As I read more about this it seems what is speculated they are doing is to hold part/most of the game on their servers. I guess they figure it's uncrackable because vital parts of the game are never residing on your local PC. I'm not sure cause I am not a coder/hacker in any way, but I would think if it still has to pass through your RAM someone will find a way to "catch" it and put it back together for use without internet or as a lot of cases have shown it will get leaked in whole and still be available without the BS.
Of course maybe one of the best things that could happen would be for the game not to get cracked and then still have subpar sales due to their BS. Then we'd see what lame excuse they come up since they couldn't blame piracy. I still doubt their stubborness would allow them to admit the lack of sales is their own stupidity though.
They will say that because no pirates can hack thier game anymore the sales have gone down because the pirates arn't buying it anymore.
We will all go "HUH?!?" at their backwards logic.
And the predictable end to Ubisoft's brilliant DRM scheme.
http://www.infoaddict.com/ubisofts-new-drm-cracked-in-under-25-hours
So your DRM didn't stop the pirates, and you're going to lose tons of sales from legitimate customers with this draconion DRM scheme. Don't let the door hit you on the way out of the PC game industry Ubisoft.
That was fast. I'd feel better about it if ACII and SH5 weren't in the top sellers list for this week on Steam. I don't want to see the game stolen. I want Ubisoft to suffer bad sales and PR.
If thats true (I don't see why it wouldn't be - however much ubisoft wants to delude themselves as they chug back thier silly wine) thats utterly halrious.
I mean how much do you think they spent setting up this DRM scheme? (Possibly not much by the sounds of how crap it is).
Oh, it's true alright. So true infact, a cracked v1.1 update was also released. (Google it - but don't mention it here)
I'll bet Ubisoft spent a small fortune on this DRM scheme. I don't believe for a minute the protection method was written poorly. These protection methods never last long, because many times the "hackers/crackers" doing the releases work within the software industry itself. For all we know, an Ubisoft insider could have prepared this weeks ago.
This is the reason (IMO) why every DRM scheme has failed, and will fail in the future. DRM only serves to punish the people who have actually purchased the product. Ten years from now, the pirates will have the option of playing this newest Ubisoft game anytime they like on whatever old PC (future netbook - LOL) and/or operating system they have handy. NO INTERNET REQUIRED - EVER.
The honest consumer will own a crippled copy, tied to the internet that will cease to function the day Ubi's servers go bye-bye. That's not "hilarious", it's a F'ing shame on Ubisoft and the software industry as a whole. Piracy is wrong, and DRM is wrong. Two wrongs don't make a right.
Oops. DRM servers crash, Assassins Creed 2 is totally unplayable for paying customers. I've heard the cracked version is working fine.
This proves just how wrongheaded these schemes are. It's taking the "legitimte version is inferior to the stolen one" to the extreme, in that it flat out doesn't work.
It's just giving people who actually gave Ubisoft cash for this scheme a taste of what it will be like when Ubisoft doesn't want to suppor AC 2 anymore and just yanks the servers in time for AC 3.
I take it you didn't buy it then?
And the news about the DRM servers is both funny and alarming. I have to use that DRM! I play games, that's what I chose to do when I picked my class. I can't miss out on AC2...
Oh heck no. I vote with my wallet. I am not at all interested in participating in this kind of DRM scheme. I'll leave PC gaming before I give money over to rent games in this fashion. It's not as if I am not interested either. I've been a fan of the Settlers series since Serf City. I won't be buying Settlers VII either because of the DRM attached to it. Ubisoft can burn for all I care.
Sure you can. It's just a game, there are lots of others to spend your money on instead. Buying AC2 just supports this idiotic scheme of Ubisofts.
Vote with your wallet, it's more effective then angry forum posts.
These DRM schemes cost a fortune to write. I wrote one for my company and that was using a COTS solution and it still cost us a small fortune. Mainly because of how many times it had to be rewritten because marketing wanted to change the licensing scheme so much. Even so it's a bit of a joke how much you spend to protect your IP when you consider the chances of losing money from it.
My quandry at the moment is that I played AC 1 on the PS3 and now I've decided not to buy Ubisoft half because of this new scheme of requiring internet access and secondly because they are absolutely one of the worst companies at supporting their games. If you get more than 2 patches for fixes you are lucky and many Ubisoft games that I own are still broken and left that way. So I really want to buy the second Assassins Creed on the PS3 because I wont have these problems I have with their PC games but at the same time I want to stand by my morals for once.
And I'll have to look at Settlers 7 reviews and dream that Ubisoft was actually a nice company and I wouldn't feel like I am supporting all that is wrong with public companies if I bought it.
Requiring a constant connection opens the door to ByteShield-style technology that, while it will certainly be cracked eventually, would be much more annoying and tedious to crack than traditional DRM. I have no idea whether Ubi employed this type of protection, but if they did, their statement that the posted cracks are incomplete is likely correct. Of course the game will be cracked for real soon enough, but release-day cracks seem unlikely.
