Ubisoft Says Always-On DRM, "A Success"

[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.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

This is the equivalent of a 5-year-old denying that he stuck that strawberry jam waffle in the VCR. While his face is full of said strawberry jam.

Either Ubisoft is THAT retarded or they're starting to become the Scientologists of the games industry.

 

[DEAD34345]

Pirated games don't have DRM, so I rather doubt it has any real effect on the rate of piracy. (Actually that's not true, It's most likely turning normal customers towards piracy just so they can play without the DRM)

The logical explanation is that Ubisoft hates paying customers, and likes to make them suffer as much as possible.

 

[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.

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

Lol, you're assuming I'm all for the EA online pass scheme? Because i'm not.

 

[Orcus The Ultimate]

This is a message for Ubisoft:

Spoiler

hihihi! some Hangover moment...

 

[Iglock]

*drum roll*

"...and the derp of the year award goes to..."

 

[Snotnarok]

There's success in a system where their DRM 'protected' games are put on torrent sites working fully with no online required to play? Where only the customers who paid for the game don't truly own it?

How is this even legal? How can they charge money for something, but not actually let the person own it. This literally has a string/wire attached to it. At least with Onlive it MAKES sense why there's online required, there is absolutely no reason for this kind of DRM, there's NOTHING it stops and there's NOTHING good about it.

Long story short: It's a success at making people pirate the game.

 

[TheMariner]

And that's just one more reason why I don't buy Ubisoft games for PC.

 

[Winterfel]

THE STUPID IT BURNS

Oh, and the injustice burns, too. They're essentially saying, "You have no internet and want to play our games? HAHA FUCK YOU"

Now i am not a pc gamer but my friends all have Starcraft 2. I heard that You have to sign into battle.net to play it. Isn't that essentially the same thing?

It kinda is but then again b-net never caused me as much trouble as Ubisoft's.. abomination.

 

[Nobby]

Its successfully stopped me buying their games, that's for sure.

 

[kebab4you]

Question Ubisoft: Have it ever crossed your mind that the reduced piracy is because the game isn't any good?

 

[mrdude2010]

i lol'd. hard. it doesn't even stop pirates, as a cracked copy of the game won't need the ubisoft servers to run- i'm not sure exactly how the crack for a ubisoft game works i'm not a programmer/hacker


i remember there was this big thing a couple years ago where people were making fun of ubisoft because their DRM servers were down, so only people who had bought games illegally could actually play

 

[ImprovizoR]

There is no alternate universe in which this could be a success. Not even in quantum mechanics theory or infinite alternate universes. They are obviously lying.

 

[Atmos Duality]

"It reduced piracy!"

Except...

"We don't have definitive stats on how many copies of our game were pirated!"

This changes nothing for me. I refuse to buy Ubisoft games if any version of their game has Always-Online DRM. It's the only way to get the message through their head.

 

[infohippie]

So they've seen a clear reduction in piracy? I presume they've also seen a clear reduction in sales? Just in my circle of friends, most of us were planning to buy Assassin's Creed 2 when it came out. Since Ubisoft's DRM announcement, none of us bought it, and most of us have decided to never buy another Ubisoft game again, ever. I look forward to seeing their sales and stock price decline slowly but surely.