Ubisoft Working On a New Anti-Piracy Tool

Ubisoft recently revealed that their game sales have seen a 50% drop over the past quarter, blaming the overall market slowdown and piracy (particularly on the DS) for the low numbers. They also announced that four of their games, including Splinter Cell: Conviction and Red Steel 2, would be delayed until 2010. The company's CEO, Yves Guillemot, now says they are working on a new anti-piracy tool that should be ready by the end of 2009. He didn't offer any details about how it would be implemented.

Comments

Delaying sounds like a good strategy

[janek78]

If they keep delaying their titles that will surely teach the pirates a lesson. Look at Duke Nukem Forever, no-one has cracked that one yet!

Re:To stop Usenet

[Norsefire]

Edit -> Find and Replace

Search for: Usenet
Replace with: torrent

[ ] Match case
[*] Match entire word only
[ ] Search backwards
[ ] Wrap around

[Replace all]

Welcome to 1995.

Re:Best Antipiracy Tool

[wjousts]

Rubbish, you best anti-piracy tool is lack of quality. Make the game so shit that nobody in their right mind would even want to waste their time downloading it. Many publishers seem to be currently working on this strategy.

Re:New anti-piracy tool, eh?

[thisnamestoolong]

"But no, I actually agree with you. If you don't like the price and/or DRM scheme the appropriate response is to not buy it and not pirate it. Pirating the game just adds fuel to the fire and will lead to an escalating arms race between publishers and pirates that ultimately only hurts the honest consumer."

What arms race? This implies that there is a legitimate contest between advancing DRM schemes and pirates -- there isn't, DRM is usually broken on release day, and the titles are customarily up on the torrent sites by that evening. A much better analogy would be to imagine the publishers as Dick Cheney, DRM the shotgun, the pirates a pheasant, and legitimate customers his friend's face.