By John Walker on January 27th, 2010 at 1:09 am.
Why not? Everyone loves it when our crazy comments page numbers thing kicks in. Ubisoft have taken their senses and posted them into outer space. Responding to the public outcry for more draconian, inconveniencing copyright management, they have replaced Starforce and announced their new PC-only DRM system. One that requires you be permanently online in order to be able to play.
The attempt to sell this new system begins with what it doesn’t do. There’s no CD check, and there’s no installation limits. A good start. And then, GameSpy reports enthusiastically, it will support cloud saving. Well, I love cloud saving – it’s something Valve promised ages ago (although with sadly little movement since). When I choose to use it. Which with this DRM, the current reports suggest, you cannot.
The price we pay for not requiring the CD in the drive, and for being able to install a game we’ve legally bought on as many machines as we want, is to be permanently online when playing Ubi games. It will authenticate itself online each time you load it, and then save remotely every time you save. This is, to stress, a game perhaps bought in a shop. So from now on, beginning with Settlers 7, potentially all Ubi PC games will require you to check in with them to let them know you’ve started playing their game, and then tell them every time you save, send them all the data in doing so, and then say bye-bye when you’re done playing for that day.
Shack News received some clarifying information from Ubisoft. They explain that they will apply patches should they ever remove the servers behind the games. They also explain that if your connection drops while playing, the game will pause while it tries to reconnect, and then will apparently allow you to carry on without the internet. They don’t say whether it will be impossible to save if you do, however. They also say in the same notes that, “you will need to have an active Internet connection to play the game, for all game modes.” So this is a little unclear.
This seems like such a bizarre, bewildering backward step. Of course we haven’t experienced it yet, but based on Ubi’s own description of the system so many concerns arise. Yes, certainly, most people have the internet all the time on their PCs. But not all people. So already a percentage of the audience is lost. Then comes those who own gaming laptops, who now will not be able to play games on trains, buses, in the park, or anywhere they may not be able to find a wifi connection (something that’s rarely free in the UK, of course – fancy paying the £10/hour in the airport to play your Ubisoft game?). Then there’s the day your internet is down, and the engineers can’t come out to fix it until tomorrow. No game for you. Or any of the dozens of other situations when the internet is not available to a player.
But further, there are people who do not wish to let a publisher know their private gaming habits. People who do not wish to report in to a company they’ve no affiliation with, nor accountability to, whenever they play a game they’ve legally bought. People who don’t want their save data stored remotely. This new system renders all customers beholden to Ubisoft in perpetuity whenever they buy their games.
Clearly publishers are terrified by piracy. While none of the major publishers has ever produced any evidence to support the claims that piracy decreases their sales, they clearly think it does, and are trying to do anything they can to prevent it. Their ultimate goal – to make more money from sales – is in our favour too, of course. We want more PC games, and we want them now. So if publishers aren’t willing to invest in the medium because of piracy fears, we’ll lose out in a big way. But sadly these peculiar, Big Brother-esque approaches do not seem close to the right way to go about it.
Perhaps Ubi will react to public outcry. Perhaps a more sensible version can be created, one that offers an offline mode for those who play games offline, as with Steam. A solution that’s designed to make games accessible to those who legally purchase them. I really hope so.
Update: Just noticed two other things.
Firstly, this new DRM also prevents the option to resell your game. There are implications here.
Secondly, this rather remarkable wording in the FAQ:
Why is Ubisoft forcing their loyal customers to sign up for a Ubisoft account when they don’t want to give their private data and only play single player games?
We hope that customers will feel as we do, that signing up for an account will offer them exceptional gameplay and services that are not available otherwise.
27/01/2010 at 01:12 Meat Circus says:
This will NEVER happen.
I can only assume somebody accidentally got crack in Ubi’s boardroom mineral water.
27/01/2010 at 01:21 Blather Blob says:
Ubisoft confirm it all, and a version of the client already ships with the The Settlers 7 beta.
27/01/2010 at 03:30 Aftershock says:
Man, the wording of that FAQ seems to indicate they KNOW it’ll piss people off. I was previously holding onto the belief that they were stupid rather than evil.
27/01/2010 at 04:15 Hmm-Hmm. says:
Heh, like Modern Warfare 2 not having dedicated servers? Do not underestimate the lure of the Dark Side (and bad decisions).
Give me a CD, I say. Make me register online (once!), I can handle that. But this? This is not going to fly.
27/01/2010 at 01:14 Yougiedeggs says:
It’s okay Ubisoft. I don’t have to like you or even acknowledge you exist anymore. Me and my laptop will be fine without you.
*goes to play Dwarf Fortress*
27/01/2010 at 01:15 Psychopomp says:
So, lock out everyone stuck with unreliable internet (Me), shitty internet (A good chunk of the world) in addition to anyone with no internet (The large majority of the world)
Good business move.
27/01/2010 at 02:17 Bonedwarf says:
I think most peoples internet routinely goes down like a three dollar whore.
Ubisoft suck. While EA are evil, when they tried to take over Ubisoft, I actually wanted EA to do so as Ubisoft are worse than EA.
Let’s not forget, based on their usage of Starforce and how they behaved then, that if you have issues with this new DRM and go to their forums Ubi’s own staff will label you a pirate and ban your account so you can’t complain anymore.
27/01/2010 at 01:20 pkt-zer0 says:
This is stupid. Really bloody stupid.
I can’t even begin to imagine why and how they think this is going to a) decrease piracy and/or b) increase sales.
27/01/2010 at 01:21 LewieP says:
At least it will will automatically track your Ubicheivements.
Edit: They really are the Tesco Value version of Activision.
27/01/2010 at 01:22 Hunam says:
You pretty much said everything there is to say on this really Walker. It’s basically insanity.
I’m more concerned how we as a world haven’t entirely killed each other yet when idea’s such as this are presented to the mass public as good ideas. Did everyone in that office give each other a pat on the back and a big sigh of relief because they saved PC gaming with this? I can just about tolerate steam for fucks sake. But as the years go buy and my games list on steam is nearing a 100 I know that’s a ton of games that I can only play as they provide it and I am stuck with, till the end of the world or their service… and that’s the current good guy. That’s who we currently root for.
You buys the games, you put’s your cd keys in thens you plays the games. Maybe I should hate CD keys too. But I don’t. Except ones that you register and lumber you with a physical product you can not shift. I liked Wolfenstein 2009. You had to register that key to play online yes, but you could un-register it.
Angry rant get.
27/01/2010 at 01:35 Phinor says:
Was just about to post that everything that needed to be said was already said by Walker, but I’ll reply to your post anyway. Reply to say that yes, it is insanity and I for one can not understand how someone could come up with this idea. That is, until I read replies in another forum where around five people were cheering for this new technology and couldn’t find anything wrong with it. Sigh..
I’ll just add this: I have save game files from late 80s all the way to 2010. Maybe I don’t use those 15-20 year old files that often but goddamnit, I still have them. There are few games and gametypes that I can accept remote saving such as MMOs and multiplayer parts of games but extending that to EVERY game? Needless to say I won’t be buying those titles. Luckily Ubisoft has not released anything good in years with the exception of AC and I wonder, maybe AC2 already has this system in place. If so, the franchise is good as dead to me. But have to wait and see about that..
27/01/2010 at 01:58 Hunam says:
Hehe, I’m the same! I still have my BG1 save lying around somewhere all I’l defend it with my life if need be!
27/01/2010 at 01:22 Vandelay says:
This is an insane idea. I’ve always thought that a one off authentication process was a perfectly acceptable form of DRM (in the manner that Steam does it, rather than the evil limited activations many other companies use.) But to require the internet every single time you want to play your game is ludicrous. There are far too many variables that could occur. This is particularly crazy on a game such as Settlers, which I can imagine would have numerous people wanting to play it on a laptop, where an internet connection may not always be feasible.
27/01/2010 at 01:25 Calabi says:
Thats dedication for you, late night posting so theres no delay in the masses rage, and I am enraged.:-&
edit: I bet theres going to be a ton of problems with this, overloaded servers, people losing save, saves being hacked, stuttering slow games, you name it there’ll be a problem about it.
27/01/2010 at 01:26 Travan says:
This just seems too ridiculous to be real. Maybe its a ruse, so when they surrender to the public outcry, like EA did, they can look totally reasonable with their only-slightly-less-bonkers DRM.
27/01/2010 at 01:28 malkav11 says:
Wow. Just…wow.
I’m trying to remember if Ubi makes anything I care about buying in future. Because until they stop this madness, I’m going to have to skip those games. :P
27/01/2010 at 01:37 LewieP says:
List of Ubisoft games on the horizon for PC:
Assassin’s Creed II
Splinter Cell Conviction
R.U.S.E.
Silent Hunter 5
The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom
Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands
TrackMania 2
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
I Am Alive
Driver reboot.
Beyond Good & Evil 2 maybe I suppose.
27/01/2010 at 01:58 pkt-zer0 says:
The Anno 1404 expansion may-or-may-not be missing from the list.
D:
27/01/2010 at 01:59 LewieP says:
Whoops, I did meant to include it, I did a search to check if it was an expansion or DLC, and then I guess forgot.
27/01/2010 at 02:19 Bonedwarf says:
That’s so depressing. The first Trackmania was saddled with Starforce which meant I had to avoid it, and even when they initially put it on Steam it STILL came with it. They eventually removed it and bought the game.
Was looking forward to Trackmania 2 but now this… Jesus christ Ubi, it’s clear you don’t WANT people to buy your games.
So what are you going to blame shitty sales on now? Since you clearly can’t blame piracy now.
27/01/2010 at 02:37 Vinraith says:
@pkt-zer0
Crap, I forgot about the Anno 1404 expansion. I was waiting for that one, too. If it’s saddled with this I can’t buy it, so that’s one more much-anticipated pre-order down the drain.
27/01/2010 at 06:07 malkav11 says:
I was looking forward to Assassin’s Creed II for PC, but I suppose if they’ve saddled it with this bullshit I’ll just snag the 360 version sometime down the road. Probably used.
Other than that (maaaaybe RUSE), I’m good. So, yeah, I guess I can boycott them without too heavy a heart.
27/01/2010 at 12:49 destroy.all.monsters says:
Damn I was really looking forward to RUSE and SH5.
28/01/2010 at 00:05 DJ Phantoon says:
Strangely enough I do not want any of the games they will be making.
Yet another boycott to stick to.
27/01/2010 at 01:29 Paul_M says:
Won’t someone just crack the hell out of their stuff anyway and thus make a far more convenient version of the game available illegally?
27/01/2010 at 04:11 zzzzzzzzz says:
Exactly thats what made me giggle about his whole affair. 8)
But then,theres the 2nd hand sales
Which KILL PC GAMING ….
(too)…
So i guess it makes sense as an profitoptimizing Experiment.
And if it doesnt work out.Customers wont remember.After all…
these are guys still playing games.
27/01/2010 at 07:18 solipsistnation says:
The problem with just cracking it and thus removing the need to, say, be logged in all the time is that if you’re saving your game to the ubisoft servers, the crackers would need to write their own game-saving system. I wouldn’t hold my breath for that.
27/01/2010 at 10:38 terry says:
Ding ding! It’s a deterrent to piracy, not a barrier. I’m pretty sure most cracking groups would look on DRM like this as a challenge if nothing else. After all, if they can bamboozle Valve games into thinking they’re on Steam when they ain’t, I’m pretty sure they could jury-rig a local savegame system.
Anyway, I take a very dim view of all these shenanigans and it’s killed my interest in TS7, the anno expansion and whatnot. Good job, Ubi.
27/01/2010 at 17:34 Azradesh says:
@ solipsistnation
Most likely they’ll just emulate the server locally, then no major changes need to be made.
27/01/2010 at 01:29 Javaguy says:
I was just thinking the other day how nice it’d be to play Silent Hunter 5, since the previous ones I missed due to Starforce.
siiiigh.
27/01/2010 at 01:29 A-Scale says:
That’s fine, I’ll just pirate it and play it without any such limitations. Really, every increasingly draconian DRM strategy just pushes me farther into the pirate camp. Pay and be inconvenienced or download for free without limitation.
27/01/2010 at 01:34 Hunam says:
Thanks for being part of the problem
EDIT: I felt this was too aggressive as it was. I mean by doing what you are doing you are not actually doing anything to solve this problem. You are not communicating to them that you are dissatisfied with their product as it is. I know as much as the next guy how hard it is to let a game slip by you have to play (seriously, I love games far too much) but even just not buying the game doesn’t solve to problem. I think it’s best if everyone just sends a polite but stern e-mail when they choose to not to buy a game about why that is, lest they blame the game rather than their terrible ideas.
27/01/2010 at 02:09 castle says:
well, one good thing can be said for those planning to steal these games: when a large number of people inevitably pirate them, ubisoft will have to confront the fact that these customer-alienating measures don’t actually help them combat piracy. and then they’ll presumably do away with them, ala EA.
as for me, they don’t have anything coming out that i’d call a must-play (though i would’ve liked to have a go at AC2), so i guess i’ll just be abstaining from ubisoft for a while…
also, is steam gonna be OK with distributing this? or is ubisoft gonna be out revenue there too?
27/01/2010 at 03:15 A-Scale says:
I’m not going to bother with a writing campaign unless I think the company regularly puts out good PC content. I don’t think Ubisoft does. I think a lot of what they put out is garbage. If it was Valve I might feel differently.
They can either catch on, or they can stop producing for the PC. Outside of AC2 (which I’m somewhat interested in) I don’t much care either way.
Also, I don’t think a writing campaign can be considered being “part of the solution” unless there is proof that games companies actually care about them. Do you see any such evidence?
27/01/2010 at 13:14 Hunam says:
Well I wrote to 2K about my disappointment of them rebranding Irrational 2 years ago. That’s the best I got :)
You could be right or it could be exceptionally understandable cynicism, but I like to think that people read this stuff. It only takes about 15 minutes to do so though so it’s not a massive burden on your time.
27/01/2010 at 01:31 Jugglenaut says:
Well, looks like they lost a sale on Assassin’s Creed 2 if they go through with this. And I was looking forward to that game so much.
27/01/2010 at 01:34 Dean says:
Should be interesting though. If it works, it should effectively make Settlers 7 un-piratable. Now Settlers is a pretty niche game that has a fairly specific audience. So we’ll be able to compare the sales figures of Settlers 6 and Settlers 7 and see exactly how many sales are lost to piracy. Theoretically, based on some peoples arguments, it should sell around ten times more than Settlers 6.
I wouldn’t mind a system like this, actually. If it were done sensibly and fairly. It’s better than having to faff around with having CDs in the drive (I don’t know about anyone else, but with USB sticks, all my CD drive ever does is rip albums and act as a really weird dongle for copy protection on games).
But that means three things:
1) A holiday mode, so the game can be set up to run without checking in for two weeks.
2) The ability to do occasional local saves should a net connection die when playing, and
3) [and what we'll never get] the ability to revoke an entire registration, so the game can be sold on
27/01/2010 at 01:35 Psychopomp says:
“Should be interesting though. If it works, it should effectively make Settlers 7 un-piratable.”
You hear that? That’s the sound of my laughter.
27/01/2010 at 01:44 Vinraith says:
@Dean
Un-piratable? I’ve quite literally never seen a DRM scheme that is BETTER motivation for piracy. Pirates get local saves, pirates can play their game offline, pirates don’t randomly lose access to their game or their ability to save. Indeed, the pirated version of any Ubi game is going to become the premier edition, even people that have legally bought the game would be a fool to play an uncracked version.
I dislike piracy. Piracy is to some degree what drives these insane decisions in the first place, piracy means losing your ability to motivate developers and publishers to make the kind of games you like, and piracy means never being entirely sure your game is going to work properly. I don’t pirate games, I find it impossible to invest myself in a game I haven’t acquired legitimately, but things like this almost seem designed to push me towards it. That can’t be the desired effect, I dearly hope they come to their senses.
27/01/2010 at 03:30 El Stevo says:
The lack of any offline save functionality will present a hurdle for cracks.
27/01/2010 at 03:50 El Stevo says:
I just read the Q&A, and noticed saves will be stored locally as well as online.
27/01/2010 at 01:38 Vinraith says:
I’ve largely said my piece in the forums on this one, so I’ll summarize: There’s no way I can, in good conscience, pay money for a game using this psychotic DRM scheme. I’ll randomly lose access to my game, I’ll randomly be unable to save, there’s simply no value in a game tied to a mechanism of this sort. This is extremely disappointing, as I was looking forward to both Silent Hunter 5 and Assassin’s Creed 2, but if this system is implemented I’ll be forced to skip them until Ubi comes to their senses.
27/01/2010 at 01:44 Psychopomp says:
To add further insult, Asscreed 2 will be 60$ on the pc.
27/01/2010 at 01:50 Vinraith says:
@Psychopomp
At $50 MSRP with a normal disc check I’d have pre-ordered it in a heartbeat. As it stands I’m worried I’ll never get to play it at all. The same goes for Silent Hunter 5. Those were two of my biggest items for the year, and they scragged them both in one lousy announcement.
Time to go buy Mass Effect 2, I guess. What kind of fucked up world is it when EA is the one treating us with a modicum of respect?
27/01/2010 at 01:38 Grigo says:
Oh fuck that, I’ll just pirate their games from now on and save myself the hassle.
27/01/2010 at 01:40 Hunam says:
Actually, thinking about it, doesn’t Dragon Age do something similar if you so much as think about putting DLC in your game? It tells me off for trying to open my savegame because I have x item that is DLC and MUST be logged into bioware online when ever using this save?
27/01/2010 at 01:43 Psychopomp says:
You have to log in. After that, you can get DC’d at any time and keep playing with no problems.
27/01/2010 at 01:47 Hunam says:
It’s still pretty rotten though. Specially as if my net was to go down the first thing I’d think of doing to pass the time would be to boot up dragon age :|
27/01/2010 at 01:51 Psychopomp says:
Eh, I don’t see it as any worse than Steam. They’ve got every right to try and protect their shit, and a simple log-in is more than reasonable. It is a little silly that working around it only requires changing a 0 to 1 in an .ini file, though.
27/01/2010 at 01:54 Hunam says:
You can log on to steam whilst offline and play all your games though, you don’t need to be online at all to launch a game with steam (I assume though you have to be online on first launch)
27/01/2010 at 02:32 Psychopomp says:
Touche
27/01/2010 at 03:35 El Stevo says:
You have to be online to turn on Steam’s offline mode. So if you lose your connection unexpectedly you’re fucked.
