Ubisoft Says It's Not Giving Up on "Always-On" DRM

[Felgy76]

Ok, so that's Ubisoft added to my 'You're never getting another cent from me' list.

 

[wasalp]

Effective, cheap, and easy to do. Thats why its such a good DRM tool.

As for the people saying otherwise, I honestly doubt any of them are legitimately inconvenienced. The demographic for those inconvenienced is so small, Id wouldnt count them at all. If you bought the game, you had to be hooked up to the internet. If you dont have internet, pay your bills/dont steal wifi from your neighbors (you dont need to be gaming if you cant afford internet). I dont know of a single human being who has their gaming machine not hooked up to the internet.

Its a good system, Im just tired of the QQing when no LEGITIMATE problems arise from it.

I dont think you realise how shitty internet is in most places. If you don't live in a decent sized city the DRM will be a nuisance.

 

[likalaruku]

When will Ubisoft learn?

Paying customers get the DRM, pirates have DRM-purged copies. Punishing the people who give you money really doesn't scare the people who steal; that the lawyers' job.

 

[Gildan Bladeborn]

This really isn't good enough - true, there's little to no likelihood that such a DRM system would, under ordinary circumstances, actually negatively impact my play experience, but their "step back" from the total insanity of requiring an always-on network connection for a single player title to simply requiring one each and every time you start the game is in fact still vulnerable to the biggest and most insulting flaw with the original approach: Your ability to launch a title that you have paid for and already have installed and ready to launch is still dependent on their bloody servers never going down, ever.

We loathe, but generally tolerate DRM that asks us to perform online authentication once, either during the initial launch or the installation process, because that holds our ability to keep playing older titles hostage to our never uninstalling them and the publishers never taking their authentication servers down - if only because we know it's usually damn easy to work around, in case the companies in question don't do the right thing and patch their damn DRM out after a while. But a system that makes you jump through a hoop each and every time you go to launch your otherwise fully installed and operational single player title is like Steam without an offline mode and none of the other mitigating features that usually distract us from how Steam is DRM.

And that is frankly unacceptable - apparently Ubisoft thinks that this move will prompt the gamers it worked into a spittle-flying outrage to come back to the fold and start buying stuff from them again, but if they believe that providing us with DRM that is just slightly more horrible than literally every other system on the market is sufficient to do that then they're clearly more insane than I originally painted them in my angry tirades back when they first announced this whole retarded 'strategy'; I'm afraid my boycott of Ubisoft products is just going to have to stay in effect until the heat death of the universe after all.

 

[TechNoFear]

Effective, cheap, and easy to do. Thats why its such a good DRM tool.

As for the people saying otherwise, I honestly doubt any of them are legitimately inconvenienced. The demographic for those inconvenienced is so small, Id wouldnt count them at all. If you bought the game, you had to be hooked up to the internet. If you dont have internet, pay your bills/dont steal wifi from your neighbors (you dont need to be gaming if you cant afford internet). I dont know of a single human being who has their gaming machine not hooked up to the internet.

Its a good system, Im just tired of the QQing when no LEGITIMATE problems arise from it.

My gaming rig (laptop) is not constantly connected to the internet, except at Au$2 / Mb via 3G mobile broadband (charged / Kb upload and download) using my mobile phone.

How much do you think it would cost me to play a Ubi game (with this DRM) for an hour?

I do most of my gaming while on-site as there is little else to do (apart from work 12 hours a day). On-site there is no mobile phone coverage, let alone any internet access (except limited dial-up in the rec rooms).

I have stopped buying any Ubi games as I can not play them on-site unless I crack the game, which as a software engineer / systems designer, seems 'rude' or pay exorbitant data fees just to verify I have a legit game.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Ugh! Stupid Ubisoft! Haven't you figured it out yet? Your "always-on" DRM scheme does little to stop piracy, alienates your customers, and generally doesn't work.

 

[Fr]anc[is]

anc[is]Um... I just tried it on the Steam version of Assassins Creed 2 I got in the xmas sale, and it's most certainly NOT patched out of mine. Shouldn't Steam have automatically patched?

It depends on when Ubisoft gets around to sharing with Steam the patch needed. I would try running a verify game cache(under the game's properties) to give it a kick in the pants.

Nuthin Thanks anyway. I was hoping to avoid it altogether be going through steam. Oh well

 

[Gindil]

The argument against DRM has always been overwhelming to me: It doesn't work to stop theft, and it annoys your paying customers. Well, this DRM is probably the first one we've seen that broke rule #1: It stopped theft, for six weeks. How many extra sales did that gain Ubisoft? No way really to tell; I'd argue the evidence says not many, but that's up to debate.

Now, it's true, it did it at the expense of a massive overblow of rule #2: It annoyed the hell out of customers. But here's the thing; Ubisoft can still claim, legitimately, that they did so for a worthwhile price, i.e. six weeks of non-theft. That's a much stronger position than most DRM products. The defence of those is usually, "Well, it got hacked immediately, pissed off our paying customers and gave the pirates a stronger product than we do. But at least we're doing something!"

