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There's an unstated, totally unproven assumption that pirates are impatient and will buy the game if it isn't cracked soon. There's been a lot of handwaving about this from people trying to justify DRM, but they're all assuming a link for which they have no evidence.

In the article, yes. By the game industry today, yes. On Slashdot, yes. In my post, no, there is no such assumption.

All I did was provide evidence (from 10 years ago, no less -- what's this about DRM being 'new?') that Ubisoft is undoubtedly aware that DRM will eventually be cracked (tip: most game developers are probably as smart/smarter than you are) and that, according to their own standards (delaying pirates, thereby likely increasing sales), the AC2 DRM was a success.

My theory, equally unsupported by real data, is that the vast majority of pirates are cheap bastards who aren't going to buy a game for $50-60, period. They'll wait, they'll play the game a little later.

Your theory, coming from a Slashdotter and not a paid game developer, is not 'equal.' But it is certainly credible and has some element of truth to it.

My personal theory is that /.'ers need to get out more. College students have no qualms about purchasing games; they only do it because they can. Will they wait for the New Game of the Month to be cracked? Yes. Will they wait for Their Favorite Game Ever to be cracked? Probably not.

BTW, this forum post was cited last time this story appeared on Slashdot: pirate says AC2 will be 'the first game he's ever bought.'

It's false news. The crack doesn't actually work - just read this forum thread. You get all kinds of weird problems like cannot accept quests, cannot advance in the game, cant use items and so on... Or this: http://filenetworks.blogspot.com/2010/04/ipaki-group-aftermath.html

As you can see, new Tweets are glorifying UBISoft DRM which has so far been successful against PC game pirates. But is it the best future protection? We don’t think so. “It withstood all the efforts to get cracked.” All? Not all. Several folks in a well known Russian underground community (CS.RIN.RU) are working on a server emulation patch – and they’ve been partially successful so far and have apparently got the game to work until sequence 5. Their method involves playing a legit copy of the game, logging all responses that come from UBISoft servers and building a complete server emulator. However to make the emulator complete, they will have to explore the game 100% which is a time consuming process. Be that as it may, this clearly shows that UBI’s DRM is not as invincible as it is claimed to be.

It has taken them over a month now. And all that is needed from Ubisoft part is to make their games more open sandbox like with even more server-side stuff and you cannot ever get a complete working version.

While definitely not all of the pirates will buy it, it would be foolish to think some of them aren't just trying to get the game for free, like these comments show. It would probably have been more true in the 90's, but piracy is widespread now and many people use it just to get something for free. If they can't get something they really want, they will then buy it.

They're not customers for the particular album/movie/game/whatever they're pirating. And lets be honest here, its a little minority of pirates who will buy the product after they've pirated it.

I'm actually happy to see Ubisoft and Blizzard have figured out how to stop the PC Game pirates. Assassins Creed II still remains uncracked and people have went and bought the game because they don't want to wait for a crack any longer. I hope they introduce it to more titles - by winning piracy we will start to get more quality games, as 90% of gamers aren't freeloaders anymore. Yeah not everyone will buy what they would have pirated, but majority of those who want to play some game will.

They're not customers for the particular album/movie/game/whatever they're pirating. And lets be honest here, its a little minority of pirates who will buy the product after they've pirated it.

I'm actually happy to see Ubisoft and Blizzard have figured out how to stop the PC Game pirates. Assassins Creed II still remains uncracked and people have went and bought the game because they don't want to wait for a crack any longer. I hope they introduce it to more titles - by winning piracy we will start to get more quality games, as 90% of gamers aren't freeloaders anymore. Yeah not everyone will buy what they would have pirated, but majority of those who want to play some game will.

I noticed the quoted nfo file on TFA's page. It made me wonder how many people out there only ever see nfo files as random bizarre characters with no alignment, rather than the relatively aesthetically pleasing monospace-font designed pages that they really are. Case in point, compare the quoted block in the article with this.

Reloaded takes care of you