27/01/2010 at 04:11 Urthman says:
IMPORTANT NEWS FLASH ABOUT STEAM!
This used to be the case, but I think they must have changed things. Yesterday when challenged on this point in another forum, I unplugged my internet and tried running a Steam game (without having previously received permission to use offline mode). Steam tried to connect, failed, gave me the option to use offline mode, and ran my game.
27/01/2010 at 04:21 StarDrowned says:
Dragon Age and every single piece of DLC is easily piratable.
27/01/2010 at 04:51 Vinraith says:
@Urthman
Yup, sometimes it does that and works the way it should. Other times it gets stuck endlessly at “updating” or tries to make you log in with no ability to authenticate you (and thus hangs endlessly on that). It’s fairly random.
27/01/2010 at 15:01 pepper says:
Restart the computer to fix that, or you could try and terminate any process steam might see as a connection.
28/01/2010 at 04:41 Vinraith says:
@pepper
Actually I’ve never had a reboot fix that problem, all that ever seems to work is deleting clientregistry.blob, connecting to Steam’s servers, and getting a fresh .blob file. Of course, to do that you have to have a functional internet account, so it’s something of a Catch-22.
27/01/2010 at 01:40 Flameberge says:
Heh. Can you imagine all the suits coming out of that meeting, and telling the PR guys to release this news? Poor PR people. Can just see them now: “Ohhhhhh shiiiii….”.
As ridiculous as this is… the response to deal with this is not “OMGZ AM GUNNAS PIRATE UBI GAMEZ LIEK FOREVA”. Because then you are just as much at fault as Ubi, in creating a perpetual cycle of draconian DRM and declining PC game sales that will, and is, slowly strangling the non-MMO PC games industry. Boycotts and consumer pressure are clearly a much better idea, aside that gamers are notoriously useless at following through on either, as we all seem to want our cake and eat it as well. Sorry guys, just a bit of a reality check. I’m sure a significant number of people posting on this comment thread have pirated something, so being morally outraged is not neccessarily justified.
27/01/2010 at 01:59 Frosty says:
@Flameberge
Good points, although is it still the same if you buy a legit copy then pirate it to avoid this ridiculous system?
I should think that a boycott actually might hold together for this one.
27/01/2010 at 02:06 Vinraith says:
@Flamberge
I’m actually slowly coming to the conclusion that people that buy things with DRM of this sort are just as culpable for these god-awful DRM contrivances as the pirates are. Pirates motivate this crap, but people that buy games with intrusive DRM finance it. If people won’t pay for games with a given DRM scheme, publishers will stop using it.
27/01/2010 at 02:30 Blue says:
I have to wonder if people really did realize that saying “fuck those guys, I’ma pirate it!” is like saying “fucking store, charging this much for a cough! I’m just gonna steal it!” I think “pirate” is a sweet little way to tart up what is still, really – and let’s be honest – stealing. Either shit is worth your money or it’s not. In the immortal words of Wil Wheaton – don’t be a dick.
That being said – this move is staggeringly, shockingly foolish on Ubisoft’s part. I can imagine the /headdesking and /facepalming that is happening with developers with upcoming Ubi products. Is some dark internal force the one programming these requirements, or are they making the dev studios insert this damning code? I hear the starting gun of the usual programming arms race – the hackers are wiggling their fingers with determination, ready to manufacture the crack that unravels this.
Alas. Nobody really wins. The best we expect is that some will just be doing the same thing that they always have.
27/01/2010 at 02:31 Blue says:
(Er… “cough” = “couch.” Herp derp.)
27/01/2010 at 04:09 StarDrowned says:
@ Blue There’s at least one VERY major difference.
When stealing a couch, (other than the obvious physical difficulties) you are taking the couch, leaving an empty spot, and the store no longer can sell said couch. Not only can they not profit off the couch, they just lost money. That couch didn’t come from thin air, they had to buy/make it. This fucks them over pretty bad.
Now compare that to downloading a game off the internet. That file doesn’t disappear. The physical copies of the game don’t disappear off the shelf. Morally, maybe this isn’t too different. Logically, though, these are very different things. I don’t think the laws applying to them are the same either, but I’m no lawyer.
There’s also the common thought that if someone pirated a game, there’s a chance they never would have bought the game anyways.
Not to mention I can click a few times, then wait a few hours to steal the game, whereas stealing a couch is going to be a bitch.
27/01/2010 at 04:11 StarDrowned says:
Dammit, messed up my italics code yet again… From now on, I’m sticking to caps for emphasis.
27/01/2010 at 05:41 Brer says:
Flamberge, you -do- realize that every single person in the world who visits and reads a video game news website or forum regularly could boycott Ubisoft and they wouldn’t notice, especially with regards to the big titles like Splinter Cell and Assassin’s creed?
27/01/2010 at 07:16 bill says:
@Frosty.
While buying a DRM’d game and then pirating it might be on better moral ground, it’s probably worse for gamers in the long run.
Not only are you supporting the DRM, you’re boosting the piracy numbers and making them add more and more draconian DRM.
Problem is, there’s no clear solution. Boycotts and petitions are ignored and don’t work. Not buying DRM’d games just kills PC gaming and innovative games faster. Pirating them kills them too.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Double damned if you do both?
27/01/2010 at 16:01 Flameberge says:
@ Brer
I do of course realise this. But that is not an excuse to steal something. If gamers want to change something, we need to get our asses of our seats of perpetually lazy rage and do something about it. A boycott is a good idea, and they can work. It’s just, as I have said, gamers are often too busy (ironically) doing what we are doing and complaining in comment threads or will not follow through on the boycott. Advertise your boycott, have discussions about it with other gamers, write to the gaming press and websites, get it publicised. Don’t just sit and go “right then, guess I’ll just go steal these products”. In the long run whichever way you want to morally quanitfy this or morally justify that illegal download, there is only one outcome – less and less PC games being developed and published, which is bad for everyone; us the consumers and the big bad evil corporations.
27/01/2010 at 01:42 Beastman says:
“They explain that they will apply patches should they ever remove the servers behind the games.”
So in other words, piracy will easily enable these games to work offline, thus once again giving pirates a better overall experience than legitimate costumers. Thanks for at least removing any slight twinge of regret I would have had from clicking the “Download Torrent” button, Ubisoft.
27/01/2010 at 01:43 Blather Blob says:
I just tried this last night, when Fileplanet opened up their The Settlers 7 beta sign-ups to non-subscribers. Using that beta requires logging into an Ubisoft Game Launcher before being allowed to launch the game, complete with entering your cd key which “will be permanently attached to your account”. It was obviously too slick and generic to be meant just for controlling access to a beta, and I was wondering what they were planning to do with it.
I notice they don’t actually mention the ability to redownload a game, just that you’re (still) allowed to install it on any computer you use. I also think when they say there’s no background applications they mean after you’ve quit the Ubisoft Game Launcher. So it would run in the background while you’re playing, but there’s no long term Windows Services running or anything.
I assume this is aimed more at stopping used games or loans to friends than commercial piracy. I doubt creating a centralized application in charge of game authentication makes piracy harder. I’d assume it’s actually easier, since once you crack the Ubisoft Game Launcher, you’ve got zero day cracks for everything Ubisoft releases.
27/01/2010 at 01:46 John Walker says:
You’re quite right – they word it very poorly. They mean there’s no services running outside of the game. I’ve removed that paragraph to remove all ambiguity.
27/01/2010 at 01:49 bhlaab says:
Um, except that they ARE? From EVERY OTHER publisher?
27/01/2010 at 01:50 HermitUK says:
Publishers need a reality check. If people can break the protection on the PS3, a machine designed to be as difficult to crack as possible using both hardware and software safeguards, then your DRM system stands no chance. But by all means continue pissing off your paying player base. That’ll work wonders.
27/01/2010 at 01:53 bhlaab says:
The only problem with cracking the system is the forced cloud saving.
Of course, the forced cloud saving is also destined to cause a billion other problems with authentic purchasers.
27/01/2010 at 05:34 user@example.com says:
They say that they can enable offline-only saves with a patch, if necessary, so pirates will have it done pretty quickly.
27/01/2010 at 01:53 autogunner says:
thats pretty bad, id be angry if I had time these days to do anything apart from revise and go on rps
27/01/2010 at 01:56 Frosty says:
First reaction: It’s just some big joke.
Second stage: Oh god, it’s really true. Are they all this stupid?
Third stage: Eh. Who cares. There are no Ubi games upcoming (at the moment) that I care for.
Fourth stage: But it’s the principal of the thing and it’s SWEARING ridiculous.
Fifth stage: Beyond Good and Evil 2 is a Ubi game. ****ing ********s!
I mean, honestly. You want to stop piracy? Whatever. Your choice. Some think it’s worthless, others think it’s worth a try. But you use some common sense!
I’m not sure who is in charge of this, or the ridiculous FAQs but they need to have a good look over this to see what they’ve done wrong.
27/01/2010 at 04:10 PleasingFungus says:
Don’t worry. It’s okay. Beyond Good and Evil 2 will very likely never come out!
Now doesn’t that make you feel better?
27/01/2010 at 01:56 Gabanski83 says:
Well, to be fair, there aren’t that many amazing Ubisoft games I can think of that I’m looking forward to; possibly SH5, and that’s it. Or maybe Beyond Good & Evil 2, if it ever ever comes to PC. This won’t worry me too much, Ubisoft very rarely get any of my money these days.
Best way for me to show I don’t like these heavy handed methods is to just not buy any of their products.
27/01/2010 at 02:02 FRIENDLYUNIT says:
Hahaa!!! FUCK!
Are they serious? They cant be serious!
I mean I NEVER get all huffy about copyprotection stuff – even when I should – but that announcement essentially made me go “Ah well. Shame. Hope no Ubisoft games I would have wanted come out because I wont be playing them.” (well after the bit I typed above where I DIDNT ACTUALLY BELIEVE IT, due to the stupidity).
Actually I welcome this new announcement! I’ve been spending way too much money on buying games lately.
27/01/2010 at 02:04 jti says:
Won’t be buying their games after this. And I have to mention that the pirated versions won’t probably have to deal with any of that s**t. Just saying.
27/01/2010 at 02:09 tim says:
I can just imagine someone getting upset over Ubisoft making you activate your game each time you want to play online because its a TERRIBLE THING and then going to go play a game on Steam right afterwards. Whats the difference, other than Steam is a much broader service then this seems to be? Steam ties your games to itself, require you to sign in online to start playing a game, and often the games you buy on Steam still contain the DRM you’d get on a retail version.
Ubisoft’s thing here just seems to be a barebones Steam-styled DRM policy, probably with worse customer service. I wonder if its just because this is Ubisoft – had it been Valve, making you activate online everytime you want to play Half Life 2 OH WAIT NEVERMIND….
27/01/2010 at 02:14 Vinraith says:
@tim
I don’t like Steam, but this is much worse than Steam. Steam has an offline mode, and while it’s frustratingly inconsistent at least it works if you set it in advance. More importantly though, Steam doesn’t seize control of your save games, prevent you from keeping copies of them, and store them offsite. Steam games don’t suddenly lose the ability to save your game if you’re offline. . That’s a total deal-breaker.
27/01/2010 at 02:11 Hunam says:
It’s the same with films though. You steal a flim you get exactly what you want. You give them some pound sterling and you get 2 minutes of unskippable text, 3 annoying adverts for films you don’t care about and the worst ever thing where it makes a song and dance about not stealing films.
It’s a stupid fucking world and the reason I don’t really care about films so much anymore.
27/01/2010 at 02:11 Vinraith says:
Has anyone got a good email address to write to on this one? Ubi needs to be absolutely flooded with complaints about this. An offline mode and local, unencrypted (ie not account-tied like GfWL) save files are absolutely vital, even if we have to put up with the rest of it.
27/01/2010 at 02:23 Stijn says:
I think actual letters (you know, paper and ink) might carry more weight
27/01/2010 at 02:33 Vinraith says:
@Stijn
Good point. I note that Ubi’s corporate website http://www.ubisoftgroup.com/ is (suspiciously?) down at the moment, so can’t seem to find an address. Anyone have one?
27/01/2010 at 03:39 Blather Blob says:
@Stijn: So you’ll claim you own a PC, but you’ll do it in a handwritten letter delivered by the postal service. Wouldn’t that be sending mixed messages? :P
27/01/2010 at 06:29 Jad says:
@Blather Blob
Well, he could be a PC gamer with such a poor internet connection that he can’t send an email or play Ubisoft games =)
27/01/2010 at 16:53 Stijn says:
Frankly, it would nowadays be more outrageous to claim you don’t have a PC.
27/01/2010 at 02:11 Ubiquitous says:
Okay, firstly. Ubisoft’s DRM – what the fuck.
I can’t stand GFWL as it is, because of needing to be logged in so that it will save my games, and how much the thing complains about it. I want to be able to hit save and for the game to save, not for my internet connection, which can be spurious at times, to hinder the activity.
Secondly, that T&A Rappelz banner ad – what the fuck.
Thirdly, I don’t know, I just like having three points.
27/01/2010 at 02:21 Caiman says:
Given the massive amount of money they could potentially lose from this move, they must seriously consider piracy to be world-ending if this is the better of the two options.
While I haven’t bought a Ubisoft game for perhaps four years, if this sets a precedent it would be the nail in the coffin of the AAA PC gaming industry. It may be that the fear of piracy is worse than piracy itself.
27/01/2010 at 02:21 theleif says:
It would be interesting if you could get hold of someone at UBI that could explain how something like this came to seem like a good decision .
What was the decision path? Did it come from outside consultants? Was it Marketing? Who actually at the company decided this was the way to go, and why?
Also: If i bought one of their games through Impulse, Gamersgate or Steam (or any other digital distributor), will i still need to check in?
27/01/2010 at 02:26 bookwormat says:
@John Walker:
I’m sure games journalists prefer to write about cool games and new ideas in game design instead of boring digital rights management systems.
Thank you very much for doing this anyway. We need this.
27/01/2010 at 02:28 Vinraith says:
@bookwormat
Well said, and a point worth making.
Thank you RPS, the only way anyone can fight this kind of idiocy is if people are aware of it, and you’ve consistently been very good at providing honest and fair information about DRM issues.
27/01/2010 at 02:47 Frosty says:
@RPS
I further this motion of intelligent reporting and wish to compliment you on the lack of bias you seem to show. You approach it carefully and intellectually whilst most of us get angry and worked up and thus stop thinking (although I’m sure you guys get angry too.)
27/01/2010 at 02:33 Enshu says:
“While none of the major publishers has ever produced any evidence to support the claims that piracy decreases their sales”.
Indeed. They could at least try to come up with some figures and diagrams and demonstrate them as an excuse while introducing this amazing DRM.
27/01/2010 at 02:34 poop says:
what a shame we will miss out on upcoming ubisoft classics like
27/01/2010 at 02:35 Psychopomp says:
Beyond
Good
&
Evil
2
27/01/2010 at 04:10 poop says:
it probably wont be any good sorry to break your heart
27/01/2010 at 02:36 DarkFenix says:
It’s a shame, but Ubisoft don’t publish any series I consider unmissably good, making it a silly move because I’ll have no hesitation in avoiding all their games.
27/01/2010 at 02:43 Mista Freeplay says:
I don’t know about this.
I have boardband and my network is always on so for the most part I wouldn’t have much problem with always being online while I play a game.
But in these though economical times I can see people having to cut back and not going with broadband and my not be able to be online all the time or at all and it would suck to have a cd of a game you legally bought but can’t play
27/01/2010 at 03:09 Polysynchronicity says:
My “always-on” broadband drops out at least once an hour for 15 seconds. It’s not a big hassle when I’m not playing a multiplayer game, but having my singleplayer game pause and reconnect whenever that happens would make me rage very hard. More so if it happened while I was saving and possibly corrupted the save.
God forbid I try to play over some of the wireless networks around here, which are even worse.
27/01/2010 at 02:54 Warren says:
Ubi : WTF
Maybe it would be cheaper for them to just print and slap some stickers on their games saying “PC gamers we hate you”
27/01/2010 at 02:56 Tunips says:
My usual method for dealing with this sort of stupid on games I would otherwise enjoy is purchase the game openly and honestly (albeit from India or Thailand or Cheapland or such) and place it unopened and unsullied on my shelf of shiny game boxes (I pine for the days of big cardboard boxes – my collection is growing ever more asymmetric), and then merrily play a fully functional pirated copy. Morals: Satisfied. Enjoyment: Satisfied.
27/01/2010 at 02:57 Draken says:
Didn’t Company of Heroes sport a similar system? As far as I remember, you couldn’t play a skirmish against the computer or even see what’s the main menu like before login on and downloading all the patches. When I found out there is about 3GB worth of patches for CoH, I gave up the title, even though RTS is my favorite genre and CoH being one of the most critically acclaimed.
27/01/2010 at 03:24 Blather Blob says:
COH shipped with no online activation/authorization, and no cd check. It was very nice, and continued to be the case up until they released the first expansion, with a 2GB patch for the original (containing all the expansion content for multiplay) which added the Relic Online stuff you’re talking about and a cd check.
However, unlike Ubisoft’s plan it does have an offline mode, which demonstrates the problems of trying to get multiple DRMs working nicely together when used with Steam’s offline mode.
27/01/2010 at 03:55 Draken says:
@Blather Blob: Hum… interesting, didn’t know about that, thanks for the info. I bought the GOTY edition and it already came with the online stuff. I guess I’ll just try to find the original version for sale on ebay. Hopefully it’ll be quite cheap.
27/01/2010 at 02:59 Nobody Important says:
Sweet, another developer I can completely ignore. My wallet likes this DRM shabizzle – it limits my purchasing.
Well, if Ubisoft doesn’t want my money, they’re free to keep being idiots. I’ll throw my money toward a developer that doesn’t treat me like shit.
27/01/2010 at 03:07 Mad Doc MacRae says:
Now theoretically for those feeling bad about piracy, what’s to stop you from legally buying the game (ideally physically somewhere) and then just installing the pirated version? I’ll admit to somewhat frequently pirating titles so I don’t think I’d bother with actually paying for one of these straightjacketed products (but I bought World of Goo at least twice now so I think I’ve repaid my debt to society).
27/01/2010 at 06:15 malkav11 says:
Here’s the thing. Buying a game with this sort of bullshit attached, even if you immediately turn around and actually -play- a cracked version, sends the message that this is okay. After all, you bought the game. It isn’t okay..
