Ubisoft’s Uber DRM Cracked Within a Day
torrentfreak.com
torrentfreak.com
(obligatory: http://xkcd.com/488/ )
Yes, the first versions of steam were pretty terrible, but they have turned it into my preferred way of buying PC games over the years -- it really is a great platform now days.
They don't do stupid shit with DRM affecting the rest of your comptuer, or hacks on the DVDs, etc. They keep it clean and simple for the user.
For example, Bioshock 2:
30GBP, "down" from 40GBP http://store.steampowered.com/app/8850/
16.74GBP http://www.amazon.co.uk/Take-2-Bioshock-PC-DVD/dp/B00175SOS2...
After all, you don't get any physical copies, which is something a collector may like.
The online features are also not too shabby - being able to join a friend's game in a single click is a pretty nifty feature that I use often.
Also, Steam generally gives 10% off for preorders, which is something brick and mortars aren't doing.
These days, less and less games fall into category number 2. At the moment its mainly Modern Warfare 2 and Borderlands.
For people like me who have grown with computers and games things like original disks, standalone copies, and accessible abandonware is like the National Archives.
I still play games from the 90's, even 80's, thanks to emulators. I don't want to buy something that won't run properly after 20 years which itself is about 15 years since any reasonable commercial interest.
So the fact that I have an implicit backup of all my games with nill re-install headache is the killer argument for Steam.
I'm fully aware of the drawbacks (including the, alas remote, possibility of the service going down, but am willing to chance this for the convenience received.
OTOH: Ubisoft just said hello to Sony (remember the rootkit fiasko, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_rootkit ) and a couple other companies on my eternal shitlist. Since it's eternal there's no escape and they won't see one mor Eurocent from me, no matter what. I also won't pirate anything Ubisoft for that matter.
Until Steam 2 comes out and they discontinue Steam 1 servers. Or the company gets bought by Fox/Disney/Sony etc and they disconnect the old cost base.
Imagine if you had to repurchase all your DVDs/CDs everytime a singer/actor switches agent/label?
Obviously online games are hard to crack on Steam (it was developed for Counterstrike). However, single-player games are as easy to crack on Steam as any other DRM system. All you need is a dummy account and a crack not to have to authenticate online.
I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere...
I'm a fan for the same reasons you listed. Also, their aggressive sales and price reductions on older archival titles significantly increases my buy-in of the Steam service, which in turn makes me far more willing to turn to them when I am buying a full-price, day 1 title.
Meanwhile, DRMing a game through Steam makes it more convenient for the consumer rather than less convenient[1]. They turned the protection scheme from a hindrance into a feature, and a desirable one at that. Most importantly, the carrot wasn't just stapled on to sweeten the deal, the features of Steam are leveraging the DRM itself. I have never heard anyone say "man Steam is awesome, but they should take out the DRM"--it's an intrinsic part of the additional features. That's what makes it so impressive to me.
[1] There are tradeoffs so YMMV, but the tradeoffs are easily worthwhile for the majority of players, which is Good Enough.
Can you give specific info as to exactly what is missing?
It's a great game, I'll definitely be buying it when the DRM is gone despite not really being much of a gamer anymore.
I stress when, because it's the biggest backfire in copy protection history and Ubi know it. After all the development time and resource that has obviously gone into the DRM, I was surprised/amused to see that the hack is pretty much just a cracked exe.
I really don't think there's going to be a "when", TBH. I don't know for sure, but I'm worried that this is a last attempt at trying to make the big-budget PC games market profitable. Either it works and stays, or it doesn't work and publishers start to drop out of the market. EA are doing exactly the same thing with the next C&C by the way.
I think this attitude is a big part of the problem.
The mindset that they can only be profitable by preventing copying, whatever draconian measures that requires, puts them in a box that will prevent any innovation, either in gameplay or in business model.
It may be that efforts at copy protection are well past the point of diminishing returns. Perhaps the investment in these technologies, and the resulting loss in customer goodwill, are costing more than the actual piracy.
Maybe the vast cinematography, scoring, voice acting, etc., aren't what gamers really want, and the "big budget" games are really throwing away money. Maybe gamers just want new ideas like Tetris.
But the idea that "this DRM must work or the industry is doomed" will prevent the publishers from discovering these approaches, or others like them.
I was referring specifically to big-budget blockbuster titles. The major publishers have divested portfolios. If the big budget PC titles aren't profitable they'll be dropped and the investment will be elsewhere, like facebook games or whatever.
I'd argue that a lot of people do want these games though, because although PC sales are very low, millions of people play them.
This kind of in-game check led to the practice of cracking "100%". This means the cracker played the entire game through and verified everything worked properly. They'd often add "trainers" (eternal life patches) to make this process go quicker.
With a fully online system as Ubisoft claimed to have, you can just store the level code/data on the server. In this case, EVERY crack will be limited as you can always download new protection code with level N+1. It remains to be seen how well they adopted this approach to updating their protection, but you can see it work in fully online games like WoW.
We designed the Blu-ray protection scheme to have the same renewable property, it's just that the disc itself is the transport channel since your player is not guaranteed to be online. A PC-only environment can make that kind of requirement, and an online-only system is easier to protect.
Having PC software players seems like the weak point to me; they'll always be analysed far more quickly than the turnaround time for key revocation/distribution/version updates.
To me that in itself is very unappealing, but that is what is "missing" from the game. If that has been cracked already then that just goes to show that good DRM can at best delay cracking the game, meanwhile there is a saying "Whenever DRM prevents a customer willing to buy the game form buying it, a pirate gets his wings"