Ubisoft's New DRM (fail)

mayordenis

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

That's quite close to the markup of most goods sold at retail.

I'm quite sure it's no the retail markup on new games though, probably very close on the used games market but fairly sure it's miles off on new games.

gizmo

yoyo wrote: »

Stuff

Cool story.

Now, here's what the PC Games shelf in your local store will look like if piracy continues at the rate it's going...



And here's what developers will get if their game doesn't do as well as it should have despite being downloaded thousands of times online...



Yes I'm aware a DRM model like this is excessive and no, as I've said before, I'm not defending it but seeing the download figures for some of the big titles, you can't expect publishers to sit back and do nothing.

yoyo

gizmo wrote: »

Cool story.

Now, here's what the PC Games shelf in your local store will look like if piracy continues at the rate it's going...



And here's what developers will get if their game doesn't do as well as it should have despite being downloaded thousands of times online...


Yes I'm aware a DRM model like this is excessive and no, as I've said before, I'm not defending it but seeing the download figures for some of the big titles, you can't expect publishers to sit back and do nothing.

Well, My post was not trying to encourage piracy, sorry if it comes across as that, also unfortunately many pc game stores are like that already! Well in Dublin anyways, Digital Download appears to be the way forward.
Assasins Creed 2 comes with a DRM, which needs you to be online the whole time, so if your playing the game, progress far, your internet goes down due to a "fault" or something, or your internet even disconnects when you try to save your game, the games progress is lost, of course the cracked version (that is inevitable) will not suffer the same problems, the picture above I posted is a rant at the stupid stuff the developers add to the game, which only p1sses off paying customers

Nick

Overheal

gizmo wrote: »

Fascinating Stuff

Fascinating Stuff.

You should also however investigate a company known as Stardock, and their policy on DRM; their major hits like Demigod and Sins of a Solar Empire, etc.

Yoyo's posted image is exceptionally accurate in that these companies are going to such lengths with their DRM (think of the cost!) that they have made it so that it is actually More Difficult to play their software Legitimately than it is to Pirate it. Its the Only reason I havent splurged on Spore, because that game looked interesting.

I don't buy Steam games because I can't get them Free: I buy Steam Games because they are convenient as hell. I can download them as many times as I want, they install and patch on the fly, its great. The alternative is get a Terabyte and store all my would-be-steam pirated games because Feck It if it doesnt take you a minute to find older torrents that work.

You might have guessed thats why Steam has Ass-Raped the Games Marketplace even in the face of Internet Piracy.

Nick_oliveri

Overheal wrote: »

You might have guessed thats why Steam has Ass-Raped the Games Marketplace even in the face of Internet Piracy.

Indeed, I do wonder are they multi-player titles that helped boost the sales. Although it can be argued that the price for digital content off steam can easily be beat on-line or in some bricks and mortar for the physical copy. Ass raped indeed.

Not that I don't like the platform.

wayne040576

Overheal wrote: »

Fascinating Stuff.

You should also however investigate a company known as Stardock, and their policy on DRM; their major hits like Demigod and Sins of a Solar Empire, etc.

Yoyo's posted image is exceptionally accurate in that these companies are going to such lengths with their DRM (think of the cost!) that they have made it so that it is actually More Difficult to play their software Legitimately than it is to Pirate it. Its the Only reason I havent splurged on Spore, because that game looked interesting.

I don't buy Steam games because I can't get them Free: I buy Steam Games because they are convenient as hell. I can download them as many times as I want, they install and patch on the fly, its great. The alternative is get a Terabyte and store all my would-be-steam pirated games because Feck It if it doesnt take you a minute to find older torrents that work.

[/URL].

Both Sins and Demigod were pirated to hell despite Stardock trying their best to make everyone happy. In fact on its opening week, Demigod had something like 20,000 legitimate users and well over 100,000 users with pirated versions who brought the servers down ruining it for the rest of us.

gizmo

Beat me to it wayne040576. Yes, I'm well aware of Stardock and also well aware that the piracy problem was so severe with Demigod that their servers went down around launch. Check out this article which features an interview with Stardock CEO Brad Wardell who points out that of the ~120,000 inital users they had, approximately 18,000 were legitmate customers. Now, isn't that a nice **** you to a developer who doesn't bother including DRM in their games?

And no, his image is not exceptionally accurate, it's completely and utterly over the top. Of course it's easier to play the game too once it's been cracked and had certain elements removed, it's also cheaper, amirite? :rolleyes:

I completely agree with you regarding the Steam issue, having just upgraded to Win 7 and installing everything from scratch it was so nice to be able to just sign in to Steam, double click my games and watch them come down at full speed. I am confused as to your last comment though, what do you mean by Games Marketplace? The general marketplace in terms of brick and mortar/online stores or a specific online service? Either way, a redesigned UI is hardly evidence of that. Their userbase figures are quite impressive alright, but with a catalogue of games as extensive as theirs combined with their distribution network it is to be expected.

The only worrying issue here is that other publishers attempt to emulate this sucesss and we have a slew of Steam clones which need to be installed on our machines in order to manage our collections. That's a debate for another thread anyway...

Overheal

Actually thats a Stardock problem, with Impulse. It doesnt require you to run it except to patch and install games, but its just not as nice an interface as steam and so i rarely if ever run it. I've emailed them as part of their surveys and said its a shame they dont market their games on Steam - I know theyre a competing platform and all but feck if they couldnt use the extra sales. Stardock is in an interesting position where its a Game/Software Developer and a Publisher trying to compete in the Cloud Market. EA and All also tried to resist steam but thought wiser than to build a new distribution platform from scratch (not that EA doesnt do direct E-Sales, its just not opposed to doing it through Steam either)

As well as that, their Black Friday sale was Advertised Exclusively - Meaning you had to run the Impulse App to view the offers. Most of the time I am very happy to get the Impulse Buys emails in my inbox. They kinda screwed themselves out of my spending money in November.

Their Annual Report mentioned the Demigod Fiasco though. And yeah, I can see how that was a major effing problem. In fact I dont know why they did it that way: You can pirate Sins to your hearts content; but the Multiplayer is Licensed-Users-Only. I mean I paid for Sins and dont care for the Multiplayer anyway (I like to spend countless hours toying around with AI) but they did that right, and I think took the Liberal DRM thing a little too far by not checking serverside access.

Aside from that though Sins was still considered a commercial success even though you can sum up that it sold way fewer copies than it lost to piracy.

dreamers75

Tip for steam users install it to a 2nd drive/partition and when formatting just point the steam installer at the steam folder on the other drive/ partition.


never have to download a game again

I have 45gb of games and **** that downloading them again ****.

PogMoThoin

dreamers75 wrote: »

Tip for steam users install it to a 2nd drive/partition and when formatting just point the steam installer at the steam folder on the other drive/ partition.


never have to download a game again

I have 45gb of games and **** that downloading them again ****.

In fact, all You gotta do is click the Steam .exe in the folder in the other partition and it will install Steam from there pointing to Your games

dreamers75

PogMoThoin wrote: »

In fact, all You gotta do is click the Steam .exe in the folder in the other partition and it will install Steam from there pointing to Your games

In Win7 i dont get the shortcuts on my games via steam on the start menu unless i install properly.

Overheal

I dont need to do that ****. Not unless my provider introduces caps. Which they wont; I live in a Competitive Market.

Fnz

dreamers75 wrote: »

I have 45gb of games and **** that downloading them again ****.

Overheal wrote: »

I dont need to do that ****. Not unless my provider introduces caps. Which they wont; I live in a Competitive Market.

Gratuitous swearing, eh?

**** that *****, **** ****** set trippin'!

dreamers75

Fnz wrote: »

Gratuitous swearing, eh?

**** that *****, **** ****** set trippin'!

Fo real!

Cuddlesworth

Fnz wrote: »

Gratuitous swearing, eh?

**** that *****, **** ****** set trippin'!

Reported.

Attack the post not the posters mother.

Burgo

So Silent Hunter 5 which uses Ubisoft's new DRM has been cracked a day after release!

Maximilian

Burgo wrote: »

So Silent Hunter 5 which uses Ubisoft's new DRM has been cracked a day after release!