27/01/2010 at 03:22 Heliocentric says:
:(
2010 held 5 ubisoft games i wanted. One of which i planned to buy 2 copies of(conviction). I probably would have spent in excess of £100, now not so much(£0).
So, on the bright side i’m not gonna be so poor. I’m not pirating these games, but any well reported cracks i’ll be all over like a rash.
27/01/2010 at 04:46 Vinraith says:
@Heliocentric
I’m beginning to think we should be maintaining a “ways to play games you legitimately own without hassle” thread on the forums for cracks. Everything from Steam disablers to GfWL removal and of course whatever comes along to circumvent this crap. What’s a PC gaming forum for if not to help people play PC games, and what’s any of this crap do but stop PC gamers from being able to play their own games?
27/01/2010 at 03:34 skalpadda says:
While the possible Beyond Good and Evil 2 is the only thing on the Ubisoft horizon that really interests me, this is still really worrying, because it feels like much of the industry is moving in this direction, with the things EA are doing with Dragon Age and digital distribution in general.
I’ll echo others in being curious of whether there’s any actual data on how big of a problem piracy really is for PC games publishers, as well as the second hand market (I don’t think I’ve ever bought a PC game second hand, certainly not in the last 10 years at least). I wonder how the potential extra sales will stack up against those who won’t buy the games because of the DRM along with the costs and effort they’ll undoubtedly have to funnel into customer support and getting it all to work.
27/01/2010 at 03:39 StarDrowned says:
These guys need to take a real look at the piracy community and what they’re capable of. They’ll make fake servers for authentication if need be, but I’m guessing it won’t even come to that. Developers are going to scare off legitimate buyers, and the only people who don’t have to jump through hoops to play the game will be those who didn’t even pay for it.
Piracy may kill PC gaming, but only because of the ridiculous measures taken to stop it. And we’re screwed now. It’s not like the piracy rate will drop and they’ll change their minds. Even if it did, I doubt they’d slack on the DRM, anyways.
I really don’t think this will last. They’re going to see a pretty huge backlash, and will (hopefully) give up on this. Otherwise, it’s all downhill from here. If they don’t back down, others may follow, while if this becomes a huge fiasco, it’s unlikely anyone will attempt the same thing.
Calling it now, pirates will be playing the games before release, and Ubi’s authentication servers won’t even be turned on yet.
27/01/2010 at 04:02 Archonsod says:
Silent Hunter V was pretty much the only game I was looking forwards to so far this year. Looks like that will no longer be the case.
27/01/2010 at 04:02 Pijama says:
I will consider myself excused thanks to these special circumstances to say that Ubisoft can go fuck itself on a fire, bleed profusely while at it and shove a pile of dung down it’s throat, ok?
27/01/2010 at 04:04 Hmm says:
Ubisoft is a company. It has existed for approximately 24 years. If they exist for another 24, how much space would every single save, from every single game, made by every single player, ever, take up? And if their life were to tragically end after 20 years, they would patch every single game in their catalogue to then work without this system.
Good idea, guys.
27/01/2010 at 04:06 Hmm says:
They’re going to limit all their games to a single save, aren’t they…
27/01/2010 at 04:45 bhlaab says:
thats a very good point
27/01/2010 at 04:04 Hypocee says:
Hooray, I just saved the price of Silent Hunter.
27/01/2010 at 04:15 Ven says:
Second last paragraph “major publishers have ever produced”.
Anyways, I like the idea of cloud storage, but only for Multiplayer games themselves, like TF2. What it should do is save onto the harddrive and then, when online, transfer all the info over to the cloud for achievements and stuff.
27/01/2010 at 09:18 aldrenean says:
“Has” is correct as it refers to the pronoun “none,” which is singular. “Have” is valid but not preferred. :)
27/01/2010 at 10:16 John Walker says:
Indeed, “none” is singular. We do prefer that people not correct grammar in comments threads. (It’s slightly more of a waste of time when the grammar was correct in the first place : )
27/01/2010 at 04:20 gryffinp says:
I actually am rather less incensed about this than, say, Bioshock 2′s DRM. This seems a lot more reasonable than installing GFWL and having activation limits. That said, I don’t want any of the games Ubisoft’s publishing, so fuck em.
27/01/2010 at 04:23 Tacroy says:
This poses some ridiculous technical problems, too. What about when Ultra-Mega Game 2.0 comes out, and on release day nobody can play because Ubi’s servers are being hammered into a fine paste? What happens when the same number of people who didn’t manage to get in try to play Ultra-Mega Game 2.0 the very next day, and the day after that, and the day after that? They’re going to have to whip up some mighty expensive infrastructure to be able to handle all of those cryptographic handshakes.
Basically, with this DRM, Ubisoft is saying “Our games may only be this successful,” where “this” is however much they’re willing to spend on the DRM infrastructure.
What’s worse is that this will not deter piracy at all. It took a few years to crack the PS3, but that was because Sony controlled both the hardware and the software. Ubisoft does not control the personal computer. All a pirate needs to do is reverse engineer whatever handshake is happening between the game and the Ubisoft authentication/savegame server, and figure out some way around it – even if it means spoofing your own server and lying to the game.
27/01/2010 at 04:55 aDelicateBalance says:
As you have basically said – this still won’t do /shit/ to stop piracy. It will simply piss off regular consumers, who will go… I can get a crack for this that lets me play it offline. Oh and it also lets me play without even paying Ubisoft, so why don’t I just do that while I’m at it. As Urthman says – when a pirated version of a game has /superior/ features to the official version, it’s a no-brainer – it’s free AND better! Ubi-Fail!
27/01/2010 at 06:11 MadMatty says:
Confirmed. They clearly underestimate the power of tha dark side. Anti-piracy checks will simply be REMOVED by crackers, no matter how convoluted and ridiculous the publishers make them.
Even the Military gets hacked from time to time, despite the fact that they got no games on their servers!
27/01/2010 at 07:10 solipsistnation says:
Ah, but what good does removing the anti-privacy check do if you can’t save your game? Are the crackers going to write their own game-saving code?
27/01/2010 at 07:28 Azradesh says:
Yes
27/01/2010 at 09:27 cliffski says:
that makes it substantially harder though. removing a disk check is one thing. reverse engineering the save game code is another, especially if canny developers do evil stuff, like use a different save game format for Wednesdays, or a different one for each alternate month (meaning pirates never know if they really cracked it).
27/01/2010 at 09:35 pkt-zer0 says:
@solipsistnation: Even WoW has private servers to substitute for the official ones, this shouldn’t be that much of an obstacle.
27/01/2010 at 15:24 Tacroy says:
@cliffski: Cracking a CD check is easy nowadays because people have literally been doing it for the last decade. Once one person cracks the first Ubisoft game with this copy protection (I’d give it not more than two months at the outside), the rest will come much more easily – after all, it’s not in Ubisoft’s interests to completely rewrite this DRM every time they release a game.
27/01/2010 at 04:33 Antsy says:
Why don’t you want my money, Ubisoft?
27/01/2010 at 04:46 Urthman says:
At some point, the pirate version of a game is going to be so much better than the original that it qualifies as a derivative work rather than a simple copy, making it morally okay to download and use it.
27/01/2010 at 09:32 MacQ says:
Well said! LOL
27/01/2010 at 04:54 Forscythe says:
I agree with yallz about how incredibly stupid this move is for Ubi, but it looks like an ideal test case to prove the point that onerous DRM can be far more commercially damaging than piracy is (if it is). Thankfully, PC gaming is a frightfully competitive market.
As always (we hope), the companies that get it (or at least those who figure out what they can get away with) will prosper, and those that harass, annoy, and insult their customers too much will fail. If Ubisoft sticks with this, they probably won’t be releasing PC games at all in two years, and that’s fine – it makes room for someone else to get it right.
On the other hand, if they manage to get away with it, and most gamers eventually accept it (never underestimate a gamer’s tolerance for annoyances), then they know the market better than we do. Huh.
27/01/2010 at 05:15 Bonedwarf says:
“Tolerance for annoyances”.
That’s just a fancy way of saying “stupidity”.
27/01/2010 at 05:02 JonFitt says:
It’s notable that they’re kicking this off with the admirable but niche Settlers7. Seems like a good game for a potential suicide play.
They wouldn’t risk something like Splinter Cell Conviction until the system has been shown to not kill a game. Arguably, Spore sales and it’s potential cash cow of expansion packs were cut short by a badly received DRM system.
27/01/2010 at 05:15 Bonedwarf says:
That, and Spore was terrible due to being dumbed down to the point of idiocy.
27/01/2010 at 09:40 AVarotsis says:
Spore sales were cut down due to it being shit.
27/01/2010 at 05:29 Labbes says:
While that has little to do with the actual discussion, Steam has been using cloud saving for Torchlight, at least. Meaning my PC crashed and on upload Steam asked whether it should use the local or the SteamCloud saves. That’s how it should be, Ubisoft!
27/01/2010 at 05:37 jpipesup says:
Soo… What happens at those 50+ player LAN’s where internet is disabled…
Ubisoft fail…
27/01/2010 at 05:41 Shadram says:
I live in New Zealand. Internet is expensive (abot $1 per GB) and relatively unreliable here. The thought that I’d have to be online at all times and upload/download every save I make (and I press that F5 key a lot in most games) pretty much guarantees I’ll never buy a game using this system. I’d be able to work out exactly how much each save was costing me, and very few games would be worth that extra expense.
27/01/2010 at 09:25 Baboonanza says:
@Shadram (first page)
Haven’t you got the message yet? Jesus, and we thought the ridiculous pricing alone would be enough!
Antipodeans aren’t allowed video games!
27/01/2010 at 05:43 Devan says:
This type of copy protection may be bad, but at least it’s easy to explain to people why it’s so bad. If they go full-force on this, they can expect their PC sales to decline, and with the additional cost of 24/7 server authentication, storage and support for all their offline games, the profit margin will be reduced on both sides.
If they drop PC games altogether, that’s bad. If they succeed in sedating the PC community to such tight leashes, then that’s even worse.
But what I’m most concerned about is them letting up just a little. It seems that whenever a publisher pushes the envelope on draconian DRM, everybody gets upset about it, then the company makes a compromise and it eventually sizzles out. But the envelope has still been pushed, and we lose ground.
What we need is for these kinds of initiatives to fail so badly that they provide a counter-case to DRM. Almost any other outcome is a negative one.
27/01/2010 at 05:49 sjkeegs says:
I swore off UBI games after my computer got messed up with the starforce DRM on SHIII. It’s been off my machine for years, and I haven’t bought or acquired any more games from them since (despite interest in a number of titles). After hearing about SH5 I thought that I would try it again after hearing that they had removed the DRM from SHIII. Just finished a session…
If this new DRM info is true though, I guess I’ll just stick with my previous UBI ban. I want to be sure that I can play the game if they take their servers offline (look at the DRM music servers that are being taken offline). I also want to be able to Save/Archive any save games on MY server, not online.
27/01/2010 at 06:28 DarkNoghri says:
BTW, from the Ubisoft FAQ:
Will all my saved games be stored online?
Yes! They will be stored both online and on your PC.
Still, Ubi has no business whatsoever requiring an online connection for single player games. Hey Ubisoft, this is how I like to run games.
1) Buy game.
2) Install game.
3) Possibly enter CD key, preferably not have to keep the CD in the drive. The whole reason I install it is so I don’t need a CD, yah?
4) Play the game.
5) Uninstall the game.
Nowhere in there is there anything about screwing around with online user accounts, logins, extra services running in the background, or anything. I want to install an executable, run the executable, and uninstall when I’m finished, with no extra crap to deal with. IS THIS SO HARD?
Why is it only Stardock that gets it right?
My internet went down the other night, as it sometimes does. You know what I did? I installed a singleplayer game to play.
I quite like Steam (friends list is good, as is adding non-steam games). It does have its drawbacks, one of which is requiring a connection half the time. And you know how many full-price (mostly) games I have on Steam? Somewhere around 5, and they are all by Valve. It’s extremely unlikely that I will buy a Steam game over a retail game, for various reasons. ONE OF WHICH IS THE CONNECTIVITY REQUIRED.
27/01/2010 at 06:34 Spacewalk says:
How large are the filesizes for saved games these days?
27/01/2010 at 09:08 Blackberries says:
Still fairly small, I think. So uploading/downloading shouldn’t take too long, though as someone else pointed out on launch week Ubisoft’s servers will probably be being hammered, which might floor anyone’s attempts to save or load their games. Hum.
Edit: though the lag still might be noticeable enough to be severely irritating with quicksaves. We tend to quicksave a lot. We don’t want an annoying pause every time we do.
27/01/2010 at 06:40 BarneyL says:
I expect that when they see their sales drop they’ll still blame it on piracy…
27/01/2010 at 07:01 Ramojn says:
an account will offer them exceptional gameplay
So it’s the account that gives gameplay, not the game? Ooooh. That explains why I was disappointed with so many games recently. I should’ve known that the fun is all in the account.
27/01/2010 at 07:03 leeder_krenon says:
do you all live in the the fucking middle of the sea or something?
27/01/2010 at 07:15 solipsistnation says:
Actually, I live in the mountains. Not BIG mountains, but when we have big storms (and I’m about 20 miles from the beach, so we get a couple of big storms a year), we lose things like phone and power. When it gets really windy, my internet connection may drop for a split-second a few times an hour. When I’m just surfin’ teh web, it’s not a big deal. If my GAME PAUSED every time this happened, I’d have my fist through my monitor before the day was out.
I also occasionally play games on my laptop. As mentioned, this wouldn’t work so well.
This is the stupidest goddamn piece of shit idea I’ve heard in a long time, and if I find that a game I want to play is locked down in this fashion, I won’t play it. I won’t pirate it either, since I tend not to have the time to deal with that (and the associated threat of malware). I just won’t play it. There are plenty of games out there, and I’ll give my money to a publisher who actually wants it, since Ubisoft clearly doesn’t.
27/01/2010 at 09:05 Psychopomp says:
The area I live in only has one broadband provider. That is Charter.
Anyone who has spoke with me online has heard me rant about Charter’s total ineptitude many times.
27/01/2010 at 09:38 Blackberries says:
Not everyone lives in a well-connected western metropolis. Rural parts of the UK, Ireland and Europe just aren’t going to have great internet connections – none at all in a significant minority of cases. What about these people?
Then consider instances like my parents’ house: yeah, they have a reliable broadband line, but the walls of the house are so sturdy local-wifi is laughable. When I visit with my laptop I spend a good deal of time not connected to the internet as I don’t necessarily want to be tied to the wall when I’m doing something non-internet related. Like, you know, playing a game.
That’s to say nothing for gaming-on-the-go.
Even in my London flat, the infrastructure is creaky enough that our connection will give out at least once a day. Playing Dragon Age last night we lost connection for about 30 seconds (I was chatting on Steam with someone). A piffling concern of no consequence to me, but if it had paused the game while it attempted in futility to reconnect and/or prevented me saving when it failed, I’d have been livid. The day before last the connection dropped briefly again, this time confusing my PC into not being able to re-connect at all. It required a restart when I wanted to browse the web again. What if I’d just wanted to play a single player game? Or had been in the middle of doing so?
As a person living in the relatively affluent south of England this would inconvenience me; what about the literally millions who are still further afield?
27/01/2010 at 07:19 Bret says:
Aw, Scott Pilgrim?
Whelp, if it’s good, its unlikely to have graphics the Nintendo Revolution can’t handle, with the whole retro feel they’re supposedly going for. So?
Console this time, I suppose.
27/01/2010 at 07:26 Guildenstern says:
Those people are fucking insane. That’s all.
27/01/2010 at 07:29 ohfp says:
solipsistnation:
yeah, why not? guess it will be possible to “fake” a connection and save offline. might probably take a bit longer than a day to get it done, but Crackers are seriously bright people (mostly), so I guess they’ll happily accept that challenge.
27/01/2010 at 07:30 Tei says:
Lets make a car analogy:
“I sell you this car. Only to start the engine, you have to call my home, and ask for a password that change every time you start the engine.”
27/01/2010 at 07:31 Bret says:
Solipsistnation might have been using some of that fancy internet sarcasm the kids are into nowadays.
I don’t trust it.
27/01/2010 at 07:36 unangbangkay says:
Soldiers work in the middle of the desert a bunch these days. In fact, their case was one of the reasons cited by Bioware and EA when they backed down from their phone-home Mass Effect DRM.
And when the plan crashes and burns up whatever sales they expected to gain from this crap, Ubi is just going to raise their hands and cite this farce as PROOF that PC gaming is/should be dead. Christ, some of these moves are starting to sound like Solium Infernum turns.
In before “soldiers should be doing their jobs not playing games,” and a big eff-you to anyone who decides to say that anyway.
27/01/2010 at 13:08 VelvetFistIronGlove says:
@unangbangkay
Exactly. And what sane person would want to come between a soldier and his games? Soldiers have big guns, and access to even bigger guns.
27/01/2010 at 07:36 mrmud says:
If this is what it takes to keep the big publishers interested in PC then im fine with it.
And while this kind of stuff never is never pirate proof what it does is delay the release of the iso.
Starforce for all the venom hurled against it did succeed in slowing down the cracking procedure for several games.
27/01/2010 at 09:42 pkt-zer0 says:
“Starforce for all the venom hurled against it did succeed in slowing down the cracking procedure for several games.”
But did it help increase sales? That’s the interesting question. One of the Splinter Cell games was uncracked for a year or so – did that sell ten times as much as others? We never found that out, I believe.
27/01/2010 at 09:52 dingo says:
Interestingly there was no Sales surge in those first few months without cracks of said games.
The people pirating I knew simply played something else and waited for the crack.
27/01/2010 at 13:09 sjkeegs says:
Starforce also messed up my computer enough so that I had to reinstall the OS.
27/01/2010 at 07:38 Dalamar says:
Sales numbers will determine the success of this approach. If The Settlers 7 sells 1,000,000+ games in the first month, this online authentication will not go away.
If sales are bad, it will still not go away immediately (I bet they’ve invested a lot in this), but maybe the rules will become less strict.
If sales are bad and there’s no pirated copy to download anywhere… that should give publishers something to think about.
27/01/2010 at 07:48 Jaedar says:
Guess I won’t buy any more Ubi games then.
Fancy that.