So. Go ahead and argue the DRM is horrible. I'll agree. But let's not pretend that Ubisoft didn't manage something no modern DRM system has. They have every right to be proud of their overzealous little tyrant of a program, because it worked.

... Partially true. But I'll make the argument that Ubisoft LOST more customers than it could possibly gain with that temporary increase in sales. I have to think of all the people this particular scheme affects:

Military
Shoddy broadband (Rural area customers)
Teenagers
Casual gamers

The military are always on the go. Now, we have a 1.5 million (wo)man Army [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_armed_forces], and of that, we'll say 30% of them are game players for convenience sake (450,000). Imagine that just 10% of them are in Iraq at a given time (45000). Seriously, that has just cut down their fanbase who can't play a game because of reason 2.

I merely put rural area customers, because they are barely served by game centers. High ping, no broadband or just plain being at the mercy of dialup *shudder*. These people are better served with other offerings.

Teenagers tend to take their problems to the internet and find solutions. Keep them happy and they can be loyal customers. Piss them off, they turn to pirates.

I believe the story of "Spore" tells about Casual gamers. They don't care for the DRM, but if you piss them off, they will pirate as well.

So my question is more, is the added DRM worth it when you factor in just a few of the people affected? I highly doubt it.

Totally called it, they just stopped using it for their older games to make way for new ones so they wouldn't need to increase their server capacities -_-

It's not just that. It's that it's not really relevant anymore.

This is just a hunch, but my guess is that the people who are eagerly awaiting the cracked versions for download on the torrents are the same people who want it as quick as possible; ideally on launch day, or no more than a month thereafter. That's why that six week window is amazing, and why it may just have increased sales. The very people who are most likely to pirate are also the ones most likely to want the game early. The ones who will buy it a year after release are more likely a more casual crowd, who are in most circumstances less likely to pirate games. Some will, make no mistake, but they're a minority.

Also, as a general rule, companies care less about long term sales than they do about initial sales. I have no idea why this is. Again, that's mostly a hunch.

Initial sales are skewed towards developers. Long term sales tend to be skewed towards publishers. IIRC, using Ubisoft as an example, Prince of Persia (1) doesn't make money for the developer anymore. It's a 70-30 split for the first two months. Then, when everyone is looking for the newest release, the older games and their CDs are the same split to publishers. Again, I'm generalizing but that's just a small look into the publishing world.

 

[Olrod]

Ubisoft Says It's Not Giving Up on "Always-On" DRM

I wonder how many potential customers have given up on Ubisoft?

Consider me a +1 to that number.

 

[ArchBlade]

Well, someone's yet to learn their lesson...

Hopefully they'll begin to get it once they implement it again. And everyone hates it. Again.

 

[JourneyThroughHell]

Okay, this is obviously a joke.

If you're patching out the system, you obviously KNOW it doesn't work, you admitted so.

Then why in the hell would you reassure PC-gamers by saying "we might still use it, wink, wink".

Good one, Ubisoft.

 

[manaman]

Well I haven't given up on not giving Ubisoft a dime of my money either.

I don't even feel like I am missing out on anything, imagine that.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

And...you've lost your support again.

Give it up now.

 

[moosek]

It sucks, but gamers (PC gamers, mostly) fucking steal. It's a $60 product, and I know that some of the people commenting on this must have pirated Ubisoft's products. It's bad, but you've forced it to happen.

Either come up with a better solution, or quit being part of the problem. I seriously don't have any better ideas on how to prevent theft from Ubisoft, so I'll play their stuff on 360.

 

[Tom Phoenix]

The moment your DRM starts inconveniencing your legitimate userbase for more than the time it takes to type in a CD-Key, it has gone too far. I'm not averse to companies protecting their products, but surely it's counterproductive to alienate your legitimate userbase such that you make drastically fewer sales.

This.....Very much this. Too few companies seem to realise this and PC gaming is suffering for it.

Congratulations, Ubisoft! Just as we thought that you were making progress and you needed to do more, you are there to remind us that we shouldn't expect more than that alone and that you are completely willing to regress back. That is very kind of you.

 

[Wickedshot]

One thing about Ubisofts insane plan, it did stop some piracy. I personally will never pirate a Ubisoft game ever, but thats mostly because I have no interest in media created by insane bile-filled paranoid sociopaths, since it can't help but contain their wacked out ideals.

The plan was to turn pirates from possible buyers, to never buyers, right?

 

[captain underpants]

As for the people saying otherwise, I honestly doubt any of them are legitimately inconvenienced. The demographic for those inconvenienced is so small, Id wouldnt count them at all. If you bought the game, you had to be hooked up to the internet. If you dont have internet, pay your bills/dont steal wifi from your neighbors (you dont need to be gaming if you cant afford internet). I dont know of a single human being who has their gaming machine not hooked up to the internet.

Oh, well, if you don't know about them, clearly they don't exist.

An internet connection should not be a requirement for gaming, only an option. Plain and simple.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

They just never learn, do they?

Why must everyone take a step forward then SIX steps back?

 

[L3G0kees]

In some news of a couple of days ago there was said that the always online "protection" was patched out months ago and only now we find out, so everybody hates it but when it is removed we don't even notice it. So why did we hate something that we didn't noticed for months