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

Spend your money right

[dk90406]

Ubisoft: Your development budget is better spent on developing good games (I am not saying your current games are bad - I have no experience with them), than yet another copyright scheme that will be broken.

Re:Spend your money right

[JohhnyTHM]

The parent is spot on. Most UbiSoft releases are utter dross.

The only title of theirs that I have been interested in recently was Far Cry 2, which I didn't buy (or copy) due to the SecuRom with limited installs. There was a thread on the UbiSoft website begging them not to use SecuRom, with some polite, thought out reasons why it was a bad idea. When the game was cracked five days before the official release date I pointed out that those downloading it didn't have to put up with SecuRom and limited installs like the paying customers did. My forum account was banned. For telling the truth. Apparently it was considered to be promoting piracy.

Way to fuck off those willing to buy your games Ubi!

Maybe this is the real reason sales are down?

Anti-piracy tool

[mwvdlee]

they are working on a new anti-piracy tool that should be ready by the end of 2009

In other news, hackers are working on breaking Ubisoft's new anti-piracy tool. They expect it to be cracked by the end of 2009 plus one day.

New anti-piracy tool, eh?

[Caboosian]

Here's your best anti-piracy tool: Drop the price on new PC games to $40, and ffs, stop treating your customers like thieves.

Re:New anti-piracy tool, eh?

[borizz]

Actually, no. At $1 I'd buy a shitload of games.

I'm just not ready to drop 50 euros on a game (which is what they ask where I live). For example, I waited until Left 4 Dead was on weekend special on Steam so I could get it for under 20 euros. That's a price I'm more than willing to pay.

Re:New anti-piracy tool, eh?

[SanityInAnarchy]

When I was employed, I had plenty of money to afford games, and I was willing and ready to spend it. I wrote this journal entry describing that situation:

If Mirror's Edge comes, say, as a Steam game -- not like Bioshock, but actually just a Steam game, with no additional protection -- I'd buy it in a heartbeat. On opening day. Make it DRM-free, and I'll consider preordering.
If it comes with anywhere near the level of DRM you're currently requiring for Spore, even this "relaxed" version, I will head over to the nearest torrent site and download a copy. I have plenty of money to spend, yes, but not plenty of time to waste proving that I own something.

Now, understand, I'm not saying everyone is like me. But I was pretty much their ideal customer -- young, male, computer enthusiast, I love games, and I had money to spend on them. If they're losing me as a customer, it raises the question: Just where do they think they're going to get customers?

As it is, I'm unemployed, so I don't have that money -- nor do I really have much time to game, when it could be spent looking for a job. As you say:

You can live without a game.

You also made a good point without realizing it:

Piracy is the competition

Any company that actually realizes that piracy is their competition has taken the first step towards fighting it. If you treat piracy as this evil, criminal act, and try to stop it with force, you will get nowhere. Instead, you can stop it by making the legitimate copy a better product than the pirated one.

Now, to address your other points:

They could be selling it for $1.00 and still they would pirate it. Probably coming up with some excuse that it is so cheap that it should be free anyways.

If this were true, don't you think the same would happen to Amazon MP3 and the iTunes store? Yes, people pirate, but those stores are still wildly successful.

In fact, that's probably the point.

High piracy rates show that there is demand for the game

They show that there's demand for the game at zero dollars. They don't show that any single person who pirated the game would've been willing to pay for it, if piracy wasn't an option.

As I said, I'm currently unemployed. My choice now is to either not play games, or to pirate games. I mostly choose to not play games, but the effect on the developer is the same -- they don't get my money.

And I'd think they would rather have me pirate the game than not play at all.

When will they learn

[raymansean]

When will they learn that lack of sales != piracy? Lack of sales implies that people are not willing to pay the price you want for what you have to offer. This may be a direct cause of a tanked economy or your product sucks. There are plenty of reasons why your product will not sell piracy is not one of them.

Let's see what ubisoft's successful games are...

[freedom_india]

...FarCry, Unreal, heroes of might & magic, & Prince of Persia.
All these had their day and now are as dead as Duke Nukem. The Rest of Ubisoft's vaunted arsenal of games are either unplayable or so bad that using them as coffee coasters seem an insult to the coffee.
Ubisoft's CEO seems to have his head so far up his a$$ that he gets high on his own "perfume".
Instead of blaming his company's utter failure to produce good, replayable games with deep themes and good graphics, he blames an outside factor that his beyond his ability to control.
What makes him think he will succeed where the Evil Empire Sony's SecuROM and other hundreds of copy-protection have failed?
His Capitalism 2 doesn't play on Windows 7 64-bit. When asked, his company's cold reply was that i switch back to Windows XP.
Uru was a rockin' failure and a complete insult to Myst.
As usual, corporate CEOs are so far removed from reality that they can continue to fool stockholders every single day with more fairy tales of their own.
I would start shorting Ubisoft's stock from today, if i can.

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.

Starforce again?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Copy Protection

[Razalhague]

The only type of copy protection that won't be cracked is the one protecting something nobody gives a shit about.

Re:Anti-privacy tool?

[moon3]

Anti-sales tool, that is the third reading here..