27/01/2010 at 07:52 bhlaab says:
Didn’t they try to do this already with Anno 1401?
And isn’t that fairly cracked?
And also they had to patch out the drm after everyone complained?
And also isn’t this the same company that released a Reloaded crack as a hotfix?
27/01/2010 at 08:10 Bob says:
Maybe they are reloaded? And are making pirate copies of their games, so they can moan about it then make bigger and badder DRM *looks around and whispers* “THEY” are all in on it you know!
27/01/2010 at 08:02 Ragnar says:
The publishers are hard at work at killing PC gaming I see.
27/01/2010 at 08:11 mrmud says:
I think its fairly obvious that they are hard at work trying to come up with ideas so that they dont have to pull out of PC publishing.
27/01/2010 at 09:12 Blackberries says:
True MrMud; this is (I think) still better than giving up on the PC altogether. But it nevertheless remains true that by pulling this kind of barmy stunt they’re making PC gaming a more frustrating experience, doing nothing to assist it. What makes this worse is the dubious amount of difference it will make in converting potential pirated copies into actual sales.
27/01/2010 at 08:15 Tom says:
Dammit, now I have to wait until the Ubisoft servers behind the games go down, before I buy Silent Hunter V and Trackmania 2. That’ll be a loooooooong wait…
27/01/2010 at 08:24 Bob says:
Noooooooooooooooooo not Trackmania 2!!! I forgot they were behind that now! :-( *weeps like a guitar*
27/01/2010 at 08:24 Frankie The Patrician[PF] says:
Oh sod it! Looks like another deal breaker…just like StarForce…
DRM my ass, UBI!
27/01/2010 at 08:35 Ravenger says:
My internet connection has been dire for the last two months (still trying to get a proper fix from the cable company), and I’ve been unable to play online. Even GFWL wouldn’t log in most of the time so I’ve been playing single player games instead.
That’s why Ubisoft’s scheme is so stupid. It assumes we all have 24/7 high quality broadband.
I guess all Ubisoft games are off my purchase list now, but then I don’t often buy Ubisoft games anyway. The last one I bought was Assassin’s creed 1. I boycotted Far Cry 2 due to the DRM. I was going to get Assassin’s Creed 2, but that’ll use the new DRM system I guess, so that’s off my list. I was wondering why they hadn’t announced the Assassin’s Creed 2 DRM system when they released the technical specs. Now I know why.
27/01/2010 at 08:43 sendmark says:
To be honest for me sounds less bother than the likes of Starforce.Steam already logs all this game playing data anyway and saving games online should save disk space?
I guess we’ll see how popular it is.
27/01/2010 at 08:45 Malagate says:
Why am I not surprised that this is Ubisoft doing this? Every time I’ve played one of their games on PC it’s either been hugely buggy from the get-go, choked by DRM, left unsupported a few months after launch or all of the above.
The last game I actually bought from them was Dark Messiah, mostly for the Multiplayer. That game was incredibly fun, but riddled with crippling bugs, MP exploits and MP balance issues that will never get fixed due to them dropping support the moment the Xbox version was getting ready for launch.
The xbox version, which was advertised as including “over 200 bug fixes”, bug fixes that will never reach the PC version. Either I’ve been spoilt by the likes of Valve (when it comes to supporting an existing game), Ubisoft really hates PC gaming, or both.
27/01/2010 at 08:51 piphil says:
I would have probably taken a look at Settlers 7 (should the PC Gamer UK review have been positive). However, due to a series of cock-ups by BT and Virgin’s ADSL department I have no landline; I’m stuck on the connection provided by a 3G dongle. Having had accidents in the past with download limits (leaving Steam on, and it “helpfully” downloading 1.7 GB of updates, with my monthly limit set at 5 GB…) I’m damned if I’m going to buy any game that randomly decides to ping data across the net.
Some of the features mentioned sound great, but they need to be implemented so the consumer can agree to them in advance. I’ll be waiting until the DRM is patched out, and will probably buy any games I’m interested in from the bargain bin.
27/01/2010 at 08:51 Rei Onryou says:
So far DRM has never stopped me purchasing a game. It’s made me unhappy, but I’ve dealt with it. I’m not going to let any old DRM stop me having fun.
And then Ubi pull this. Well, I’ll be £100+ better off this year, who knows how much more I’d save next year. In fact, I’ll take the money I’d spend on Ubi games and buy some EA stuff. How you like that shit?
27/01/2010 at 08:52 Greg Wild says:
Oh wow, that’s a whole lot of games I won’t be buying now.
27/01/2010 at 08:54 Greg Wild says:
Also, I guess we now know why AC2 was delayed.
27/01/2010 at 09:00 Sharpblue says:
Well i must say that is probably one of the most infuriatingly stupid things ive read in a good long while. They sound about as in touch with their audience as the British government is with its subjects.
I will NEVER buy another ubisoft game again *sighs*
27/01/2010 at 09:00 Lambchops says:
The last line in that FAQ is ridiculous.
Still as stupid as I find the idea that you have to be online I’m not going to complain to loudly while there’s still a chance Ubisoft will eventually release Beyond Good and Evil 2 – no amount of restrictive, annoying authentication systems could ever stop me buying that game!
27/01/2010 at 13:54 MacQ says:
There’s no guarantee that the game will be any good if they ever release it.
27/01/2010 at 09:01 jon_hill987 says:
Damnit I was looking forward to RUSE and maybe Silent Hunter 5. No more! I won’t pirate them (and there will be a crack within a week) but I won’t buy them either.
27/01/2010 at 09:02 Super Bladesman says:
On first reflection, I wasn’t at all bothered by this. Then I remembered that my broadband connection has been up and down like a lady of the night’s underwear lately. Now I’m more bothered by it… I can just imagine the frustration of a game constantly pausing due to a dodgy connection.
As someone mentioned above though – I’m not particularly enamoured with any of the forthcoming games from Ubisoft anyway…
27/01/2010 at 09:03 Blackberries says:
Holy. Crap. My jaw was in danger of shattering the mug of coffee clutched limply in my shellshocked hand as it rocketed to the floor upon reading this.
What are Ubisoft thinking?!*. This is full-on, balls-out ridiculous. No way I’d even consider getting a game with this sort of DRM.
If you’ll allow a tenuous and sensationalist analogy (aren’t they always?), this is somewhat akin to having custody of one’s child removed, with access rights strictly controlled by a suspicious court. Internet connectivity to launch? To keep playing? To save? Unbelievable.
*OK, I know what Ubisoft are thinking. They’re thinking about piracy and the bulging sacks of money scurvy internet dogs are definitely undoubtedly unquestionably depriving them of every single day.
27/01/2010 at 09:12 Bloodrite says:
As a smart man once said “DRM only annoys the people that acualy bought the game, not the pirates”
27/01/2010 at 09:15 Demon Beaver says:
OH FUCK THIS, I’M GETTING A CONSOLE!
I think someone just finally lopped the head off pc gaming… X_X
27/01/2010 at 09:20 Bobsy says:
I think it’s very important that Ubisoft gets held to account for this by the press. Haul them in front of the general public, show off their ridiculous practices, have the consumer watchdogs take an interest. It’s utterly reprihensible.
Of course, the conspiricy money’s on this being a PR gambit where they climb down in a week or two, propose slightly less awful DRM measures and we all say “yay, that’s okay”. But that’s just crazy talk. No, you’re crazy.
27/01/2010 at 09:24 TheApologist says:
So, hasn’t Steam worked through all these kinds of problems. Why are they making all of Valve’s mistakes again?
It’s just weird.
But yes, the pausing when my connection drops and lag while my save uploads means I will be thinking very carefully before buying an Ubisoft game.
27/01/2010 at 09:24 pignoli says:
Hmm, so a little perspective: I’ve noticed similar things already in play, I think. I can only load my save games for Dragon Age (which are admitedly stored lcoally) once it has connected to some sort of server to verify that I own the DLC whose content is in the save I’m trying to load. The DLC that came free with the game. That everyone gets. Bah.
27/01/2010 at 10:31 kromagg says:
Well exactly. Where was John’s outrage when dragon age implemented basically the same system? I think DRM is horrible and all that but steam + dragon age is basically the same deal.
27/01/2010 at 09:27 Greg Wild says:
I was considering that as well pignoli, true.
Ubi’s method seems a little more omniscient – it’s always there, all pervading. It’s certainly enough that I won’t be buying Ubi’s games now.
27/01/2010 at 09:30 MacQ says:
LOL. Well said! :D
27/01/2010 at 09:31 Dr_Ham says:
Did anyone else notice the price of the new AC2 game: $59.95 or $64.95 for the digital edition….
I guess it costs more to not package it?
27/01/2010 at 10:29 Bobsy says:
Bandwidth costs for direct download.
27/01/2010 at 11:30 Carra says:
Oh come on, bandwith costs… No way will that cost more then creating a disk, packaging it, sending it and giving the retail shop its part of the profits.
They just want to protect the retailers.
27/01/2010 at 09:34 Stew says:
In six months or a year, Ubi will pull an Epic and stop making PC games because there’s no profit, and never realise that their own stupidity cost them so much.
27/01/2010 at 09:34 Okami says:
This will of course in no way stop their games from beeing pirated. All they’re doing is provide a bunch of crackers with something to keep them occupied for a day or two…
27/01/2010 at 13:14 Chris says:
Indeed, Steam games are pirated.
27/01/2010 at 09:42 groovychainsaw says:
They don’t learn, do they. After many games sales were noticeably damaged (or underperformed, at least) when coupled with annoying DRM (as opposed to less annoying DRM) they go and make it more annoying. They’ll drive me to the consoles for all their games now (fortunately they dont make too many good ones..), at least I can still play those offline, I can’t see MS or Sony allowing a game on those systems with this sort of control over it.
And of course, driving me to consoles means they#’ll get less sales again on PC, and use it as justification to stop making games for the PC. It just doesn’t make any sense…
27/01/2010 at 10:11 9of9 says:
Wasn’t it Ubisoft that released the last Prince of Persia completely DRM-free as an experiment? Seemed like things were going well for them, but it doesn’t look like the results particularly pleased them.
27/01/2010 at 12:13 RagingLion says:
I think you’re right. I remember at the time one of RPS saying it might be to set up the argument later on for abandoning DRM-free games.
27/01/2010 at 09:42 trunkh says:
NBC execs at ubisoft? who’d have guessed.
27/01/2010 at 09:46 Krendo says:
Seconded!
27/01/2010 at 09:50 cheal says:
This actually means I can never again buy a ubisoft game. I don’t currently have internet on my computer in at the moment don’t really wish to get it back, primarily because I spend all my time on forums rather than playing my SINGLEPLAYER games!!!
meh.
27/01/2010 at 09:51 Krendo says:
Damn reply system!
“Seconded” above refers to this…
Urthman says:
January 27, 2010 at 4:46 am
At some point, the pirate version of a game is going to be so much better than the original that it qualifies as a derivative work rather than a simple copy, making it morally okay to download and use it.
27/01/2010 at 10:04 Dan (WR) says:
Sigh. No more money for you Ubisoft. I was looking forward to AC2, SC: Conviction and Ruse too, but I may not get them on Xbox either out of general principle.
Like most people, I don’t pirate games. I buy what I can afford when it’s at a reaonable price. The only thing that will stop me buying a game completely is… well… something like this.
Stupid, stupid people.
27/01/2010 at 10:07 Shadowcat says:
I absolutely refuse to spend money on this kind of idiocy, which probably means no Beyond Good & Evil 2 for me :( :( God damn moronic DRM.
Maybe one day it will appear on GOG.com, and I can buy it then.
27/01/2010 at 10:08 JB says:
I was looking forward to AC2 (my nephew has it on his xbox, I guess I’ll borrow his console for a bit), SH5 and RUSE. I won’t be pirating any of them either. So that’s another, what, £100? that Ubi are missing out on this year. Crazy, unless as mentioned above, this is just so when they unveil the ACTUAL (slightly less draconic) DRM measures, we all go “phew! I can live with that”…
27/01/2010 at 20:15 JB says:
I just realized. If I’m not spending this money on Ubi stuff, I can give about £20 of it to Vic Davis!!!
Yay for SI !!!
27/01/2010 at 10:09 Serenegoose says:
That’s the thing though, isn’t it. For a long time it’s been split down personal ethical grounds, and not availability, as to whether a game will be pirated or not. Most people who pirate games do it because it doesn’t make them feel wrong. Most people who don’t pirate games don’t because it strikes them as an ethically bad choice. So, the people who pirate games -always will- and the people who don’t, won’t. DRM can only work against those who don’t pirate games, by reducing the quality of the service so much so that people re-evaluate their priorities. We all want to play games, and when it becomes downright inconvenient to do so, whilst paying for the privilege… Because the person who pirates games can always just wait for it to be available, and play other games in the meanwhile, barely at all inconvenienced having not spent their money, and not having to deal with annoying DRM at the end of it.
27/01/2010 at 10:10 RC-1290'Dreadnought' says:
I believe this stuff was already included in Assasins Creed (I had the Steam version), last year. Near the end of the game, I got ridiculous lag. When I searched the internet for possible causes, someone suggested it could be because the game was trying to connect to a Ubisoft server. I tried disconnecting from the internet and it helped. That wouldn’t be possible with this new system.
They could make it even worse. For example:
- By requiring you to log in, for every connect.
- By requiring you to fill in your serial key and a captcha every time it connects with the server, to make sure you are the human that owns the cd.
- By requiring you to fill in a form of 10 pages about your experiences, every time it connects with the server
- By making you wait when the servers are ‘busy’.
- By making you watch the same adverts over and over again, while you wait for the validation to clear.
27/01/2010 at 11:16 Drexer says:
Yeah, AC1 around the time of the Steam sale(when I bought it) had a problem that you described. Apparently, each time you make a kill it connects to a server; seeing as the server was down, each time you made a kill you had 3 seconds of visual lag.
27/01/2010 at 10:12 Heliosicle says:
nice one ubisoft, I was really looking forward to buying Splinter cell, if I’m going to have a better expirience pirating it, I think I might
27/01/2010 at 10:17 Nameykins says:
Well, looks like I’m not going to buy Ubisoft games anymore, PC or console. I am just sick and tired of having to pay the price for piracy as a normal consumer. And the only way to really voice out my opinion, is simply not buy their products.
27/01/2010 at 10:24 Andy says:
Ubisoft are making games good enough that I’m going to want to buy them regardless of the draconian DRM they put in place. They should not imagine for a second however that I won’t use what ever techniques are inevitably going to be developed by pirates to make my legally purchased game playable when/how/where I choose.
I’m actually surprised that Ubi are getting away with this approach legally themselves. It does rather seem like a denial of services to paying customers to me.
This is the rough equivalent of the film industry requiring you to take your newly purchased dvd to the cinema before you can actually watch it.
27/01/2010 at 10:27 Tom says:
Arrrr…matey, fire up those torrents and be done with it.
27/01/2010 at 10:27 Serenegoose says:
Except not even really. If you don’t buy it, they’ll just say you pirated it, because they can’t prove who did and who didn’t. It’s not like they get sales figures for those who torrent it. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
27/01/2010 at 10:28 Monkeybreadman says:
*Pokes head tentavively out of hole*
As stupid as this is, something needs to be done about piracy. I know at least 5 people that have completed Mass Effect 2 already (living in EU btw). This isnt it however. But what is? Maybe a hardware solution?
*ducks back in hole*
27/01/2010 at 14:33 jalf says:
1: Did those people pirate the game or just buy it from a store that sold it early?
2: Would they have bought the game if they hadn’t been able to pirate it?
It doesn’t really matter how many times a game is pirated. What’s important is how many more sales it could’ve gotten if it hadn’t been pirated.
27/01/2010 at 15:48 Psychopomp says:
Concerning 2), there’s a large contingent of people who treat torrents as extended demos, myself included. I can’t tell you how many games got have gotten a sale from me, because I went ahead and tried it. Hell, I just plopped down 60$ for Mass Effect 2, a game I had almost zero interest in but decided to try anyway.
(It’s much better than 1, by the way. MUCH.)
27/01/2010 at 10:33 Serenegoose says:
Kromagg: As far as I’m aware, steam doesn’t stop working if your internet connection dies mid game. It doesn’t rely on their servers being peachy and accessable whenever you want to save it. Steam actually -gives- you something for your trouble, and I’d be perfectly happy with it if only they got off their arse and fixed the offline mode, which is a bit dodgy. Steam does walk very close to the line. Ubi hopped, skipped, and jumped over it.
27/01/2010 at 11:28 Monchberter says:
And quite a few non Valve games will allow you to load up a game, then start Steam on another computer, and also load up on another computer, despite Steam quitting on the first computer, but not closing the game.
Where Steam is effectively just the front end, this isn’t a problem
27/01/2010 at 11:31 Monchberter says:
I also remember the days when I could LAN Half-Life Deathmatch with just one copy between four. This also worked for a while with Steam and the trick I posted above.
Were were poor and could only afford one copy between us!
27/01/2010 at 10:33 terry says:
That FAQ is really bizarre, it’s like putting in “What if Ubisoft are actually Nazi Aliens?” as a question and answering it with “Well, at least we’ll all get DLC!”
27/01/2010 at 10:33 HELLO says:
When will they ever learn? Just how is this going to protect their product? HOW?
It’s going to be up on torrents sooner than you can think it! And who’s going to be left dealing with those “exceptional services”? That’s right, the people who PAID for the game, while those who got it for free get the better service (better price, better product).
And I’m not even mentioning the $10 price hike… or the 5-month delay… which I just did….
Oh well.. good thing most of their games aren’t all that. Your loss, Ubisoft.
27/01/2010 at 10:41 alm says:
Soon it will be Rise of the Console.
Tales of how we had more powerful games on systems we built ourselves will circulate as myth to countless generations.
27/01/2010 at 10:42 Theory says:
This is what happens when people bitch about StarForce and Securom and other such security systems that are actually okay and don’t actually matter. Go on, admit it: either you never bought a SF/Securom game, or you did and had no problems.
Now, thanks in part to your whining, we regress to constant disc-in-drive checks in Spore: Galactic Adventures (as opposed to Spore’s simple, convenient online check on installation), and this kind of thing in Ubi games. At least 2K have stuck to their guns, if you squint enough to ignore their use of GFWL.
Edit: some historical context.
27/01/2010 at 10:47 John Walker says:
Theory, I think challenging the internet to tell you they didn’t have problems with Starforce might *just* be something of a mistake.
