Ubisoft's "Always On" DRM Is Back In Driver: San Francisco

[ImprovizoR]

What's even more stupid, is that there will be a cracked version of this on Pirate Bay within 24 hours of release, if not sooner. All they are doing is pissing of any real customers.

One would think they learned that when Assassin's Creed 2 got hacked. AC2 didn't even have multiplayer so a hacked version played better than a legit one. Under those circumstances it turns out it's cheaper and better to be a criminal than to let Ubisoft treat you like one. Pirates won't suffer because of this, legitimate customers will. And that is so painfully obvious to everyone with at least 2 operational brain cells.

 

[Noogai]

I don't really think they were expecting anyone to actually buy these games. If they were they wouldn't attempt to shove this DRM down the player's throat. I can only hope that this won't go onto their other franchises, like ME.

 

[Enrathi]

Really, didn't people eventually crack AC2 anyway, despite the crazy DRM?

And as I recall, during the first 6 weeks it took for them to crack it completely (the most important time for game sales figures, I've heard) they didn't sell significantly more copies than AC1 in the same time frame. So while the DRM actually did work (as far as piracy was concerned), they didn't convert many of those pirates into consumers. And since that's the theory behind DRM, gain more sales by preventing piracy, then I guess the DRM ultimately failed. Yet here they are again, attempting to push away more customers willing to pay for absolutely no return.

 

[James Crook]

What, The Fuck. Ubisoft? The one-time-registration DRM was a very well received change over the always-online bullcrap you had before. Does Ubisoft ever listen? They were actually praised for doing that.
I pre-ordered Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood back in May via Steam, and when it came out, I just registered my copy of the game once online, then I could play the game freely, even when my third-rate Internet connection's down times. Whenever I couldn't play an online game with my friends because of a network cut, I could just fire up ACB and continue playing through the gripping story, that got me occupied for some weeks.
Well, guess I'll just have to wait for a patch for this DRM bullcrap (like the ones that came for Assassin's Creed II and Splinter Cell: Conviction), and when the game goes on sale, for Christmas, maybe.

 

[Red Albatross]

Hypothetically, if I were an unscrupulous person, I would (hypothetically, of course) torrent this game even if I were uninterested in actually (hypothetically) playing it, and I would (hypothetically) encourage others to do the same. Multiple (hypothetical) times. Just to give a big, fat, middle finger to Ubisoft.

But of course that's completely hypothetical. I wouldn't do something like that. We Americans should all write our representatives and present our viewpoints about evil and misguided corporations screwing their own customers for fun and profit. That would be the sensible and moral thing to. Oh and boycott Ubisoft. Serious. Companies will keep doing this kind of shit if people keep buying their garbage.

 

[NickCaligo42]

So... Driver: San Francisco. An obscure, all-but-unheard-of driving simulator series that desperately needs all the positive press that it can possibly get, and your biggest announcement with it is to attach the always-on DRM that killed the PC sales of the good games that you published...

 

[Worgen]

dammit ubisoft, you better not be pulling this shit with the new heroes of might and magic game when it comes out

 

[Skratt]

I think I'm done with UbiSoft. There are no games good enough to put up with this crap. Best of luck to any still willing to try - you are better people than UbiSoft deserves.

 

[Sartan0]

And Ubi-soft continues to fail! This is why I don't buy their games at all on PC.

 

[M920CAIN]

In the future all games will occupy 200GB of space (190GB for the copy protection & 10GB for game content).

 

[night_chrono]

Everyone is saying that "it will be cracked in a day/week/etc."

With AC2 it wasn't truly "cracked" for several months. It took about a week for someone to reverse engineer an authentication server that you could run locally, removing the need for a net connection. However as for removing the need for an authentication server took a month or two if memory serves.

Given what hackers learned with AC2 I'd imagine cracking this will go much faster, as I doubt Ubisoft has changed much of anything with how the DRM works.

Plus lets not forget that a good portion of the AC2 server problems were caused by people flooding the servers trying to gather enough info to do the reverse engineering.

 

[Herbsk]

If had actually ever bought the Assassin's Creed games on PC, it would be tempted to stop at this point - As it is, I only buy the Assassin's creed games from Ubisoft anyway, and only on the XBOX.

