" during the first few months, but then they move along to give the server time to the next game.
By all logic this is a system that is self-defeating and only becomes more expensive than what it is supposed to prevent. I doubt it will last much longer.

 

[fragmaster09]

You know what I want to see? an actual discussion of what this DRM means. I've seen lots of people who instantly sputter a gut reaction and condemn it immediately but that's incredibly short sighted. There are lots of issues to discuss here, not the lest of which is why people hate it so much (and don't give me that crap about you just hate DRM or your internet connection sucks there is more to it and you know it). I want to know why people keep blasting DRM and why stories keep getting put it. Its not about simply hating the thing, this is on the level of a zealot crusade and I want to know why. As far as I'm concerned though, it's never going to happen because people are just too angry to talk all they can do is yell. Ah well, maybe DRM should treat use like means spirited children, we sure act like it.

Maybe people don't like the possibility that one day they won't be able to access their games. My command and conquer games from years ago? I can still play those. I will NEVER lose those unless i destroy the disk.

This DRM? I lose my game when the servers go down. I don't get a say in it. I'm renting the game until they tell me that they're shutting the game down. I'm not buying it.

Fuck that.

but then again that's just what EA does, and they make you spend in the £30's for ones like the sport games... i'd rather lose my £5 S7 than a £35 EA Golf

 

[Antari]

Well I know I've noticed a very severe drop in my playing of Ubisoft games. I don't know about the statistics they are mentioning though.

 

[ResonanceSD]

Actually, buggrit. I support the DRM measures. Steam does exactly the same thing for TF2 and counterstrike. No steam logon? NO GAME FOR YOU, MY FRIEND. It's unintrusive, and it protects their sales figures. Sure, I may be speaking as someone from a first world country with a reliable net connection, but honestly. They are a business. They have to answer to shareholders. Not you people.

You just named two games that are multiplayer only, and therefore require an online connection to play. Bad argument there.

Ok, so Batman: AA, hugely popular single player game. Where's all the moral outrage that it requires a live account to be able to save the game? People will buy games that are good, and accept the conditions attached. A bad game with bad DRM will get canned, and the developers will be rightly tossed into the gutter.

Again, Steam itself is a form of DRM, no one seems to care about that either. Why? Because it works well and is unobtrusive. The accounts for Dragon age 1 and 2 are a form of DRM, no one cares about those either. No login? Ha! no DLC for you. ME2 had that as well.

 

[fragmaster09]

Actually, buggrit. I support the DRM measures. Steam does exactly the same thing for TF2 and counterstrike. No steam logon? NO GAME FOR YOU, MY FRIEND. It's unintrusive, and it protects their sales figures. Sure, I may be speaking as someone from a first world country with a reliable net connection, but honestly. They are a business. They have to answer to shareholders. Not you people.

You just named two games that are multiplayer only, and therefore require an online connection to play. Bad argument there.
And yes, they have to answer to shareholders, but shareholders only stay such as long as there is money being made. Where is the profit when Ubisoft has to divert money from sales to pay for their server maintenance which gives nothing in return?
With more internet providers putting caps on and reducing their service, more people are going to be wanting to reduce their online time wherever possible. Buying the latest Ubisoft game is not going to be one of their choices.
It is quite possible sales have already taken a dip, and this is damage control in the denial fashion. Ubisoft is already releasing a game soon without their DRM, and they have been showing a trend of not keeping it on their games for very long. If anything this is becoming more a measure to "prevent piracy" during the first few months, but then they move along to give the server time to the next game.
By all logic this is a system that is self-defeating and only becomes more expensive than what it is supposed to prevent. I doubt it will last much longer.

an idea from reading part of your post: after entering the product key to verify the game, allow offline(SP+MP against computer) without internet connection, provided the game disk is in the drive(i'm sounding like a PC gamer - go golden fingers!), but require an internet connection, with sighned in account, with verified copy, to play online with others, this way, multiplayer is for buyers, and singleplayer is for people with the disk but no code, or the dishonest people who pirated it

 

[MeTheMe]

Yes, perhaps if they keep telling themselves that it will finally come true someday.

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

Meaningless. They have no reasonable way to measure pirating. This is nothing more than a PR move - telling everyone it worked because otherwise all of the people complaining would have been justified.

That Ubisoft representatives are willing to make up data to justify their poor decisions doesn't change the fact that this is still probably the worst of all of the absolutely terrible DRM schemes currently in use. But they'll continue to insist that it's working because most people will complain, but at the end of the day they still want to play the games.

Ubisoft has fallen prey to the increasingly popular "producers vs. customers" attitude of many of the big publishers.

 

[samsonguy920]

Actually, buggrit. I support the DRM measures. Steam does exactly the same thing for TF2 and counterstrike. No steam logon? NO GAME FOR YOU, MY FRIEND. It's unintrusive, and it protects their sales figures. Sure, I may be speaking as someone from a first world country with a reliable net connection, but honestly. They are a business. They have to answer to shareholders. Not you people.

You just named two games that are multiplayer only, and therefore require an online connection to play. Bad argument there.
And yes, they have to answer to shareholders, but shareholders only stay such as long as there is money being made. Where is the profit when Ubisoft has to divert money from sales to pay for their server maintenance which gives nothing in return?
With more internet providers putting caps on and reducing their service, more people are going to be wanting to reduce their online time wherever possible. Buying the latest Ubisoft game is not going to be one of their choices.
It is quite possible sales have already taken a dip, and this is damage control in the denial fashion. Ubisoft is already releasing a game soon without their DRM, and they have been showing a trend of not keeping it on their games for very long. If anything this is becoming more a measure to "prevent piracy" during the first few months, but then they move along to give the server time to the next game.
By all logic this is a system that is self-defeating and only becomes more expensive than what it is supposed to prevent. I doubt it will last much longer.

an idea from reading part of your post: after entering the product key to verify the game, allow offline(SP+MP against computer) without internet connection, provided the game disk is in the drive(i'm sounding like a PC gamer - go golden fingers!), but require an internet connection, with sighned in account, with verified copy, to play online with others, this way, multiplayer is for buyers, and singleplayer is for people with the disk but no code, or the dishonest people who pirated it

Seems like a fair idea, except it would only discourage putting effort into the single player content. "It's only going to get pirated anyway, why bother?"
Ubisoft has one thing going for it. It makes games both single player and multiplayer that beat EA and Activision hands-down. That is probably the only thing keeping it afloat and allowing them to keep their DRM. They let that slip, Ubisoft will be a sinking ship.

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

Yes, because in this age of the internet, If you say it, it must be true.

I think ill leave this here.

Best analogy of ubisoft's drm scheme. I have not bought a pc version of an ubisoft since theystarted thisdrm stuff, and I would probably pass on the console versions as well out of principle for future games until they replace the current drm.

 

[koroem]

Doesn't this system boot you from whatever game you're playing, causing you to lose any unsaved data if your internet connection so much as goes down for a millisecond?(correct me if I'm wrong)

How can something like that be a 'success'? I would think it would keep people from buying the PC version of the game, and cause more people to pirate it.

Yep. And if you are really lucky, you get to have all your save files reverted to old copies losing hours and hours of play time because the sever and client didn't sync correctly just like all the people who played Assassins Creed 2 on PC. Yay!

 

[Arnoxthe1]

And the moral of this story is, don't tick off your customers.