27/01/2010 at 10:55 Theory says:
Not in my experience. I’ve thrown the gauntlet down several times over the years, and the only, single person who ever even claimed to have had a problem was running into this Windows XP bug when playing SF games.
27/01/2010 at 11:00 destroy.all.monsters says:
i call bullshit on this. Starforce has had repeated problems and was justifiably given crap for it. I have had less problems with Securom but really the crux of your argument is “if you don’t bitch then they won’t shove something even more draconian down our throats”. This is not only provably untrue it is rather like Chamberlain talking about peace in our time.
DRM is, at best, tolerable and frankly closer to unacceptable. Moaning didn’t cause it – the desire to control is what causes this. GFWL, Steamworks, and the plethora of deplorable DRM schemes are to take away your rights as a consumer to put them squarely into the hands of the publisher. Do you know how long publishers have been salivating over the idea of games that cannot be re-sold? Enough drool for an ocean there. Try buying a used copy of Gal Civ II and see how far that gets you.
The bottom line is that you have missed the forest for the trees in your argument. If it means that big companies have to lose big profit for awhile to get the message then we should do our part and not buy from them. We should not blame others for their correct and righteous indignation as if that was ever a motivating factor for more egregious drm.
27/01/2010 at 11:03 Larington says:
I once tried to play a legit bought copy of black & white 2, it wouldn’t load, wasn’t giving any reason… Turned out the DRM (Safedisc apparently) didn’t like my CD (DVD?) ROM and I was eventually forced to install a no-cd crack to play the bally thing.
Since then I’ve been wary of going anywhere near of games with DRM – What if there isn’t a no-cd patch for it? Theres a reason I buy most games from the likes of steam now and fewer and fewer games from retail/online.
27/01/2010 at 11:57 Theory says:
@monsters: I’m not suggesting that we don’t bitch when something we don’t like comes along. That’s a personal decision. I suggest that we consider more rationally what we do and don’t like in the first place. Do I detect that you’ve never had SF/Securom problems yourself?
@Larington: I can sympathise, a similar thing happened to me with Soldiers of Anarchy. Worse still, the only crack out there was for the US edition of the game (but I got it working in the end). Our specific problems weren’t widespread however, let alone by design — unlike the ones inherent in Ubi’s system here.
Thinking about it, there must be disc drives that don’t work with SF…
27/01/2010 at 12:00 Theory says:
And before I forget: some historical context.
27/01/2010 at 12:01 cheal says:
I’d also like to call bullshit on this. I did have serious issues with the DVD player in my last computer after installing a couple of SF games. It most affected SF discs but also caused problems across the board and that’s not even to mention the problems of having two different kinds of SF on your computer. I have no problem with securom except the install authentication and install limits which were imposed because
A: Over the past 10 years I’ve probably only had a fast internet connection to my gaming PC for about 6 of those years (I don’t at the moment for instance) because my homestead is in a rural area of Ireland where internet access is sporadic.
B: The install limit meant having to actually uninstall those games before a format in order to get my installs back. That is just a horribly stupid thing to have to do.
I far prefer disc checks (Because I have my discs on a shelf beside my computer and always will!) over online authentication although I find steam relatively agreeable because of it’s offline mode and the fact it offers something to me as the customer and isn’t JUST a DRM system.
27/01/2010 at 12:08 Theory says:
Congratulations Cheal, you’re number two. :-) Got Windows XP?
27/01/2010 at 12:20 destroy.all.monsters says:
Theory: First off no one in their right mind is going to read that wall of text that you pointed to in order to make/save *your* argument. I am not willing to make your argument for you. If you want to bolster your argument I suggest you do so in thread.
Secondly, yes I have had many problems with Starforce, with Safedisc and with other DRM “solutions”. I am far from the only person to have had these problems. Many of them try to disable any virtual disc software. Daemon Tools has been specifically targeted repeatedly, for example. In worst case scenarios they’ve been known to lock out or trash an optical disc drive. Not fun. Nor do uninstallers even remove the malware from your computer.
Still, you have chosen to back away from the crux of your argument. Complaining, boycotting, whathaveyou inherently does not cause increasingly more intrusive drm. Frankly I think that publishers have seen how far they can go – what with the recent example of Modern Warfare 2 – they feel that the time is ripe to dictate rent-a-games to the pc crowd.
27/01/2010 at 13:29 Iain says:
@Theory:
I’d also call bullshit on the “no problems with StarForce” thing. Any software that installs itself as hardware so that you can’t uninstall it properly isn’t DRM – it’s malware – and it has a long history of actually rendering optical drives utterly unusable, if it takes a dislike to some of your software (regardless of whether it’s legal or not).
I won’t touch any game that uses StarForce because of the trouble it’s given me in the past – and I wasn’t even using virtual disk imaging software. Any form of DRM that requires you to either piss around in your hardware profile or (at worst) do a complete hard drive reformat to get rid of is not something I want to have installed on my PC.
27/01/2010 at 14:03 Theory says:
@monsters: There’s no great need to read it, it’s just background information. The gist is that people bitched about Quake 3′s CD key authentication when it came out using much the same arguments that you see about DRM today. Today that type of security is considered totally benign, even virtuous. Perception is reality.
I don’t consider security software disabling other security-bypassing software a “problem”, personally. It seems an entirely reasonable and very minor inconvenience. On the other hand you say disc checks have “been known” to trash optical drives — but has that happened to you, or even to anyone you know? I’ve never encountered anyone who can honestly say so. This is why I asked the question I did in my original comment.
I’m not sure why you think I’m “backing away” from anything.
@Iain: So is persistently rumoured. But like I asked monsters, has it happened to you, or to anyone you know? I suspect the answer is no.
27/01/2010 at 14:38 jalf says:
I don’t understand. How would shutting up about earlier DRM attempts have stopped them from coming up with more draconian ones?
This crap from Ubisoft isn’t a response to people whining about DRM, it’s a response to the perceived piracy problem. No matter how much you loved Starforce, Ubisoft would not find it a satisfactory solution so long as it can be pirated. Which it can. And so they come up with this instead. Not because Starforce is disliked by gamers, but because it’s disliked by Ubisoft, because it’s not secure enough for their tastes.
Saying we’d all be better off if we’d just not complained in the first place is just completely upside-down logic.
27/01/2010 at 18:00 Theory says:
Not a result of whining? Ubisoft very publicly ditched StarForce as a direct result of a concerted internet campaign against both it and them.
27/01/2010 at 23:46 destroy.all.monsters says:
Yes Starforce trashed one of my drives years ago. That’s why, to this day, I refuse to buy games that use it. In another instance I was unable to use my CD Burner until I removed the game that used it, and did an in depth registry search. The fact is that you refuse to see the mountain of evidence that abounds on the internet as real. That is _your_ problem. Apparently you are one of those types who assumes since it never happened to them that it never happened to anyone else.
It seems you feel virtual disc drives aren’t a useful piece of software for the consumer. Apparently you don’t mind when a drive goes mad and shatters your game disc or whathaveyou. I am happy for you that you have a mountain of money that you can repurchase at will. That doesn’t mean that you should dictate terms to those of us that don’t.
You find it just fine and dandy that the publisher dictate terms to the consumer. So, just say that. You’ve given them a free pass – and as far as you’re concerned the gaming public has no need for rights. It reminds me of the people that say you have no need for rights, or privacy since only the guilty need those things.
For the record it was not “whining” that killed Starforce. It was the threat of lawsuits. A company and a type of drm do not generate the level of hate that Starforce has by not being a horrific drm measure. That’s why people grumble about Securom but most people don’t actively hate it. Somehow you have afforded some sort of benificence to a corporation which is totally out of line as to what a corporation is all about.
27/01/2010 at 10:46 Adam says:
This makes so little sense it’s unreal.
There have been games before that required a server authentication to install / play the first time. And guess what? They were pirated.
How does this change anything for pirates? The game will be cracked as soon as it’s released (or in the case of Mass Effect 2, four days before US released, and a staggering 8 before the EU release… way to go EA).
Once again, publishers just don’t get piracy and how to stop it.
27/01/2010 at 10:48 Malagate says:
A “hardware solution” already exists, they’re called “consoles”.
Interestingly enough some other people have voiced their opinion that this ubi DRM idea is so terrible that they’ll get a console instead of playing the PC version. Consoles of course being the most restrictive DRM known to man, albeit not as annoying.
Which is exactly what Ubisoft want, why the hell should they support a platform that can be compromised apparantly one week after a release? Why not make it so annoying to use the PC versions that eventually everyone just uses the much-harder-to-pirate-but-convienent-to-use console versions, justifying them not creating a PC version at all?
27/01/2010 at 11:34 jon_hill987 says:
@ Malagate:
I think this is the reason behind GfWL as well. Making the XBox seem as attractive as the PC by making the PC worse rather than making the XBox better. Personally I think Microsoft are shooting themselves in the foot as I, and I expect many other people, will go over to Linux* if PC gaming is finished.
* Or Mac if you are that way inclined.
27/01/2010 at 10:50 destroy.all.monsters says:
I buy games. I expect that I own them and am not renting them. I feel justified in pirating when publishers do this type of thing since they have decided that customers no longer matter.
Fuck ‘em.
And for the usual detractors I ask this: why is gog.com making money from their customers? Why do customers choose Gamersgate for newer games – especially when it takes longer to download from them?
There is such a thing as customer loyalty and there is such a thing as not acting in the worst interests of your customers. Try to dictate terms and see how far you get with the buying public.
Brad of Stardock/Impulse/Gal Civ fame even tried to justify that type of behavior about a year ago until the forums erupted at him. You want zero tolerance on your end? We’ll give you zero tolerance on ours.
27/01/2010 at 10:50 Gunrun says:
HAVING TO BE ONLINE ALL THE TIME? WHAT IS THIS MADNESS WHO IS EVER ONLINE ALL THE TIME IN THIS AGE OF DIALUP AND EXPENSIVE PAY PER MINUTE ISPS.
I bet 99% of you use steam and its famously patchy offline mode. What is any different with this?
And you guys without always on internet connections are in such a small minority that you be safely told to bugger off at this point.
27/01/2010 at 11:06 destroy.all.monsters says:
Way to miss the point. Most of my gaming never needs to be online. Steam has no value other than it’s deeply discounted sales.
So what you’re saying is that if one has an ISP outage it’s ok that they’re screwed. After all, why should consumers have rights at all? That is, essentially, your argument. I’d suggest re-thinking that.
27/01/2010 at 11:33 Psychopomp says:
@Gunrun
Steam doesn’t forcibly pause your game when you’re disconnected from the internet, and Steam at least *offers* an offline mode.
27/01/2010 at 10:52 Gunrun says:
All you people who use the term “I feel justified in pirating the game” are awful by the way. You’re just making the problem worse. If you boycot something that doesn’t mean you get to steal it. It means you don’t get it at all.
27/01/2010 at 10:59 Rick says:
Ahh but as the industry has shown again and again they are more interested in the numbers who get their game for free not those who just don’t get it at all.
So if piracy goes up because of DRM it has failed if not made the problem worse, whereas if sales go down they don’t see it as that they see it as proof that the pc is dying as a games format.
27/01/2010 at 11:02 alm says:
Rick if companies are dumb enough not to notice a boycott, they won’t notice that an increase in piracy was a revolt against shoddy DRM. As others have said they make more money from consoles anyway and it would be the demise of PC gaming altogether, and good riddance as far as the companies are concerned.
27/01/2010 at 11:43 Andy says:
I won’t be pirating any of the games. I’ll be buying them legally and then hacking the balls out of them so I’m not hogtied by Ubisofts stupid-ass system.
27/01/2010 at 12:29 destroy.all.monsters says:
Using your terminology I am proudly awful. You feel that the consumer should have no rights. Those of us that want to stand up for them have a limited number of ways of making our displeasure known. Voting with your wallet is one of them.
Do I feel entitled when someone treats me poorly just because they can? Yes, yes I do. You treat people the way you would want to be treated. This is how Gog.com and to a slightly lesser extent, Gamersgate make their bones. They aren’t doing too shabbily last time I checked.
27/01/2010 at 12:59 Gunrun says:
destroy.all.monsters
You’re only awful if you pirate the games.
There is a difference between voting with your wallet and stealing the game. All it proves to the developers is that you want to play the game. Chances are they’ll just decide to put the game out on a platform where if you want to play it you have to buy it. Pirates like you are the reason DRM exists in the first place. There has ALWAYS been an “excuse” for piracy but if you need to justify it to yourself and others with some sort of moral crusade then you are deluded, and it simply boils down to “I am a cheapskate”
27/01/2010 at 13:18 destroy.all.monsters says:
Gunrun: You apparently have no clue how the real world works. Let me spell it out for you: there is literally no place where you can force someone to buy your product if they don’t want to buy/pay for it. Any game on any system, whether it be PC or console, is ridiculously easy to obtain for free. If you choose to maintain the fiction that publishers have some say in the matter then that’s fine – as long as you realize (and they realize) that it is a fiction.
What I find irksome is your ridiculous view that consumers should have no say in the matter. You refuse to cop to it though. You prefer pointing your finger at others rather than seeing how you’ve justified unjustifiable behavior. Basically you think it well and good that paying customers are treated as guilty before proven innocent. You fail to grasp that those who come up with these schemes will only find another justification for doing something even more heinous when given the opportunity.
Yes, I am a “cheapskate” who has dropped hundreds of dollars in the last year at Gog, Gamersgate, Gogamer, Steam and even my local retailers as well as Ebay and craigslist.
Now if you think that any of the screeds that you’ve tossed up here are going to have any sort of positive effect then you’re the one that’s deluded. Meanwhile feel free to enjoy your games for just as long as the publishers decide that you’re allowed to.
27/01/2010 at 10:55 alm says:
Piracy is not constructive. It merely satisfies a need while biting the hand that feeds.
I don’t have a solution myself, but just saying, piracy only helps /you/.
27/01/2010 at 10:56 Rick says:
Well I guess we’ll all just have to crack ubisoft games regardless of whether we bought them, nicely done guys you’ve created more of a market for the tools of piracy…
27/01/2010 at 11:04 Nero says:
More reason for me to not buy major companies games. I can’t really recall the last time I bought a major game at full price. Looks like I will keep sticking to indie games. Cheaper and more creative games, win for me.
27/01/2010 at 11:07 Colthor says:
Hahahaha!
Well done, Ubisoft. I hope you’re proud.
27/01/2010 at 11:20 Jargo says:
Maybe i am a part of a minority. But i am a Laptopgamer and i am normaly playing my PC games at a train, in a cafe or at my girlfriends place. All of these places have NO internet. The internet is at home, where my xbox is!
It is annoying enough that i often have the register a pc game online at home before i can start playing them outside. But not playing at all ??? WTF ?
27/01/2010 at 11:28 Guildenstern says:
Enjoy your 50 dollar rental. Opps, sorry, I meant 64 dollar rental.
27/01/2010 at 11:30 neolith says:
No good will come of this.
27/01/2010 at 11:35 Ian says:
Fuck you Ubisoft I won’t do what you tell me.
The pirates have a better product. Getting better by the day.
27/01/2010 at 11:36 Carra says:
Sigh, what’s the use? The first game with this protection scheme will be protected for a few days or weeks. Then those magic hackers will fix it. Your games will be saved to your local disc and you’ll never have to use the Internet. From one point of view the hacker gets a better version then the customer (idem dito with the x activation limits, a pirated version doesn’t have those and thus is better).
All this does is forcing people to download the crack if they want to play offline. Do you really want customers to go look for cracks & hacks? Maybe next time they’ll just download the full game instead of just the crack.
27/01/2010 at 12:08 cheal says:
Yeah I think that really really bad DRM such as this will actually lead to yet another generation of people who opening know the in’s and out’s of piracy. My first experience of piracy was getting a cracked executable to remove the disc check and once you know that such resources exist, it’s like a pandora’s box tbh. I still prefer to buy games or I boycott where I see fit.
27/01/2010 at 11:51 Kadayi says:
I’m inclined to just wait and see how this pans out before reaching for the pitchfork and torch and talking big about pirating all their games in future, rather than just say boycotting them instead (sad gentleman, very sad to see so many familiar faces threatening the piracy route…). Personally I give a shit about laptop users (a hive of scum and villainy) , it’s rare if ever that my internet connection goes down and it’s rare if ever that I replay titles 3 years down the road. I also don’t doubt that in this day and age of man baby internet fury Ubisoft wouldn’t release these titles from this program after a certain time period once the bulk of sales had been reaped.
27/01/2010 at 12:39 destroy.all.monsters says:
Kadayi: Your faith in Ubisoft is touching, though I have no idea if it’s justified. I can’t fathom your distaste for laptop users. However, not everyone has fabulous internet. i get by on wifi for the most part, which is intermittent at best. Most of the games I play I have played repeatedly – Zero Hour, the Act of War games, Deus Ex, Syndicate, SHOWW2 so to me access to my older games is important.
I think at this point it’s important to get the torches and pitchforks because this is when we might make enough sturm und drang to get something accomplished. *Maybe* they will hear us and regain their sanity. Maybe they never will though. Still, it may mean that someone will do for publishers what Gog.com has done for game sales – and that would be a huge plus. If that means shaking out the current players I can only say “the sooner the better”.
27/01/2010 at 14:44 Kadayi says:
@destroy.all.monsters
I’m just of the opinion that people should just wait and see. Nothing here is cast in stone in terms of how it’s going to work, and all we’ve got going on is people venting on worst case scenario (OMG my games won’t work in 3 years!!! Fuck you developers I’m stealing all your games!!!). Personally in the event that the internet is temporarily down I’ve enough of a life that I can get by without worrying that I won’t be able to access that game that I might want to replay at some point in the future. If you could create electricity out of FEAR, this sort of thread could power Manhattan for a year.
As regards your internet issues. Is that a publishers responsibility or yours? I’d say it’s yours. Don’t like the service you have, change up to a better one. It’s a buyers market out there.
27/01/2010 at 23:52 destroy.all.monsters says:
The point isn’t ^my* internet issues. The point is that it isn’t a buyer’s market for internet out there, despite what you say, for a great many people whom you have dismissed with a wave of your hand. That this is a draconian solution looking for a problem.
I see no reason to trust a corporation with my best interests. Nor do I believe that a publisher should be able to dictate to me where and when I can play my game. I should be able to play it whenever I want to. In my case it is usually late at night when many servers are down for maintenance. You think it is a good thing they dictate to you when you can play? What about when it becomes who you can play with? What level of interference is enough for you to finally become outraged?
