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

Re:Virus free keygens

[Aranykai]

Real nerds run them on a virtual machine, sandboxed in the copy of VMware they pirated years last week.

Seed plz!

[tonto1992]

ps, need crack

What if piracy levels remain the same?

[Anonymous Coward]

That would also show that DRM is moot as it has no effect on piracy. The fact is you will never lower piracy levels through DRM, as long as you can lock it up, there is someone who can unlock it. Copyright infringement is part of the cost of doing business in the gaming world.

Fact is people don't like to be treated like criminals, and if they well they might as well act like one to hold up their end of the bargain.

Re:What if piracy levels remain the same?

[vux984]

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.

Re:What if piracy levels remain the same?

[stephanruby]

That would also show that DRM is moot as it has no effect on piracy.

No, this won't show anything either way, or if it does show something, it will be opened to interpretation. This is not a study. This is not a test. There is no control group. The game may do well, or not well. This will depend largely on how good the game actually is. Also, a criterion of success cited by one side may be cited as a criterion of failure by the other. So for instance, if the absence of DRM increases the word-of-mouth referrals and sales, that might be counted as a success by one side, but if that same spurt in word-of-mouth referrals increases the number of downloads from p2p -- that same company may see this as a failure (since it would be seeing all those downloads as a sign that imaginary dollars are walking out of the door).

So with no predefined criteria of success, and no control group of any kind, both sides are bound to repeat the same old arguments over again. It's just that all that rationalizing, framing/reframing, and arguing will be done with freshly acquired data, instead of historical data, and people from either side will probably just stick to their preconceived notions either way.

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.

Re:How to make enemies and alienate people

[Anonymous Coward]

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'm buying a copy just to support the concept.

[mlts]

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.

Re:I'm buying a copy just to support the concept.

[LtGordon]

Now that someone is actually assuming customers are not criminals, its worth supporting the effort.

Hardly. The point is to release a game without DRM and then massage the numbers so they can turn around and say that the lack of DRM drove piracy up significantly. The point will be moot, because how do you gauge losses due to piracy? The same way Microsoft does: (Every single theoretical download) * (Retail price) = (OMGthehorror$$$)

Could it be, just could it...

[Opportunist]

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.

They already have their answer.

[iYk6]

These people already has their answer. DRM prevents piracy. Sure, we all know that it isn't true, but judging by what their rep says, they are only seeking to prove that there is something good about DRM, and this "trial" is only to prove that they are right, not to actually gather information. No matter what the results are, they will claim that they have confirmation of what they already believe.

Re:They already have their answer.

[IamTheRealMike]

Wow, the denial on this thread is amazing. The test hasn't even started yet, and people are already writing it off on the grounds that it can't be a "real" test, or that they're doing it wrong, or whatever.

I think it's safe to assume it won't make much difference, because modern PC DRM doesn't seem very strong, but to make blanket statements about DRM is pretty absurd - it clearly does work in other implementations, like the consoles.

Let's wait and see what the numbers say. I know most Slashdotters made up their mind a long time ago, but at least Ubisoft is open to other ideas.

Re:They already have their answer.

[_Sprocket_]

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.

Re:They already have their answer.

[_Sprocket_]

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.

Re:They already have their answer.

[Lumpy]

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.

Re:How to make enemies and alienate people

[philspear]

Treating people like criminals will make them lose respect for you and that's a really bad way to make a sale. And yes, that includes snippy little remarks about "how honest" they are. I, personally, will never buy another game from this company so long as this dipshit is at the helm.

I think it would be really easy to become very jaded about DRM and piracy when you're the one being pirated from. I DON'T think it's fair to heap abuse on someone from that background who is making a compromise.

The guy is making a game, and is likely annoyed at least with people who pirate it. Some are people who bought the game, but download the cracked version because of the DRM, probably. It's of course impossible to test whether that's most people or whether most pirated copies are downloaded by people who never paid a dime for it. This is one of the only ways I can see to actually test the idea that DRM encourages piracy.

Don't buy the games if you don't want to, but acting offended because the guy isn't giving away his product with a smile is, well, absurd.

Re:How to make enemies and alienate people

[moranar]

legitimately pirating the game.

The word of the day is 'Oxymoron'.

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.

You seriously believe what you just wrote? It looks like a flimsy rationalization for pirating. These days, it's often simpler to download a torrent than going to a website, registering, signing in, downloading the demo, installing crapware (not always), etc. That would have been a 'better' rationalization, I think.