Slashdot Mirror
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."
Real nerds run them on a virtual machine, sandboxed in the copy of VMware they pirated years last week.
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
I'm going to be buying the PS3 version, since I believe it to be a console game at heart. But after seeing this act of good faith, I seriously want a copy for PC.
Actions speak louder than words, and even if this asshat thinks we are all out to get him, the action is still beautiful. If you want this game for PC, please buy it.
I know already though, that what will happen is that the game will probably see (according to their stats), around an 80% piracy rate. I'm sure a good chunk of people in that stat will be people who are legitimately pirating the game. But I'm sure that there will also be the usual crew of people who download the game to demo it. Demos often don't give you the full sense of a game, and you need the full version to get a feel for whether you really want the game or not. Prince of Persia won't be everyone's cup of tea. And since there's no console demo (or PC demo, so far as I know), then even people who want the game for a console might be inclined to download it.
Nevertheless, I think it's pretty much flat out guaranteed that it will be pirated less than Spore. =)
I've refused to buy games with intrusive DRM. Now that someone is actually assuming customers are not criminals, its worth supporting the effort. Even if the boxed game just gets chucked in the back of my car and forgotten about.
Its not much of a carrot, but if it got around that people actually went out of their way to buy games without DRM, software publishers may just loosen their stance.
Could it be that UbiSoft was a bit pissed at their former supplyer of DRM, because they themselves couldn't get rid of it from Rainbow Six when it caused too much trouble without stealing a crack from Reloaded? And when you couldn't find a new supplyer of DRM in time for the next release, hey, let's make a PR stunt out of it!
When God gives you lemons... well, I'd find a better God, but some just squeeze really hard.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Alternatively, if they can skew the numbers to say that Prince of Persia was pirated on a larger scale than any of their other games, it will be the poster boy for DRM-pushers.
On the other hand, since they aren't paying for the DRM, which I suspect is licensed per copy, not a one time purchase, there is actually a range, where its being pirated more, they sell less, and they actually make more money. It would be beyond funny if the actual results fell into this range.
That said, I figure the reality is that this game will be pirated exactly as much as any other. No more, no less.
If you make a really crap game, piracy will go down, but sales would go down too.
If you make a good game, both piracy and sales will go up.
I don't know what the warez scene is like these days, but a couple decades ago folks would copy software for the sake of having the software. It didn't matter if the tittle was a useful / good or bad / useless. If it was another piece to add to the collection, the warez packrats would squirrel it away. It was kind of an illicit data version of Pokemon; gotta collect them all. I wouldn't imagine it's much different today.
That would mean that a bad game would get copied indifferently to the quality of the game. In fact, bad games may even appear to be copied more as the percentage of illicit to legitimate copies skews to the warez packrats.
I know most Slashdotters made up their mind a long time ago, but at least Ubisoft is open to other ideas.
The reason "Slashdotters made up their mind" is due to the tone coming from Ubisoft.
"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."
It sounds like Ubisoft already has their minds made up. That's what "Slashdot" is picking up on.
Yeah - it'll be interesting to see what happens with this. It makes for a very interesting experiment and discussion. But I'll have to practice my "surprise face" just in case Ubisoft announces that their experiment has proven the need for DRM.
Being someone who has spent a LOT of time in meetings like they had about this..
it's not about what they say. It's about not paying for the royalties and licensing for a DRM solution. I'm betting that putting no DRM in it brings the cost of the game development down to 3/4 the price.
That means higher profits per unit sold.
it's ALL about money. dont be fooled by any of their PR talk.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.