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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.
For less than the cost of a single DS game (and they're only about $30), you can buy a cartridge and microSD card that can hold all the games you could ever want and then some *and* lets you play old school [s]nes/gameboy games. No juggling or losing cartridges, it's all just there.
Why would I want to participate in the for-pay DS economy when the pirate experience is far superior?
Brought to you by the same assholes that loved Starforce (until they were sued for their crippleware).
Guess SecuROM isn't intrusive enough for them.
The only type of copy protection that won't be cracked is the one protecting something nobody gives a shit about.
One of the best ways to get rid of DRM and make the DMCA appear irrelevant would be if the dedicated pirates didn't crack ubisoft's new system for a few weeks, but sales sucked just as much anyway. The challenge of beating a new system quickly means crackers focus attention on the game even if there's little reason for anyone else to want it once cracked. Then they flood Usenet and torrents as part of bragging about their success. Companies interpret all this attention as demand, which would theoretically otherwise result in sales. That's the first source of pressure for DRM measures.
The second source comes about when people download these cracked versions, just because it theoretically costs so little to find out if this game sucks as much as the last one, or for bragging rights to friends and similar reasons. This model is a mistaken cost analysis. The downloaders aren't taking into account the hidden costs of encouraging companies to think real demand exists for games which actually suck. The result is more sucky games and more companies falsely thinking they have a product that would sell like hotcakes if they could just get a DRM solution that was actually uncrackable, at least for the first month or so.
Unfortunately, since downloading numbers are hard/expensive to estimate with any accuracy, the smaller companies have to go mostly on the time it takes for the software to be cracked and uploaded. Thus it only takes one guy to start the DRM ball rolling if he targets a smaller company. Companies that can actually afford to get some independent estimates of how many people are sharing a torrent or downloading from a particular Usenet provider might occasionally get a reality check if dowmloads are flat, but that group consists of a few large movie or music distributers, and very few gaming companies do much in gathering download data. Most of them feel they simply can't afford it, beyond maybe paying someone to watch for it to be initially uploaded to usenet wares groups.
Who is John Cabal?
The free aspect may be a large part, but not always. Some software is ridiculously overpriced - Look at Photoshop, Dreamweaver, etc- full editions can go for more than some people make a week. If you're a work-from-home freelance web dev, you don't want to shell out that much. Yet, if you don't use them, few companies will want your work, since it's not using "industry standard" tools. That said, I personally don't download any games from torrents etc, and I think it is wrong to use pirated software if you're making a profit from it (e.g. copied photoshop, and you're a graphic designer). What I have done is had friends over who bring games they own. We/I play for a while, and if I like the game, I buy it. If not, then it gets deleted. Furthermore, I haven't bought any games in a while because (as has been pointed out before) many are crap. The last game I bought was Portal, and that was because my video card came with a demo that I liked... I can't remember how long before that it was that I bought any games...
Evolution - Est. 4500000000 B.C. Don't piss in the gene pool.
There's a gameplay video of Conviction - it certainly doesn't remind me of the old games, but it still looks like a good game. I don't think Double Agent is a bad game - but the horribly buggy PC version ruined it for me.
Of course, not only is quality of product important...but, Has Ubisoft heard about the World Wide Recession?!?!?!?! Do you think it *might* have something to do with their sales?!?!?!
And if they want to compare to a Movie...well, a movie is almost an impulse buy, with maybe $8-$15 price wise...but when you start talking around $50 for a game....if you don't know where you next pay check is coming from, it's hard to justify a layout of $50 a pop,
Way back when, games for 6502 CPUs used to have all sorts of copy protection, I mean they even tried having deliberately, but uniquely damaged floppies as copy protect....but they all gave it up, as it cost so much to research and implement copy protection that it was driving up the costs, and the cracks would still come out within days of the titles. So they dropped all copy protection, and their profits went up.
I wish these game companies would look at history before repeating it...
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
They think they are! That's the whole point of DRM... Make it so the pirate copy isn't as good as the legal one.
No, that's focusing on the wrong side of the equation. Focus on making the legit copy better, not on making the pirate copy worse.
There's no way to make the legal copy better than the pirate one, other than the fact that it's legal and you don't feel bad about it.
Not true.
Even MMOs eventually get server emulators.
Yes, they do. And you know what?
The various WoW emulated servers are much worse than the legit ones. Quests are constantly screwed up, every update breaks something, it's difficult to even get a copy, at which point you still have to compile from source...
The legit WoW servers are where all your friends are. That network effect alone is what keeps people on Facebook, for example. When Frozen Throne came out, the legit servers had it, and the pirate servers very likely broke. It also means you can actually call Blizzard for support, vote with your dollars, etc. There's the Armory page...
I mean, I could go on.
It doesn't even have to go that far -- take Steam. A legit copy of a game means I can walk up to any PC, download the steam client, type my password, and download the game. I can install it on as many PCs as I want that way. I get to be part of the community -- I can IM people I play with through the "friends" network, and we can invite each other to join a given server via an IM. And I get achievements.
A pirate copy means I can more easily play offline. That's it.
Now, granted, some people will take the better offline play every time -- for example, anyone in the military, where Internet access is scarce and tightly controlled. But to me, that's actually a reasonable trade -- I would much rather have a legit copy than not.
Even Windows is this way. Legit copy of windows means I can keep doing Windows Updates for as long as they exist, without having to worry about something breaking. Cracked Windows means I have to be careful that some upgrade doesn't invalidate my copy, alert Microsoft, etc. Add up the amount of time wasted by a pirate copy of Windows, multiply by your hourly rate, and compare to the price of a legit copy. Cracked copies are getting pretty good, but for me, it's still a no-brainer to stay legit.
It's impossible to make a legit one unambiguously better for everyone, but it absolutely is possible to make the legit copy better for enough people that you make a profit.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
It may amaze you that I am actually a professional computer games developer. I am a "victim" who's work has been pirated probably many more times than it has been paid for. However in the industry, even with the publishers, your hard-line attitude is not particularly common. The key goal is to get people to pay money for software, not to stop people from playing the software without paying. If a copy of a computer game is bought by someone who has seen his friend play a pirate version, then that is a sale as much as any other. That is what makes money. I would get more money from someone who buys ten games and pirates another ten than one who plays none at all.
Secondly, what you clearly don't understand is that developers _want_ to have their game played, just like an artist wants their work viewed. It is nothing even close to being just a profit making venture in the eyes of the developers (I could be making double my salary in another field). THAT is why Ubisoft should be and for the most part probably is thanking pirates, since they are largely the ones playing the games. Developers mainly want more people to look on their works and be impressed, money just allows them to make more.
Anyway, sadly I cannot continue this argument due to time constraints, it's been fun but ultimately pointless.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem