Ubisoft’s newfangled DRM scheme requires you to be online to play | Hacker News Reader

Ubisoft’s newfangled DRM scheme requires you to be online to play

crunchgear.com

16 pointspsawaya12 comments

The advertised benefits to this method over other methods of game DRM are that you can install on an unlimited number of machines (but only play on one at a time); you don't require the game disk in the drive after installation; and save games are stored online (so you don't need to copy them to a flash drive between, say, home and work).

From what I can tell, it doesn't install any device drivers and it doesn't require that any special ports be opened.

(Disclaimer: I work for them but I'm not involved with the development of this system. I'm just adding a bit more information about it.)

Those advantages you mention are pretty handily outweighed by the additional inconvenience of this.

Does DRM actually make a dent in piracy? My feeling is no since pirated disk images come with cracks for the DRM scheme du jour, and that that is why they're going to this crazy scheme. What makes them think that pirates aren't just going to bundle something that intercepts all the traffic that this thing sends out, and then reply with the appropriate response?

Why not accept that a certain percentage of users are never going to pay for software, and that they aren't potentially paying customers anyway? It would make life easier for your actual paying customers, and you should be trying to make them feel like kings. (I know you're not in charge of this/responsible for this, I'm just curious as to whether you have insight into why this is happening)

The only conclusion I can come to is that DRM does work (for some definition of "work").

This isn't a poorly-studied field. Piracy rates have been carefully tracked by every major publisher for years but the information is rarely made public. Ubisoft has experimented with several DRM methods in the past, including having no DRM at all on 2008's Prince of Persia.

I figure that someone's come to the conclusion that using DRM makes more profit than not using it. And also those at every other major publishing house after studying their own figures.

No, it doesn't. What if I buy this game to play on my laptop. And then I am out of the country in a place where there is no internet connection. Will I be able to play this game? The fact is that I paid my hard earned money on this game, and I own the game. I don't want to jump through hoops to actually play the game. I agree that it prevents piracy to some extent, but are they (Ubisoft) so naive to believe that this additional layer of security is hard to crack. Seriously, Ubisoft needs to rethink it's strategy before it alienates its customers.

I'm just saying that the publishers balance potential lost sales due to DRM against potential gained sales because of DRM and see a net sales gain. It's a publicly traded company - they have an obligation to shareholders to address this.

Say that 5m copies have been downloaded illegally (I think that's pretty conservative in the case of AC2). Assume that a small percentage, maybe as low as 1%, of those that pirate it would actually buy it if they couldn't pirate it. That's 50000 copies. Realistically, how many people are put off from buying by this DRM. If that figure is less than 50000 and covers the development cost of the DRM then you have your net profit and DRM "works".

Adjust the figures to whatever you think is realistic, but publishers have a lot of research data that they don't make public so they're probably in a good position to make predictions.

It doesn't mean that their numbers are correct though.

To be honest it's like game manufacturers (Ubisoft in particular) are trying to make piracy the better option.

Look guys. I have decent money, want to support creators and don't feel like fucking around trying to pirate a $50 game and making sure that it doesn't have viruses or anything along with it. Stop making me feel like a moron for actually giving you my money.

The important bit:

"Every time you lose your Internet connection the game boots you to the main menu, and all progress made from the last save point is thrown out the window. This isn’t an MMO, mind you, but a plain ol’ single player game."

It's like big-budget PC publishers are begging me to not buy their games.

My home PC is on the internet over wi-fi. It goes down sometimes. If a game decided to go abort when this happened, even though nothing was actually wrong. I'd be angry. I'd call the game defective.

I agree. And I don't believe that this whole be online to play tactic is hard to hack. It will only add another obstacle for the crackers to overcome, but cause real pain to customers who actually buy their game.

I hate it when I spend money on software just to be treated like a villain.

What happens when the license server gets taken down? I still play 27-year-old NES games on occasion. Will Ubisoft even be around in 27 years?

I just recently declined to buy (or pirate) an otherwise great game for this reason. I sent a polite email to the developers explaining this. It's really quite disappointing.

What happens when the servers get hit with a DDoS attack the first week of release?

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