28/01/2010 at 10:20 Kadayi says:
@destroy.all.monsters
You simply saying that there aren’t lots of internet providers does actually make it so. There are in fact quite a few out there, eager to cut up the other to take your business. Naturally if you live somewhere remote, your options might be a tad more limited than others, but that price you pay for living off the beaten track. No one ever said the internet would be democratic.
Also I’d take a guess that if Ubisoft are planning this, then they’re unlikely to be using just the one verification server. Still again we’re well into the realms of the FEAR again with this ‘OMFG I won’t be able to play for a couple of minutes at 5 am in the morning!!! Fuck you Ubisoft I’m pirating all your games from now on you filthy money rapists!!! ‘ scenario, and frankly it all seems way too one legged indian for me to take seriously.
As regards corporations. I’d say it better to worry about the Haliburtons of this world rather than the Ubisofts.
27/01/2010 at 11:58 sockeatsock says:
I smell troll. Troll troll troll.
27/01/2010 at 12:05 subedii says:
Let’s see, hideously stupid DRM implementation, release four months after the console release with no advertising (also incidentally, at the same time as all the other heavy hitters are hitting the market for March), hike up price another $10 compared to PC releases to be in line with console prices even though there’s no licensing fee (thanks Activision for starting that one off BTW).
Yeah I think I can safely predict how this is going to go
1 - Game will sell less well than the amazing numbers Ubisoft are undoubtedly expecting
2 - Poorer than expected sales will be chalked up to NONE of the above issues and instead be placed solely at “ZOMG ALL YOU PC GAMERS ARE PIRATES WHAT THE CRAP YOU DISGUSTING FREAKS!”
3 - After raging loudly in public and stoking up yet another “PC gaming is DYING!!!11!” thread, either rinse and repeat, or take all your toys home with you and never go near the platform again. (Cf. Epic)
I’m actually pretty doubtful it’s going to sell well come release, at least probably not the numbers they’re hoping. I agree that the DRM probably isn’t going to stop most people, but there are a tonne of other problems besides. The most important being that they’re releasing four months after the console release (most people eager for it would’ve gotten it on one of the other platforms), after all the hype has gone and with no effort at additional advertising anyway. All this during march, when the huge hitters are coming out (Battlefield Bad Company 2, Alpha Protocol, APB are just a few if we’re talking just big games coming to the PC, and there’s more otherwise).
This entire scenario is sadly predictable and I’ll be extremely surprised if it goes any other way, least of all the way Ubisoft clearly expects it to.
Why do some people insist on such retarded release schemes when other devs and publishers seem to have gotten the point by now?
27/01/2010 at 12:25 Serenegoose says:
Subedii: Exactly. This is what I’ve been saying all along.
27/01/2010 at 12:31 Colthor says:
@subedii:
Activision weren’t the first to hike the RRP, at least in the UK (to £39.99); Sega (Empire: Total War) and EA (Sims 3) beat them to it, and there may have been others.
Happily RRPs tend to be ignored by anyone with any sense, although games seem to have started rising above £25 new :(
27/01/2010 at 12:19 Acidburns says:
Surely if sales of Ubisoft games go down as a result of their stupid DRM system and other PC games from other publishers do exceptionally well (all these march heavy hitters as you say) then even the simpletons at Ubisoft who drafted this scheme would see it is flawed?
The only other conclusion they could reach is that all pirates hate them specifically. Which would be a bit paranoid.
27/01/2010 at 12:37 subedii says:
Why should they? Anything resulting from this move is clearly confirmation of the strategy. Poor sales? Proves we were right, we NEED more intrusive DRM measures. Good sales? Proves we were right, our DRM measures and lacklustre sales strategies were effective.
Also known as confirmation bias. If they’re dumb enough to do this and think it’ll give them some big improvement on sales, there’s no reason to believe they’ll see sales statistics as anything other than confirmation of their decisions.
27/01/2010 at 12:25 Rei Onryou says:
Added insult to injury: Ubisoft warn that development costs must be kept in check in order to keep the consumer price down. http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=232832
So what’s this about Assassin’s Creed II costing more?
27/01/2010 at 12:25 anomie says:
I think driving you to consoles is what they want :)
27/01/2010 at 13:17 Sarlix says:
I tend to agree with this. A quick look on the 2k forums in the midst of the DRM episode showed that a hell of a lot of people stated they would now be buying the console version of BS2 instead of the PC version. I think the general plan is to drive people to the consoles, it sure would make sense no?
And as for Ubi’s new DRM scheme, I can think of one more down side: If I have to be constantly connected to the net than that means I also have to run my firewall and any other internet related processes. This could mean a potential performance loss, and if I’m being totally honest I am a bit of a task manager Nazi!
27/01/2010 at 12:29 Wulf says:
Well, this and turning Beyond Good & Evil from a beautiful thing of wonder, colours, and random photography (in 1) into a desaturated, OMGMAREENZ thing of ugliness (in 2) has taken Ubisoft right off my watch list. Their Prince of Persia remake almost caught my attention for being a modern Sonic the Hedgehog, though, so there might be hope for them yet… but… I really miss the Ubisoft of old. :<
Ubisoft of old, you still in there? Hello? Remember Sands of Time? The original Beyond Good & Evil? The Ubisoft that thought Uru: Ages Beyond Myst was worth publishing? Rayman, even?
You could be like that again. Please be like that again.
27/01/2010 at 12:48 Nickiepoo says:
I own two copies of Soldiers: Heroes of WW2 for LAN play. The first is physical, the second is DD. DD worked fine on the second computer, but the physical version kept on crashing after 5 minutes on the first. Once I installed the DD version on the first (using the CD key from the physical copy) it worked fine on both computers.
27/01/2010 at 13:01 Till says:
No sane person is paying more than $0.10/GB for bandwidth. And if you’re using a lot, it’s much cheaper than that.
27/01/2010 at 13:17 Larington says:
I suspect just allowing activation then offline play would be enough to reduce the grarr rage to just angry mumbling… But I don’t know how well online activation systems like the one in Steam function in conditions like those experienced by people in the armed forces. Either way, what happens if you’re playing an Ubisoft game you paid for and your Internet connection goes out for some strange reason? Game pauses and your, well, f*****.
27/01/2010 at 13:22 cdm says:
10 gb for a $1?
Where do you live?
27/01/2010 at 13:29 msky123 says:
I can file this under ‘dumbass move of the day’ for them.
27/01/2010 at 13:39 frameset says:
@Colthor
You sure about that? I only paid £35 for the collectors version of Empire, and Sega’s latest PC game AVP, is only going for about £20 on most pre-order sites.
27/01/2010 at 14:20 Colthor says:
@frameset:
Yeah, you can check the RRP on Amazon and Play – Empire’s listed as £40 RRP on both. But neither’s charging half that, of course.
27/01/2010 at 13:57 cjlr says:
Fuck.
That.
Shit.
27/01/2010 at 14:03 kout says:
What about those 5MB-savegames that some games have? Will it mean uploading 15mb through my 128kbps upload speed every time I press F5?
27/01/2010 at 14:15 disperse says:
Good point. Will our “quicksaves” still be quick?
27/01/2010 at 21:16 LintMan says:
Unstated, but the end result here will be that all Ubi’s games using this system will have “console-style” save systems: checkpoint saves where they store minimum information about your game state (ie: like Borderlands), along with very limited number of save slots.
27/01/2010 at 14:03 Monkeybreadman says:
Well i was thinking some sort of chip on new GPUs or motherboards. Am only trying to think of solutions that could work and be exceptable to all sides. Something DOES need to be done about piracy. But it needs to be 1 idea adpoted by everyone, not individual publishers coming up with their own shitty ideas
Just saying ‘FUCK OFF!’ isn’t constructive and pushes developers and publishers away.
But who am i kidding this is teh internetz, logic is left with the login.
I’m off to Stormont
27/01/2010 at 14:05 Monkeybreadman says:
GODDAMN replay button works even less than SecuROM
27/01/2010 at 14:07 Monkeybreadman says:
Oh now you work don’t you, just when i typo ‘replay’ instead of ‘reply’. CONSPIRACY! i tell yer
27/01/2010 at 14:27 Sarlix says:
Other than the Crab to my left, the reply button is the bain of my life! at least today anyway.
27/01/2010 at 14:06 jackflash says:
Whatever. Publishers continue to put downward pressure on the price I am willing to pay for their games to put up with their bullshit. “Wings of Prey” on Steam – there’s a game I really want, but won’t pay more than $25 for due to all the DRM bullshit.
27/01/2010 at 14:12 oceanclub says:
I wonder is this a result of their DRM-free experiment with Prince of Persia? If so, it’s a bit like a naive person who, after leaving their front door open and being robbed, decides to mount an sentry gun over it rather than, you know, buy a lock.
P.
27/01/2010 at 14:53 wyrmsine says:
PIRATE SAPPIN’ MAH SENTRY!
27/01/2010 at 15:40 Bhazor says:
I’d hope it would be an example of not releasing a rubbish game for a much loved franchise.
27/01/2010 at 14:13 Buemba says:
Guess their “no DRM” experiment with the PC port of Prince of Persia a couple of years ago didn’t yield very positive results, huh?
27/01/2010 at 14:25 Nobody Important says:
I doubt that the PoP experiment went well, only because they never said “I TOLD YOU SO!” like Ubisoft loves doing. Had it done worse, they would have used that to try and silence the haters.
27/01/2010 at 17:57 Azradesh says:
I imagine it didn’t sell very well because it was a big puddle of meh
27/01/2010 at 18:02 Gorgeras says:
It didn’t work because the last PoP was crap. I wish someone would try the no-DRM experiment on a non-shitty game not consisting almost entirely of overt and covert quicktime sequences. We want games, not interactive movies.
Maybe it was because it was a port, whilst Sands of Time was made for the PC and then ported to console.
27/01/2010 at 14:20 the wiseass says:
What the fuck is wrong with gamespy and that retarded Gerald Villoria comment: “I think the DRM benefits of this approach and the ancillary bonuses (remote game saves, unlimited installations, no CD authentication) will end up outweighing the annoyance of having to log-in before playing” ?
You know, we ALREADY had all these “ancillary bonuses” even before this whole DRM bullshit was invented. It’s like amputating the legs of a perfectly healthy person only to put him into a wheelchair and then selling this as “ancillary bonus”. Whatever that guy means by that term.
This guy is wrong on so many levels, it’s impossible to grasp. I was able to save my game, backup my saves and installing my games as often as I wanted even before Ubisoft came up with this ridiculous idea. So how exactly could these features, that existed well before Ubisoft even existed, possibly redeem such a mind numbingly dumb DRM system?
This is the reason why I try to ignore everything coming from gamespy or IGN. It’s mostly pure and simple PR crap.
Also this: “But further, there are people who do not wish to let a publisher know their private gaming habits”. Damn straight Mr. Walker!
Oh by the way, as a student that is sharing his internet via wireless LAN, this is simply unacceptable. Yes my connection is not that great and sometimes drops out for a few seconds, this alone would make playing any Ubsioft game impossible.
Lastly let me thank the RPS team and John Walker for keeping us up to date with this whole DRM dilemma, sacrificing their time complaining about game protection while they could be writing opinions on actual games. Thanks a lot guys!
27/01/2010 at 18:27 Jad says:
What’s funny is one year ago Ubisoft released a game that had two of those three advantages (it didn’t have remote saves): Price of Persia 2008. It had no CD-key, no disk check, no installation limits.
I actually thought that they went further than they needed to in removing DRM from that game — not needing the disk was nice, but disk checks really aren’t a big deal for me. Now they swing all the way around to the most draconian DRM yet. WTF, Ubisoft?
27/01/2010 at 14:31 ant one says:
well thats what you get for pirating games… making games isnt free: it takes thousands of man-hours over years to get one of these games done.
Stop whining and wake up: publishers will NOT make games to LOSE money. they, like any other coroporations, are in it for the money, and nothing else… and they need to pay the army of animators, programmers, designers, etc.
I do agree that some parts of the system ARE annoying, and to play Ubi PC games, you’ll have to put up with it: its their product and they decide how they sell it. If you don’t agree, you can just stop buying them: that is the choice you have as a consummer…
i’m just supprised no one has done this before.
27/01/2010 at 14:36 Jim Rossignol says:
Yes, punishing the people who buy the game for the actions of those who steal it is a great idea.
Have you not been paying attention?
27/01/2010 at 14:36 Guildenstern says:
Hmm, Ubi employees visit this blog? I wonder.
Seriously, what part of “this will do nothing to prevent piracy” you don’t understand? In fact, pirates can now write “Superior Version” on their cracked torrent and they will be actually right!
27/01/2010 at 14:49 Sam says:
In any case: people have done this before; essentially, it’s best considered as a step back from MMO implementation (where almost everything is on remote servers).
27/01/2010 at 16:12 SheffieldSteel says:
This isn’t about piracy. It is an attempt to neuter the resale market. The rest is marketing spin.
Isn’t that obvious? Who is really in the market for these “great benefits”? If I’m playing in an airport, I still need a copy of the game installed on the laptop, and I could probably, you know, find space on the hard drive for a save or two.
27/01/2010 at 22:28 cliffski says:
wow. not everyone who disagrees with angry internet posters must be a ubisoft employee. Thats the mentality of digg. Anyone on digg who doesnt post “we love teh piratebay” gets slagged off for being an RIAA shill.
Some people disagree. This doesn’t mean they ‘work for the man’…
27/01/2010 at 14:37 RaiCoss says:
I hate to say this, but after reading the FAQ, it doesn’t seem that bad…… :3
The only PC game I have ever pirated is SPORE, and that is only after the store bought copy f*cked up my XP install with SecuROM. All of a sudden my DVD Drive started glitching and refusing to read discs. I reinstall XP and problem is gone. Install SPORE again and helloooooooooooooooo, DVD Drive starts glitching again.
If you have stable broadband, this really isn’t that bad.
27/01/2010 at 14:44 Guildenstern says:
If they want to rent out the game to me, while they retain full control of when and how I play it, ok. But let’s not pretend they are “selling” me something then.
27/01/2010 at 14:47 Sam says:
…yes. Even if we assume you’re right (and you’re not, since you’re forgetting the change in the balance of trust this represents), the caveat you specify is rather large.
Many people don’t have stable broadband, and this decision would prevent them from playing any games by Ubisoft. Indeed, many people still don’t have broadband at all – the UK isn’t particularly good at rural broadband penetration, and one imagines that outside of the US (+Canada), Western Europe and the high-tech bits of East Asia, network penetration is even worse. Ubisoft’s DRM implementation basically says “If you’re not lucky enough to be an a country with decent data networking infrastructure, you can’t play our game”.
27/01/2010 at 14:53 Acidburns says:
Is the best option for folk in rural areas “broadband” via satellite? If I remember right that gives you a decent download speed but your still stuck with dial-up speed for uploading. That’s gonna suck for uploading you save games. I imagine it will interfere terribly with the online-checks too.
27/01/2010 at 22:29 cliffski says:
The widespread popularity of MMOs suggests that the vast majority of people playing AAA games have broadband that works.
I live opposite fields and surrounded by sheep and deer, and my broadband is fine.
29/01/2010 at 21:55 SheffieldSteel says:
How many people in this thread have posted that they do not have any</b? internet access? None. That's the value of anecdotal evidence.
27/01/2010 at 14:53 RaiCoss says:
Are you addressing me Sam?
27/01/2010 at 15:07 dwl says:
This isn’t new. The MMO’s have been doing this for years and people accept it. Specifically this system reminds me of Guild Wars, which works well. If it means publishers can reduce prices because they don’t have to wory about piracy great.
Unlikely but a nice thought.
27/01/2010 at 15:11 Sam says:
Yes, Rai, I’m replying to you.. And my reply is threaded with yours in the RPS comment view from the RPS main page – it’s just that the forum software sucks and doesn’t do threaded replies at all.
27/01/2010 at 15:14 Sam says:
Oh, and dwl: MMOs have “gotten away” with this for years because… well, the clue is in the acronym. There’s no other sensible way of doing massively-multiplayer than server-centric gameplay and state-saving. That this happens to make MMOs effectively unpirateable – especially because you charge “rent” for the server space, rather than extortionate prices for the copy of the game – is a happy side effect.
Single player games, on the other hand, have no business being forcibly cloudified (there’s precious little benefit to it, and a lot of negatives).
27/01/2010 at 15:14 Acidburns says:
@dwl
Surely the reason people happily accept that their Massively Multiplayer Online game requires an internet connection to play is because it is a Massively Multiplayer (wait for it….wait for it….) ONLINE game? Playing it without an internet connection would be daft. An MMO’s resistance to piracy is a side effect of the requirements of creating an MMO. Note that it is still possible to pirate an MMO. The client is downloadable for free, and folk have been running their own private servers for some time. They miss out on the massive part mostly, but hey.
Edit: Beaten to the punch.
27/01/2010 at 15:00 bookwormat says:
I actually think I will defend what Ubisoft is doing here.
I would prefer owning game licenses, but that is not happening: This has nothing to do with piracy, or even with videogames: All software moves to service oriented models now. As long as you can afford to run the service infrastructure, selling your software as a service has more benefits than selling it as a product. Everyone does it now. Game consoles too. And consumers already voted years ago, with their wallet and with their data, that they are willing to bind themselves completely to the cloud.
Now the biggest problem I see with current DRM schemes is the furtiveness with which the old model (purchase) is replaced with the new one (subscription): Most consumers have no idea what they get when they pay for a game. As a consumer you can read about three games in a a magazine, then look up the three related game offers on amazon.com, and at no point is someone telling you that
the one box is a subscription to a service, which you can use to download and play, but not borrow/sell, for the duration of the service.
the second box can be installed N times, which means you can install only n times. Sometimes with the option to extend n through careful and complex “activation management”. And sometimes by paying for a call to customer support. And sometimes not at all.
The other is sold as a product and you can play it, borrow it to your sister, then give it to your friends
And all three games cost the same price. Not because customers are not interested in what they get for their money, but because they assume that buying a DVD is just like buying a book (or buying a DVD used to be). The publisher is not telling them what they get. The store owner is not telling them what they get. Even the games journalist from the magazine does not tell them what they get.
Current DRM schemes are so confusing that not even people here on RPS understand them. That’s why many people write about “their rights to play the games they bought”, or the longlivity of steam subscriptions.