But what we've learned from this is that even effective DRM has a big downside - clown A puts a file on a torrent site claiming it's a crack, clown B sees the file, probably doesn't even download it, but goes around posting that there's a crack, and everyone believes it, because it's a plausible claim. So now, potential customers think they would be paying for a product that's inferior to the one pirates can get for free, which is pretty disgusting, and they reasonably choose to spend their money elsewhere.
Ubi lost another sale due to this. I was interested in R.U.S.E., but saw the DRM and said no thanks.
Stopping release-date cracks will be effective DRM, as most of the losses from DRM is customers who are willing to pay but not wait. They want the game NOW, and if that means pirating, so be it.
That's not going to do anything about the majority of pirates, but it will help vs the most costly pirates (the ones that do cost you sales)
The qustion is can this type of DRM be done, without anything more then a minimal inconveniencing to consumers?
All DRM is inconveniencing to a slight degree- even Impulse. For me, the line between minimal andd minor comes around Steam, which I find to be a minor inconvenience.
http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/49438
Sands is consistently top quality.
Another lost sale. I was thinking about buying Silent Hunter 5... But after hearing about this new DRM, now I won't be.
That's bull. Look at EA. They went over the top with Spore, people rejected it outright. How many more of EA's games have online activations and limited installs in the retail boxes.... almost none. They took an entirely different approach after that with Sims 3, DA and Mass Effect 2.
I tend to agree. If Ubisoft really wanted out of the PC market, they'd just get out of the market. No need to stabotage yourself so you have poor sales numbers to justify it. My theory on this is that it's an expirement like when Microsoft tried to release Vista-only games and tried to charge PC games for Windows Live Gold. Ubisoft probably wants to see if people will put up with this new DRM, and how badly it will affect sales. If the loss in sales are minor, you will see more of this from more companies. If they take a massive hit in sales, they will have no choice but to call it off.
That article makes it sound like voting with your wallet here is still a loss for the PC community. Voting against such horrendous DRM is not a loss for anyone except Ubisoft; and nobody will shed a tear for them. Even the console community isn't laughing at this, as they know it's only a matter of time before publishers start trying it with them. 360 and Wii game piracy is far more severe than the media would have you believe.
It seems there is more than a "call home" to this DRM. Does anyone actually know a pirate who has finshed (or even played a few missions) of AC2? Or any game with this DRM?
Actually it is. If sales arn't good enoug they simply wont be making a PC version of Assassins Creed ever again. So its "Buy it and prove that customers are okay with DRM" or "Don't buy it and never have the option of playing another one again".
You can also "Pirate it and never have the option of playing another one while also prove Ubisoft to be right" - thats not an option for me for several reasons.
Explain to me why you are completely ignoring the EA example. EA threw out some pretty crappy DRM on top of Spore, got a lot of flack for it, and then released Sims 3, (shortly after the event), followed by DA and ME2 all with simple disc checks and the options (it's still an option) to grab an online account and get more content for additional moneey. People voted with their wallets, were not silent about their rejection of DRM and guess what, EA is not using the OA plus limited install limit on their retail products anymore. This is a real life recent example that completely contradicts that article and what you say. I've not seen any metric that suggests DA and ME on PC was a failure or a loss for them. Do you have that data?
Apologies if I am assuming wrongly but you sound like someone who doesn't understand the industry. I am in a similar industry and I wish it was as simple as an experiment. It's not, it's people in power, who don't understand their customers or the product who make bad decisions because they think it will help a perceived problem. It's as simple as that.
They make them decisions (the decision to go with this kind of DRM) based on advertising literature from the people who make the DRM, scare mongering and banging on about how much they lose to piracy and how much they will gain with this kind of licensing. The people making these decisions have been put in the place of power because of their so called managerial/marketing skills, the company has got so big that the top end is totally detached and they don't listen to the guys below them because they are the decision makers and they obviously know best(!) These guys work only towards their bonus next Christmas. He will make all these so called improvements and then use them to get the biggest bonus he can and by the time the shit hits the fan or someone has worked out what has gone wrong the person who made the decision has side stepped in to a different job, hood winking another set of people that he is a star player.
There is no way that someone would make an experiment that could negatively effect sales and be perceived to be the problem, it would affect share prices and more importantly would affect their bonuses.
Actually this is where you are wrong. Spore was a massive financial sucsess. It sold in droves, DRM or not. I think the expansions didn't do so well but that's because Spore was a bunch of shit and everyone who bought it realised they'd been robbed. But as for Spore, people didn't vote with their wallets, well some may have but Joe Bloggs bought 2 copies.
I suspect the reason EA went without DRM on Sims was because someone in the company had their ear to the ground and up until then EA was the Devil's own company on every forum you ever visited because of 3 letters, DRM. I suspect that was either an experiment or someone in the company made a good argument about why DRM wasn't doing their reputation any good.
Another thing that was significant with Spore was that despite the DRM and how much EA payed to have that in the game, and even despite it's huge sales figures success Spore was still one of the most pirated games ever. I think that went a long way to letting EA know what a waste of money obnoxious DRM was.
Umm, do point out where I actually said Spore was NOT a financial success? I am talking about DRM here and the reception of DRM. You are reading into my posts what you want to read, not what I wrote.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
