Ubisoft Testing PC Prince of Persia Without DRM

Ars Technica reports that the upcoming PC version of Ubisoft's Prince of Persia will not feature any sort of copy protection. (Not including Steam downloads, of course.) After the backlash in recent months over the DRM in games like Spore and GTA IV, Ubisoft is giving gamers the chance to demonstrate that DRM actually increases piracy. One of Ubisoft's community reps had this to say about their decision: "You`re right when you say that when people want to pirate the game they will but DRM is there to make it as difficult as possible for pirates to make copies of our games. A lot of people complain that DRM is what forces people to pirate games but as PoP PC has no DRM we`ll see how truthful people actually are. Not very, I imagine. Console piracy is something else entirely and I`m sure we`ll see more steps in future to try to combat that."

Comments

Of Ubisoft and DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubisoft's actually bowed to customer pressure on DRM before. Consider Silent Hunter III and IV.

III shipped, if I recall, with StarForce---and Ubisoft eventually patched it out, and new bargain copies are completely DRM free.

IV, in response to the outcry over StarForce, shipped with SecuROM---which, of course, was patched out, and newly pressed CD's come without.

Basically, their habit seems to be to ship with DRM to try to preserve initial sales, and then bow to customer demand to keep bargain sales reasonable and keep old fans happy.

So, I suppose, the moral of the story is: don't buy Ubisoft games when they come out. Wait a year, until the game's down to fifteen bucks and they're stripped of DRM.

You cost Ubisoft most of the profit they might have earned from you had they released it DRM free, and then get the game DRM free at a dramatically reduced price.