Therefore, I won't be affected by this, but I still think PC gamers get a raw deal here. It would probably be better in they just stopped release games for the PC altogether than keep this crap up.

 

[MegaManOfNumbers]

Fine, just like RE: Mercenaries, I won't buy the game then.

I got other, way better games to play anyways.

*goes back to playing Tales of the Abyss*

 

[Snotnarok]

So this game is clearly going to be pirated more than bought because of it. Why the hell is anyone going to put money into a game that limits your ability to play it.

Hell I use a 'backup' of Farcry 2 when I own the damn game, it's just their lovely drm that I just have no interest in having on my PC.

 

[Royas]

You know, Ubisoft can keep their crappy game. If this is the way they are going to continue to act, I'm comfortable with never buying another Ubisoft game ever. Only franchise I'm going to miss is Assassin's Creed, and I'll get a used copy for a console. So, Ubisoft can go to hell.

And regarding the speed of a game getting cracked, specifically AC2... I'd count an emulated authentication server as a true crack. If you don't need to contact the actual servers, the game is cracked, no ifs, ands or buts about it.

 

[lacktheknack]

And there I was, marginally interested.

Now, if it sells horribly, will they blame the PC players or the pirates? Because they sure won't blame their precious DRM.

 

[mjc0961]

I'll be sure to never get the PC version of this one (not that I cared about it in the first place). The worst part about this stupid DRM isn't that I can't play single player if my connection goes down (although that is extremely shitty), it's that I can't play if their servers go down. I should never be denied single player because the company that published the game is having server issues.

 

[No_Remainders]

well... I don't have a problem with this, I mean, I already do have permanent connection

but still, what the hell Ubisoft

one thing is wanting to protect your products, another very different one is paranoia

Well, you have a permanent connection until your ISP fucks up, which they all do from time to time.

OT: I think this is a pretty shit move by Ubisoft, as does everyone else, it's stupid to force people to have a connection to the servers in order to play. What happens if I'm on a long train journey and feel like playing on my laptop? Meh. I wasn't gonna get the game anyway.

 

[Blackpapa]

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

I'd be tempted to say the management at ubisoft is simply insane, at first glance. But when big money is involved there has to be some logic, some reasoning behind all of this.

The possible scenarios are:

1. The management doesn't have a clue what it's doing - that is, they've lost touch with reality. In other words they are insane.

2. The management knows perfectly well what they're doing.

Scenario number 2 is pretty scary actually. It means they are aware of just how awful the DRM is for paying players today and that when Ubisoft will be experiencing financial troubles patching a dozen games will be the last thing on their minds. They are aware they'd effectively close down their company and steal paying customers' games with them - and should the company go bankrupt there would be nobody to turn to complain, no brand to sling mud at or sue.

They are furthermore aware that this DRM will be broken in a month or less - it's well known that they carefully observed the process of cracking their previous games with this system. The system is indeed an effective one as it makes piracy impossible for a certain, short period of time. The decision to implement it regardless means that disabling piracy for a month is worth the cost of draconian DRM, player inconvenience and locking people out.

This makes you stop for a moment and think - what are the sales, during that "piracy grace period" for gamers who bought the game who would specifically pirate it otherwise? Note that we're not talking about people who won't buy the game if they can't pirate it nor the people who don't pirate games at all. We're talking about the people who will buy the game specifically because of the DRM, who would otherwise pirate it, during that period before it's cracked.

I'm not an expert but I reckon that group is pretty small. So small in fact, I'm surprised the profits from those sales actually cover the costs of implementing this advanced DRM scheme.

Because... if those sales that are enforced by the DRM don't cover the cost of the DRM itself then the reason isn't business as much as hatred of PC gamers. Wouldn't it be simpler just to spray anthrax into the game boxes?

 

[Doclector]

What. Gorram. Idiots.

Who exactly does this benefit? So other forms of annoying DRM weren't bad enough? They (and anyone making games for PC, it seems) need to seriously think about what they value more; lost profits from whatever piracy these ridiculous measures prevent, or their customers, because the way things are going, they ain't gonna be keeping both.