The retail box for Spore just says “Internet connection required for installation.” This is an awful scam. If you make a game you are free to sell it anyway you want. But you should tell your customers what you are selling them, so they can weight your price against your offer.
And that is what I like about Ubisofts service: It is very simple to understand: “Played Online”. Everybody understands this. Everyone who played a game on Facebook or once had a World of Warcraft subscription or subscribed to Team Fortress 2 knows what this means: You need to be online to play. The game will require you to connect to a service. You might not understand why you need to be online, but that is not necessary to make a good buying decision.
I think it is very easy to understand what you get for your money from Ubisoft, what you are/aren’t allowed to do with it.
And consumers can now evaluate the offer to the price, and make a decision in their own interest. Maybe it turns out that consumer don’t want to pay $60/$85 for a service. Or maybe they are willing to pay even more. Maybe they they only accept something like Steam. But they can make that decision now much easier, and this is good.
27/01/2010 at 15:26 MacQ says:
And what if a customer buys a single player game but thinks it’s an MMO, ’cause the box says Played Online? No, it’s not easy at all.
27/01/2010 at 15:41 bookwormat says:
How a game plays is very well documented by the media. They talk about it in reviews, it’s on wikipedia, and you can watch in on Youtube.
What rights and services you buy when you pick up a game is almost not documented at all.
27/01/2010 at 19:44 archonsod says:
I can’t think of any companies who succeeded selling software as a service. Selling support as a service on the other hand works wonders. Which really makes me wonder why no games publisher has bothered trying it; after all it doesn’t matter if you’ve bought or pirated the game, you’re going to want the patches. So where does it make the most sense to place the pay barrier?
27/01/2010 at 20:00 bookwormat says:
Valve, Electronic Arts, Take-Two Interactive, Activision/Blizzard, Ubisoft,, Square Enix, Capcom, THQ, Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony, Google, Apple, IBM, Oracle, Amazon, 37signals, Zynga ?
28/01/2010 at 10:22 MacQ says:
That’s what EULA is for. The term Played Online says nothing about rights.
27/01/2010 at 15:01 Man Raised By Puffins says:
This feels like the only sensible response.
27/01/2010 at 15:04 Horatius says:
Sometimes a blunt response can sum up a position very elegantly.
27/01/2010 at 15:10 Urthman says:
Remember how horrible the interface was in Assassin’s Creed One? Where you had to go through 7 different menu screens just to quit the damn game? Well there was another option, which was pressing Alt-F4, which instantly quit to the desktop. Which was great, except sometimes it corrupted your savegames. I lost several levels of play that I had to redo (including sitting through the enormous number of painfully bad unskippable cutscenes).
After giving up on the game for a while, I came back and redid my lost progress and kept playing the game, only this time I backed up my save games pretty much after every session. I trust you see where I’m going with this?
I’m very disappointed. I’ll be too-uncool-for-school and admit that I was really excited about playing Assassin’s Creed 2 on PC. I thought there was no possible way Ubisoft could screw up the PC version worse this time. Well congratulations, Ubisoft, you just unlocked the Even Worse than Last Time and the Lost Another Sale achievements!
Look, RPS men. I blame you lot for this. Because I think the only possible way the publishers will stop doing this crap is if the reviewers drastically lower the review scores when publishers break their games this way. If the PC version of Assassin’s Creed gets a 4.5 on MetaCritic because the player can’t reliably save her game, I’m afraid that’s the only thing that would really change Ubisoft’s mind. I mean, I’m not buying the game as hard as I can, and they probably just think I’m pirating it.
27/01/2010 at 15:18 Bobsy says:
PC Gamer at least takes heavy and obtrusive DRM into account in their reviews.
27/01/2010 at 15:29 Fitz says:
PC Gamer at least takes heavy and obtrusive DRM into account in their reviews.
Only if the review code contains the DRM. More often than not, I believe, the review code differs significantly from the retail code in that the DRM isn’t implemented on the reviewers’ versions.
I wonder why?
27/01/2010 at 15:26 Fitz says:
I really, really hope that this shit isn’t bolted on to Silent Hunter 5. It’s the only Ubi game due for release that I’ve got ANY interest in buying, and if it “comes with bullshit” then they’ve lost another sale.
What is WRONG with these people?
27/01/2010 at 15:39 Acidburns says:
@ Fitz
It seems like they plan to role it out on everything if their test on Settlers works out for them. Silent Hunter 5 was a game I was very much looking forward too also.
While a lot of people are suggesting (not incorrectly perhaps) that this heavier DRM is part of a greater focus on consoles and screwing the PC gamer I think Silent Hunter is a pretty good example of a game that is unique to the PC. Personally I’d be quite happy if the Silent Hunter developers took their games to another publisher and Ubisoft were to abandon the PC market because none of the other game appeal to me. Of course there are a lot of other PC gamers who would like to play games such as Assassin’s Creed 2 and so on.
27/01/2010 at 15:28 oceanclub says:
This just has epic fail written all over it. Pirates will be clamouring amongst themselves to come up with a hacked version – think of the hilarity when they bring out “Assassin’s Creed 2 – the Special L33t Edition”, which far surpassed the legit version that consumers buy.
On top of that, I can see retail stores being innundated with returns, with people being unable to connect – and therefore play – around launch time. At least the current authentication methods (such as Bioshock had) mean the consumer only has to connect _once_ in order to play from then on; this method means that unless both the consumer’s connection _and_ the authenticating servers are at 100% reliablity, they’ll be unable to play.
Why didn’t Ubisoft simply go with Steam as their authentication method? Have their figures on day 1 piracy for Steam games that the rest of us don’t know about?
P.
27/01/2010 at 23:21 malkav11 says:
Good luck finding a retail establishment that will accept returns of open-box PC games for anything other than the exact same title.
27/01/2010 at 23:27 Vinraith says:
@malkav11
You aren’t yelling enough, corporate-owned retailers are ultimately required to fold like a cheap card table no matter how irrational the customer. Trust me, make a big enough fuss, demand to talk to the manager, and you can take back virtually anything. The trick is to only use this power for good (as in this case) and never for evil (like most douchebags).
27/01/2010 at 23:30 malkav11 says:
Oh, I’ve never tried to return a PC game. I just know it’s official policy everywhere not to take returns of PC games. Because people could have pirated it, I believe is the official reason. nevermind that it would be infinitely easier to just torrent the damn thing.
28/01/2010 at 00:15 Vinraith says:
@malkav11
Is it really that easy/reliable to torrent games these days? I was always told by my more “adventurous” friends (and mind you this is about 10 years ago) that it was difficult to get a fully functional, non-sabotaged, non-damaged, stable, and virus free game that way. People these days make it sound 100% reliable and safe and I have a very hard time believing that, but is it just that I’m out of date on this issue?
28/01/2010 at 00:24 Lambchops says:
@ Vinraith and the subject of standing your ground to retailers
I’m ashamed to admit it but I did once use the phrase “breach of trade descriptions act” in an argument with staff at a shop.
Having worked on the supermarket checkout myself and been on the end of some shit at times I reckon that my eventual victory in pursuit of a free Guitar Hero guitar was only barely worth it.
Though saying that it was at GAME and they did royally fuck up their advertising of their special offer so perhaps they deserved it!
27/01/2010 at 15:31 cjlr says:
Now that my gut reaction is out of the way…
I have one question: how does this benefit the consumer?
‘Cause darn it, I just don’t know at this point. Perhaps it’s my own naivete, but shouldn’t that be the reasoning behind any move like this? A little thing I like to call, companies doing what benefits the consumer?
Let’s review what this does: it locks out consumers with poor or sporadic internet access – hell, anyone with an ISP that isn’t infallible. Nobody has high-bandwidth cable internet access 24/7 – hell, most people have a fair bit less. Internet down for a few hours? Now you can’t even save! Fuck yeah! That’s the future, baby. It further imposes a lifetime on the product, since whatever authentication servers exist will not do so indefinitely – not to mention that the connection on their end is not infallible either.
Honestly, I don’t see where this makes anything better for us. Can anyone enlighten me?
27/01/2010 at 15:34 Guildenstern says:
Whaaat? Corporations should have interests of their customers at heart? What are you, a dirty commie?
27/01/2010 at 15:33 Acidburns says:
It’s worth pointing out that there’s more jobs out there that require people to spend long times away from internet access besides soldiers. A friend of mine works for the merchant navy. He is lucky enough to only be at sea for 3 weeks at a time, but people who work on container ships can be out at sea for 6 months or more. Good like getting an internet connection in the middle of the ocean. Are these people not allowed to play PC games now?
27/01/2010 at 16:20 SheffieldSteel says:
If there’s one tactic that might just work, it is this.
Spread the word:
UBISOFT HATES THE TROOPS!
27/01/2010 at 16:30 oceanclub says:
Spread the slander that tanks in Ubisoft games only have one gear: reverse.
Oh, and old-fashioned DVD checks are to be referred to as “Freedom DVD checks” from now on.
P.
27/01/2010 at 16:39 Psychopomp says:
We could just let people know they’re french.
27/01/2010 at 17:41 oceanclub says:
I can see the advert now – we could probably film it ourselves if we can find a big enough sandpit:
Scene: We pan across hilly desert to a soldier (preferably a Sam Elliott look/soundalike) wearing desert battledress sitting with an Alienware laptop and a bottle of something.
“Hey there, good fella. I’m Sergeant Steve Maguire of the 82nd Airborne Division, stationed here in Afghanistan. When I’m not protecting girl’s schools from Taliban attacks or defending this country’s precarious democracy, I like to unwind by playing Assassin’s Creed or Splinter Cell on *pats laptop* lil’ Betsy here. I’ll always been an honest guy and loyal customer, and I’ve never stole nothing in my life.
*closeup – voice trembles slightly*
But now, some fella in a suit in France thinks I’m a thief. This fella wants to take the one comfort I have left. I ain’t never been to France, so don’t know why this fella has it in for me. That fella’s willing to take my good dollars for Assassin’s Creed 2, but won’t let me play it ’til I get home. _If_ I get home.
You write a letter to that fella in Ubisoft, and you tell that fella we’re not thieves and want some respect. You tell that fella old Steeve sent ya.
*speaking offscreen to fade* Say friend, ya got any more a that good sarsparilla….?
27/01/2010 at 18:09 SheffieldSteel says:
Do it! Film it, ship it, share it.
Personally, I believe that the best way to “support the troops” would be to bring them home but there are an awful lot of people in the US who support the soldiers without question, and who’d be outraged to hear about what Ubi are doing.
28/01/2010 at 05:01 Urthman says:
oceanclub, that’s the best comment I’ve ever read on RPS.
Won’t somebody please film this and post it to YouTube?
28/01/2010 at 05:49 Vinraith says:
@Oceanclub
That. Is. Genius.
27/01/2010 at 15:56 Robsko says:
I hope one day legitimate customers will be able to play their games like pirates do : hassle free.
All of those various kind of DRM achievements are actually giving more fuel to piracy.
Basically just because those publishers are trying to kill second hands sales (as i don’t believe this is to fight piracy at all, all those kind of drm have already proved to be inefficient at it)), they shoot themseves on the feet with their direct sales if people interested in their games will get the product in non legit ways.
27/01/2010 at 16:13 Guildenstern says:
[i]This[/i]. Piracy talk is just a smokescreen, they want to kill second hand sales more then anything. I don’t even blame them for that, but let’s drop the pretence, ok?
27/01/2010 at 16:34 cjlr says:
Very much this.
Authentication servers impose an artificial lifetime on a game. Period. End of story. Even the most brown-nosed DRM apologist cannot deny it.
But obviously we won’t mind if we can’t play older games. All we need is a new Call of Duty, Madden, and Guitar Hero every year for eternity, right? I mean, GOG? What the hell’s that? Clearly they would never make actual money with a scheme like that, right? And they just give you the installer! What the hell kind of business model is that! What about the pirates?
27/01/2010 at 16:04 Nex says:
I got money that says there will be a crack for each and every single game Ubisoft comes out with within 20minutes of release if not weeks before the release.
27/01/2010 at 16:04 SheffieldSteel says:
As a professional game programmer, I can lose my job for advocating piracy.
Who would have thought it would come to this?
I will only buy this game after I have found a way to play it, and save games, without an internet connection. Read into that what you will.
27/01/2010 at 16:29 Wooly says:
Fuck this shit.
27/01/2010 at 17:16 frymaster says:
this is why I am vehemently against piracy; not so much because it costs companies some profit but because you will never, ever, convince companies that it doesn’t hurt their bottom line and, realistically, it probably does hurt it at least some* (and no, I don’t think the burden of proof lies with the companies).
the combination of bean-counters eyeing up potential revenue plus the creative people’s inevitable reaction to their work being ripped off is mostly going to result in companies having a large anti-piracy stance. And we end up with stuff like this, because the programmers probably have pretty good internet connections, and have totally no practical idea of the misery this is going to cause.
to all the “anti-piracy measures justify piracy in some kind of wierd moral calculus” brigade: please don’t. for the love of god, don’t. All you’ll do is convince publishers they aren’t going far enough; if you want to make a moral stand, do it by simply not buying the product. (If nothing else, moaning about something while simultaneously breaking a law to obtain it is a bit of an argument-undercutter in my book)
* even a small proportion of a whopping big number is still a whopping big number
27/01/2010 at 17:46 SheffieldSteel says:
This isn’t primarily about piracy. “Anti-Piracy Measure” is the acceptable face that’s put on this decision, which will first and foremost make it impossible to resell an Ubisoft game.
Look at it this way: no one knows how much revenue is lost to piracy, simply because it is a black market – no reliable information is available as to its scale. When GameStop sells used games, though, that’s a different matter. They’re required to publish financial statements regularly, so every publisher knows how much of a dent is being made in their revenue stream by used game sales. This is something where you can plug hard numbers into a spreadsheet and produce a bottom line. The only “wishy washy” figures here are the guesses about how many customers mught be put off by this tactic. In short, the benefit of this new scheme can be quantified and the cost cannot.
27/01/2010 at 17:31 manu says:
“They explain that they will apply patches should they ever remove the servers behind the games.”
Maybe a talented group of individuals will release that patch before that, saving them the hassle.
27/01/2010 at 17:42 Unaco says:
OUTRAGE!!!
Seriously though… this isn’t a good move. It’s not a step in the right direction. I was vehemently and vociferously opposed to Half-Life 2 and Steam when it first arrived, primarily because I only had dial-up. At least it had an offline mode, so 2 days after installing and waiting for everything to update @33.6kbps I could just play the game. Nowadays, with Broadband, it isn’t too bad, and I’m actually beginning to like it. But… it has the offline mode, so if my b’band is down (not that often since I changed my ISP and package), I can always play my games offline.
I know people in my street with a different ISP who regularly lose their internet for ~24 hours, once a month at least, with one thing or another. Also… people with limited broadband… won’t this increase their traffic, eat into their download limits? What about poor b’band speeds? Uploading a couple of megabytes everytime you quicksave… or downloading a couple megs everytime you want to load a save… just going to be annoying. Not to mention playing (or, rather, not playing ever) on a laptop in a park or on a train. They can say “the world is getting more connected everyday, and alot of people are almost always connected to the web/net in one way or another” all they want… but the fact is 100% reliable, easy, saturated connectivity is not here, and until that day, a system that requires it is just going to infuriate people, and drive them away from your products. Also… disruption to their servers locking everyone out, the vulnerability of this system, or the fantastic opportunities for cyber-criminals to hold the entire company to ransom – “Pay us, or we’ll never stop DDosing/disturbing your system/servers, and noone will ever play one of your games again.”
Gah! Who am I kidding, trying to argue, with even a modicum of rationality and logic… I should have just left the comment as “OUTRAGE!!!”.
27/01/2010 at 17:49 SheffieldSteel says:
It’s nice when the rational and the emotional parts of one’s brain can agree on something.
27/01/2010 at 17:44 undead dolphin hacker says:
“Oh boy, Ubisoft” indeed.
27/01/2010 at 19:13 neems says:
I’m curious as to when the major game publishers will introduce measures that will prevent console customers selling on their games. My nearest Game will sell you a ‘pre-owned’ (or second hand if you actually speak English rather than marketing bullshit) copy of Uncharted 2 for approximately £3 less than a brand new copy, and none of that money will get near the publisher / developer.
Of course that is why so many games have online components these days, or at least some kind of DLC, but I’d love to know how much revenue is lost due to the pre-owned market.
27/01/2010 at 19:15 neems says:
Damn, some fella upstairs beat me to it… by an hour and a half. And probably eighteen other people earlier in the thread.
27/01/2010 at 19:22 Count Elmdor says:
Read this, Ubisoft: WILL NOT BUY.
27/01/2010 at 19:42 eyemessiah says:
me2
27/01/2010 at 20:31 Mikeuk_3 says:
Goodbye Ubisoft – you can stick your new system where the sun doesn’t shine!!
27/01/2010 at 20:37 TheSombreroKid says:
the pc gaming community owes it to it’s self to make this hurt ubisofts bottom line, no modern warfarce ‘i’ll pick it up anyway even if i am suposed to be boycotting it pish!’
27/01/2010 at 22:51 cjlr says:
@SombreroKid
Nope. Doesn’t work like that. If sales go down, then piracy is always the reason.
…
Right, guys?
27/01/2010 at 21:01 Hunam says:
I never bought MW2! Me! I can stick to a boycott….mostly.
/plays L4D2
27/01/2010 at 22:08 Frosty says:
@Hunam
I play neither! Although, that’s because I didn’t want to buy either game. I’m not doing it because I’m a good person.
27/01/2010 at 21:23 SenatorPalpatine says:
One other thing: What if the world ends and there is no longer any internet? The apocalypse shouldn’t spell the end of video gaming. How are the survivors going to waste their time?
27/01/2010 at 21:51 Oliver says:
Maybe I’m really dense here, but why can’t publishers build in a simple account system linked to a hardware key on your computer? Like your network card’s MAC address or something? You’d be allowed to link 3 to your acct and as long as that checks out you’re good to go?
Perhaps this could be pirated too, but at least it would be unobtrusive to the end user. This way we’d be able to get no stupid DVD checks, no limited installs, or any of that crap. I’d be first in line if that’s what was implemented.