Crazy. I really want to get this game but there is no way I'm buying it with that DRM attached. Ubisoft are actually forcing me to consider pirating it or at least buy it but then play a pirated copy.

wayne040576

They're saying it wasn't cracked now and that the version on the torrent sites is not the release build.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/ubisoft-denies-silent-hunter-5-drm-cracked-on-first-day

Cuddlesworth

wayne040576 wrote: »

They're saying it wasn't cracked now and that the version on the torrent sites is not the release build.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/ubisoft-denies-silent-hunter-5-drm-cracked-on-first-day

A quick browse and I see that the release day patch of 1.1 is also cracked. I suppose they are also going to claim that the 1.1 version of the game is not the official release?

folan

Im not bothered buying or pirating games like this. Boycotting by not spending money is one thing, but im not even going to give them the satisfaction of me playing it.

Id like to see how this will actually effect game sales though. no other DRM type has slowed sales that much afaik

Nate--IRL--

The Fail has become Epic.

UBIs DRM servers are down, nobody can play Silent Hunter 5 or Assassins Creed 2 ..... except for the pirates.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/98927-Ubisoft-DRM-Authentication-Servers-Go-Down

Nate

oceanclub

I've known sysadmins who've been canned for far lesser SNAFUs than this.... this is absolutely disastrous PR-wise for Ubisoft. I imagine that some people might have had a wait-and-see approach and re-considered purchasing their software _if_ it had even worked as promised.

P.

Coriolanus

Heh, this is great.
I was looking forward to AC2, since I don't have a console. Obv didn't buy it when I read about the DRM.
I wonder if there isn't someone inside of Ubi that wreaked a little sabotage... Seems awfully fast for this to have happened.

Stercus Accidit

Nate--IRL-- wrote: »

The Fail has become Epic.

UBIs DRM servers are down, nobody can play Silent Hunter 5 or Assassins Creed 2 ..... except for the pirates.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/98927-Ubisoft-DRM-Authentication-Servers-Go-Down

Nate

How likely is it that some gamers are ddos'ing the servers to get a message across? Fair play to them if they do, anyone who paid for the game and can't play should blame ubisoft, and play BFBC 2 instead, released same day, and doesn't feature the thought crime scanner.

oceanclub

Stercus Accidit wrote: »

How likely is it that some gamers are ddos'ing the servers to get a message across? Fair play to them if they do, anyone who paid for the game and can't play should blame ubisoft, and play BFBC 2 instead, released same day, and doesn't feature the thought crime scanner.

I'd be surprised - if that was the case, Ubisoft would be screaming to the high heavens about it. I think it's simply that they weren't ready for it. Don't forget, Steam was 2.5 years old before Valve was released, and even then there were major problems. This system looks like it was slapped togeher in months.

P.

Stercus Accidit

oceanclub wrote: »

I'd be surprised - if that was the case, Ubisoft would be screaming to the high heavens about it. I think it's simply that they weren't ready for it. Don't forget, Steam was 2.5 years old before Valve was released, and even then there were major problems. This system looks like it was slapped togeher in months.

P.

I don't know, if a ddos were blamed it would be a PR no no IMO, as the gamer community would be seen as revolting, but maybe not, after all these are the retards who brought in this DRM in the first place.

Hi I bought your game can I play it?

You are a pirate!

No I am not, I validated it online with you, it is a purchased copy, but it won't work.

You are a pirate!

No it won't work because after validating it online after purchase, your servers went down, so I cant play now at all.

You pirated it after you bought it!

Why would anyone....

PIRATE!

Overheal

New prototype authentication server crashing? It must have been them Pirates, Arr!

No, come on now. New bull**** like this never goes right on the first try. Ever been in an MMO beta? *shudder*

Spore servers never went quite right either or something, iirc.

Venom

What a ****ing mess lol.

Drakar

From Bluesnews

The Ubisoft Forums have posts from customers who were unable to play games protected by Ubisoft's online DRM yesterday because the DRM servers were offline. Needless to say most of the posts express severe unhappiness at being unable to play and express anger over a DRM scheme that locks paying customers out of their own game. This Ubisoft tweet explains: "Apologies to anyone who couldn’t play ACII or SH5 yesterday. Servers were attacked which limited service from 2:30pm to 9pm Paris time," and this one follows up: "95% of players were not affected, but a small group of players attempting to open a game session did receive denial of service errors."

TwoShedsJackson

I was interested in SH5 but with that DRM, not a chance. Better to wait a couple weeks until it's been properly cracked and can be played without all that hassle, and even at a time of my choosing, not dependent on whether or not their server and/or my internet connection is up. Well done, Ubisoft, you convinced me to pirate your game.