As far as this goes, I’ve never heard of anything so stupid. I don’t like that I *have* to have Steam running when playing lots of games, but at least I can still play my games if I’m not online. And it’s pretty unobtrusive .. it does it’s thing and I can play. No big deal. This scheme is clearly devised to try to kill the dual-headed beast of piracy and reselling with one stone. Trust me, this ain’t gonna work.
27/01/2010 at 22:34 Tei says:
“Maybe I’m really dense here, but why can’t publishers build in a simple account system linked to a hardware key on your computer?”
Tagging a computer with a unique ID would be a dead hit to your personal privacy… and It will be dificult, and easy to avoid. MAC address.. are loaded in memory, and after that, are read from memory (so you can change the mac on-the-fly). Any other GUI capability will be as easy to hack/change at convenience of the user.
Also, wen I buy a game, maybe I want to be able to play that game in two or more different computers I own, one in my home, other in my bed, or whatever.
27/01/2010 at 23:20 malkav11 says:
People have wanted to do something of the sort for a while now. It’s called “trusted computing” and it’s bullshit.
The way you propose doing it is actually worse, because I quite regularly swap out great swathes of internal components in my computer for something better. I don’t want to lose access to games every time I do.
27/01/2010 at 23:38 Lilliput King says:
It doesn’t necessarily have to be as you describe though Malkav, surely?
We could have something that’d fit in a PCI slot, or maybe even a USB device. That’d do the same thing, and wouldn’t be an issue when we switch components round, as I imagine most RPSers do fairly often.
The thing I’m not certain about is how reliable such a device would be. Considering a cracked one would give access to every game using the system, the possibility of cracking a hardware key would pretty much make it an unattractive prospect to publishers.
27/01/2010 at 23:43 Tei says:
“We could have something that’d fit in a PCI slot, or maybe even a USB device. That’d do the same thing, and wouldn’t be an issue when we switch components round, as I imagine most RPSers do fairly often.”
If the PS3 got cracked, and It was a completed closed solution. Imagine a separate modular thingie.
28/01/2010 at 14:17 SuperNashwan says:
This USB key idea already exists, look up iLok and Synchrosoft. Synchrosoft took a massive amount of work to emulate by some very talented people and although iLok is cracked, it’s often used in conjunction with custom DRM schemes which makes a bunch of stuff it protects still unreleased. One of the pieces of software I own uses a challenge generated from a piece of your hardware with the response from a remote server, which remains uncracked.
Essentially there are ways to make piracy really hard, just they only work for so long and the games warez scene is highly competitive. Groups will be falling over themselves to beat anything publishers like Ubisoft come up with. The only person affected in the long run is the legitimate paying customer, although the sensible thing would be to pay and then use the cracked version.
29/01/2010 at 11:50 MacQ says:
How about they stop investing huge amounts of money into stupid worthless DRM and lower the prices of digitali distributed games? The money they’ll save from that and from not having costs to print manuals, make DVDs and distribution costs would all cover the (MAYBE!!!) lesser income. They’ll probably sell more and make more income then now.
27/01/2010 at 22:59 Zyzzi says:
Hey, looks like I’m not buying anything from Ubisoft in the near future! I mean, the amount of unimaginative sequels coming out this year, coupled with price and DRM just makes me unwilling to buy anything.
27/01/2010 at 23:12 ManaTree says:
Odd. I logged in and I still have to do all this.
Anyways, there’s a little trick with Steam’s offline mode. Disable your networks and network cards. It works better for me, not 100%. But it does do something.
My guess is that it thinks it’s able to connect online when clearly not and it keeps attempting to do so. I wish they’d really fix that. It’s such an annoying bug.
EDIT: Son of a bitch. It didn’t work. I meant to reply to the Steam offline mode comment on the first page. VINRAITH, LISTEN TO MEEEEEE!!!!!
27/01/2010 at 23:43 hoff says:
Piracy down by 0.263%!
Sales down by 80%!
27/01/2010 at 23:59 KOuri says:
This WILL get hacked, server responses spoofed or codepath hijacked. End of story. Just another fun day for the black hats. :)
28/01/2010 at 00:21 gojiro0 says:
Damn, I was looking forward to Settlers 7 too. No way in hell I’m going to support a model such as described above.
28/01/2010 at 00:27 HALF says:
We hear all this rubbish reported about how PC gaming is dying however the truth is that publishers are actually trying their best to KILL it with shit like this.
28/01/2010 at 00:31 HALF says:
And forgot i wanted to say that if anything this is gonna cause more problems as guys who have never thought about downloading a pirated version or hack will now probably want to download said hacks to bi-pass this and play the game in the normal manner they are accustomed to(with out having to log in every dam time and probably be bombarded with advertisement opps i mean news on the game login screen).
28/01/2010 at 00:54 camacho says:
Ubisoft didn’t market their games as a service. You still pay full retail price for their games. Onlive is a games as service. MMO’s are not. They are games whose selling point is the fact that you get to play with a whole community.
28/01/2010 at 01:23 DarkNoghri says:
In other news, this appears to be the longest RPS comment thread I’ve ever seen.
28/01/2010 at 01:36 Klaus says:
Really? There was one about DRM in general that lasted pretty long.
I think it spawned that “Children eaten by DRM today: 9529″ thingy at the bottom of the page.
28/01/2010 at 04:09 drewski says:
@Vinraith – you’re so out of touch you might as well be carving your posts on stone tablets.
28/01/2010 at 04:34 Vinraith says:
@drewski
Good one, got any “yo mamma” jokes for us while you’re on a roll?
28/01/2010 at 10:19 Indica Man says:
Won’t happen. Gamers will either boycott UBISoft or work out how to install a fake server on their systems to bypass the UBISoft online thing.
I won’t buy anything that tries to control my online and gaming experience. F%^$ ‘em I say.
28/01/2010 at 17:27 oceanclub says:
@urthman @vinraith Shucks, you guys. Maybe I should have been a advertising copywriter. Or as it’s technically called, a “whore”.
28/01/2010 at 19:49 OJ287 says:
UBISoft in the head if you think this will make me want to buy your games.
28/01/2010 at 20:52 Iain says:
@Theory:
I’ve not had StarForce nuke an optical drive to the point of it physically breaking, but I have had StarForce cause certain disks (legitimate, licensed software, I might add – I don’t pirate any software at all) to stop reading, cause issues with using Nero when burning CD-Rs to backup data, and I’ve also had it make the operating system so unstable that I’ve had to reformat the hard drive and reinstall Windows from scratch.
Another thing I object to about the use of StarForce is that if you uninstall the game it came with, it doesn’t remove the DRM. So not only does it install itself without your knowledge* (early usages of StarForce did this) and write itself into your hardware profile rather than the installed software list, it doesn’t even give you an easy method of removing it, either.
As a consumer I have a right to know exactly what’s being installed on my machine, not have software install itself without my knowledge or permission – and if I don’t like something, I shouldn’t have to leap through hoops to get rid of it, because the developers couldn’t be arsed to provide an uninstall button.
*(Of the games I’ve bought, only Colin McRae: DIRT ever asked me for permission to install StarForce – at which point I took the DVD out of the drive and put it straight in the bin)
28/01/2010 at 20:53 Iain says:
And that was meant to be a reply. Dammit.
28/01/2010 at 23:48 pkt-zer0 says:
So, as revealed on the Ubisoft forums, it turns out that ANNO: Venice will not have this new copy protection. Whether that means it’ll have no DRM or use the copy protection originally in the base game seems uncertain.
29/01/2010 at 00:01 Vinraith says:
Actually they removed the limited install nonsense from the boxed version of Anno 1404 back in October, so if Venice is structured the same way it should just have a straight disc-check and nothing else.
I’m very glad to hear this won’t be on Venice, that’s at least one game I was looking forward to not ruined by Ubi’s idiocy. Thanks for the info.
29/01/2010 at 20:39 PC Monster says:
Last to the party as usual. Everything worthwhile has no doubt been said, and more besides, but I feel strongly enough about this to unite lung, throat and tongue in glorious voice:
EVERYONE – and I mean EVERYONE who has ever praised Steam in any fashion, gloried in it’s existence or pimped it on forums has no right whatsoever to bitch about Ubisoft tying their games to online servers. Steam’s success has been noticed, people. You were warned back at the beginning that Valve’s attempt to hold the hands of gamers as they played was only the first few steps on a very slippery slope. And now look. Permanent online connection just play the game and an absolute necessity to be able to save; the logical progression. Features that were once commonplace and available to all now being touted as new ‘freedoms’ from less sophisticated DRM schemes.
You know who you are, you guilty ones. Thanks for helping screw up gaming for the rest of us.
29/01/2010 at 21:12 Sam says:
Excuse me, what?
“People being happy to use an internet-based digital download management system (with some online authentication checks that have an offline mode” = “the slippery slope to always online single player games that save games to the cloud”?
Slippery slope arguments have a reputation for being asinine, but really, you’re taking the biscuit.
29/01/2010 at 22:03 SheffieldSteel says:
That’s not the logical progression; it’s taking something to extremes.
Steam is popular because of super-cheap game deals.
Steam isn’t as unpopular as it used to be, because it isn’t as 5H17 as it used to be.
Steam has an offline mode.
And so on.
30/01/2010 at 05:02 Vinraith says:
SHIT.
http://www.impulsedriven.com/dodvenice
It looks like Venice won’t be free of this crap after all. From the site:
A PERMANENT HIGH SPEED INTERNET CONNECTION AND CREATION OF A UBISOFT ACCOUNT ARE REQUIRED TO PLAY THIS VIDEO GAME AT ALL TIMES AND TO UNLOCK EXCLUSIVE CONTENT. SUCH CONTENT MAY ONLY BE UNLOCKED ONE SINGLE TIME WITH A UNIQUE KEY. YOU MUST BE AT LEAST 13 TO CREATE A UBISOFT ACCOUNT WITHOUT PARENTAL CONSENT. UBISOFT MAY CANCEL ACCESS TO ONLINE FEATURES UPON A 30-DAY PRIOR NOTICE PUBLISHED AT http://dawnofdiscoverygame.com/
30/01/2010 at 12:23 KindredPhantom says:
409 Comments. Wow, that is the most I’ve seen on RPS.
Though it is a pity that they are about DRM.
31/01/2010 at 02:02 redrain85 says:
So this was the great “workable plan” Ubisoft talked about last year, which they said they had come up with to “combat piracy”?
Not that I’ve ever believed this was primarily about piracy. It’s a factor, sure. But that’s just the convenient scapegoat the publishers keep using time and time again. It’s about control. Controlling resale, and controlling how and what you can do with the title you’ve purchased. That’s what this is all about. So they can keep you from modding the game, and perpetually sell you additional content instead. Then pull the plug on the game in a couple of years, trying to force you to buy the next version of the title. And finally, have the cycle continue. This is their wet dream, what they drool over.
I really hope there’s enough outcry that this latest idea backfires horribly. Perhaps there’s still some hope for companies like Take-Two/2K and Ubisoft. That they’ll finally learn, and get the message. After all, apparently EA learned from their mistake with Mass Effect 2 vs. Mass Effect 1 and the similar “always phone home” DRM they had proposed. If the “evil” EA can learn, maybe the rest can too.
31/01/2010 at 12:41 The Reaper says:
Vote with your wallets people. JUST SAY NO, just say no to this outrageous form of copy protection. I know that I will be and that’s a down right shame because I love the settlers series, however I will not be held hostage to Ubisoft and their outrageous copyright protection schemes. They can bite me, they won’t get any of my gaming money as long as any games they produce that I want contain this protection system that treats every customer as a possible criminal.
31/01/2010 at 19:24 sk4r says:
It’s funny that this system will have better chances of actually working if less people buy it. Is Ubisoft aiming for that?
01/02/2010 at 00:34 Reality_Check says:
The protection will be cracked within days of the first game with it coming out.
If not, then it will be eventually, just like Safedisc, Tages, Securom, Laserlok, Starforce, FADE and custom checks.
Just listing up how many products failed and were cracked should make it clear the only crowd that will be affected by this 100% is the PAYING “idiot”, not the pirate.
What is far worse however, is that I can see the REAL idiots out there already: they will pay these Ubisoft monkeys their real money, Ubisoft will think they WANT this DRM and that it helps, THEN the very SAME people who BOUGHT it will download the CRACK so they can actually USE THEIR OWN GAME AS THEY ORIGINALLY INTENDED: at their own leisure.
So paying customers are actually creating this mess. If you are going to end up using a crack to have the product you wanted, just be damned honest.
You do not want the DRM product the way it ships? Then frickin act like it.
DO NOT BUY SOMETHING YOU DO NOT WANT IN THIS STATE!!!!
Instead you should either ignore it, or, and this is ethically fine by me, since the only vote the consumer has left IS the wallet, go ahead and pirate it until this DRM madness disappears again.
I don’t see a thing wrong with piracy. It’s a modern way of competition. De facto we have a quasi monopoly of producers and big corps running things and shoving DRM down our throat; it’s only very few small more indie-feelish labels and startups that say look guys, no DRM, decent price, let’s be honest here. The only other real pressure block actually is piracy.
And what the publishers fail to realize is that the alternative is not a lost sale vs the DRM product with piracy, but simply that if THEY do not want to sell and give someone a “cracked”, hassle free product, then the OTHER marketplace that piracy is will.
It’s the same with community based music sharing. A lot of people pay for seedboxes to have their ratio be okay and still have the variety. Why not pay the same thing as a sub fee to someone who actually makes the music and be legal?
But no, they want to criminalize the consumer and cripple him to frick and back.
Well, good riddance to those corps, publishers and labels I say.
No idea why they and all the finger wagging reality blind folks can’t see this…
06/02/2010 at 00:16 BlackHawk9401 says:
Is this this going to be free for everyone online or what?
18/02/2010 at 03:53 obscurified says:
Wow…
Ironically I have a feeling these games will be highly pirated…
18/02/2010 at 12:34 oceanclub says:
There’s no need to buy this game. Or pirate it. There’s plenty of games out there, and plenty of developers who are more deserving of our support. Buy it, and it will prove to Ubisoft that they get away with their scheme. Pirate it, and they’ll point out that this proves even more that they need such a scheme in the first place.
P.
18/02/2010 at 13:31 AdrianWerner says:
Ubi knows what they’re doing. I mean…if it was just AC2 I could easily boycott the game, the problem is that they’re also releasing Anno: Venice, Settlrs7 and Silent Hunter 5 around the same time. I used to think it was Ubisoft going nuts, releasing bassicaly their whole damn 2010 PC line-up in span of three weeks), but I’m guessing they just want to force this through.
As much as I hate this DRM system…missing out on Venice, Settlers and Sh5 would just be too much
18/02/2010 at 13:32 AdrianWerner says:
18/02/2010 at 14:29 The Reaper says:
They thought that piracy was bad for sales, wait until they get the whiff of failure from all the people that refuse to buy UBI games due to this insane DRM.
They are committing the business suicide themselves and it’s quite obvious that when you combine the people that WILL pirate these games, AND the people that will now, NOT buy their games, it will become quite obvious to their bean counters that PC gaming is just dead and that they had no hand in killing PC Gaming. Pfffft, UBISoft is digging their own grave.
18/02/2010 at 17:51 oceanclub says:
The problem is, even if people _do_ buy their games, they will probably still download a cracked copy anyway, which offer basic functionality (the ability to play offline). That means more people hosting the relevant bittorrent files. So Ubisoft are encouraging legitimate customers to act as uploaders.
P.
19/02/2010 at 10:53 oop says:
That’s too bad… I guess I won’t be buying Assasins’s Creed II for PC because my net connection sucks…
24/02/2010 at 04:01 ORCACommander says:
So long Ubisoft it is a pleasure to not do business with you.
26/02/2010 at 16:44 Kalon Reeves says:
I will never, ever under any circumstance buy any kind of software whatsoever that employs these type of over extended controls of my legally purchased property regardless of the company or title. And I was a fan of Ubisoft for quite some time.
01/03/2010 at 08:36 Galahad says:
Ok well having read about Ubisoft’s new anti-pirating strategy from multiple sources i am disgusted that the company will be punishing honest gamers for the hundreds of thousands of pirated copies of AC1. I buy all my games from steam or CDWOW and am happy to support quality games and their respective producers.
But in light of these measures from Ubisoft??? …It pains me to admit but deep down i am actually hoping that the pirates crack AC2 to hell and back even more so than AC1 so that Ubisoft and every other game producer out there gets the message.
I have cancelled my pre-order for AC2 and have bought Mass effect 2 instead. As for Ubisoft, i was a fan but no longer and will not be purchasing their games while this DRM system is in place.
04/03/2010 at 23:03 dallasking says:
well its a good thought i have to say but some games i just don’t see how they could be maid for online use like Assasins’s Creed.
http://dallaskinggaming.blogspot.com/
09/03/2010 at 18:13 H2SO4 says:
AC 2 is not ‘only’ for pc version . So, I guess ubi wanted to give a trial of their DRM system in the pc version.
19/04/2010 at 12:15 ed hardy says:
In this warm spring, Ed hardy t-shirts, jeans, hats, cheap ed hardy are your indispensable choice. They will dress up your cool. For instance, I have purchased some cheap ed hardy caps for my brothers several days ago. It is a real wonderful accessory choice. Fashion accessories today have become an important part of one’s personality and are perceived as indicators of one’s social status and taste. It’s not surprising to see the growing fashion consciousness in men and women who are now taking to designer hats to match their own unique style. Ed hardy is so unique that they can not miss it.
[url=http://www.likeshoes.com/Ed_Hardy_Series_1.htm]cheap ed hardy [/url] cap is one of the most popular [url=http://www.likeshoes.com/Ed_Hardy_Series_1.htm]cheap ed hardy [/url] accessories. The cool cheap ed hardy cap is an embroidered trucker cap with the fabric front and plastic mesh backs. The designs are based on the tattoo designs, prints, and drawings and paintings of San Francisco based tattooist Don cheap ed hardy, and carry the official logo. People will be attracted by the bold, dazzling patterns. The skulls and flowers, and the tigers and geisha’s of the orient are intricately embroidered on the caps.
http://www.likeshoes.com/Ed_Hardy_Series_1.htm
http://www.likeshoes.com
24/05/2010 at 11:38 Spikkelvissie says:
Ubisoft must realize that they just sent the whole African market down the drain! I am a South African and most of us don’t have a fast permanent internet connection. This means we can’t even play the single player campaigns. They lost me and many other customers due their shortsightedness and not thinking of third world countries. They screwed us and now we will never buy their games!!!