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Future Ubisoft Games To Require Constant Internet Access
Following up on our discussion yesterday of annoying game distribution platforms, Ubisoft has announced the details of their Online Services Platform, which they will use to distribute and administer future PC game releases. The platform will require internet access in order to play installed games, saved games will be stored remotely, and the game you're playing will even pause and try to reconnect if your connection is lost during play. Quoting Rock, Paper, Shotgun:
"This seems like such a bizarre, bewildering backward step. Of course we haven't experienced it yet, but based on Ubi’s own description of the system so many concerns arise. Yes, certainly, most people have the internet all the time on their PCs. But not all people. So already a percentage of the audience is lost. Then comes those who own gaming laptops, who now will not be able to play games on trains, buses, in the park, or anywhere they may not be able to find a WiFi connection (something that’s rarely free in the UK, of course – fancy paying the £10/hour in the airport to play your Ubisoft game?). Then there's the day your internet is down, and the engineers can’t come out to fix it until tomorrow. No game for you. Or any of the dozens of other situations when the internet is not available to a player. But further, there are people who do not wish to let a publisher know their private gaming habits. People who do not wish to report in to a company they’ve no affiliation with, nor accountability to, whenever they play a game they’ve legally bought. People who don’t want their save data stored remotely. This new system renders all customers beholden to Ubisoft in perpetuity whenever they buy their games."
How can this even remotely be considered a good idea? I do understand the burning desire for customer dependency, demographic information and all that, but seriously...I'd be very irritated if I were in a tricky spot, my network dropped briefly, and the game responded in such a fashion. Probably irritated enough to return it, if I hadn't been aware of the issue beforehand.
I'm sure there are lots of people who don't have reasonably priced internet access all the time. For example, people who travel on business. It's a while since I did that, but I wouldn't fancy paying ten bucks a night extra just so I can play my games.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I think the rampant PC game piracy (almost 80-90%) can be blamed for this somewhat. The best battle against piracy is to make the game use online features as much as possible. It will require complete rewrite of the back-end systems or the game code to get those features in pirated version and that is a huge amount of work. Just look at how succesful MMO's and online multiplayer games are with this. This is just taking it to next level and protecting the single player games too.
While this will be little pain in the ass for some customers too, something definitely needs to be done for PC piracy. The profit margins could be really improved if it was impossible to pirate games, resulting in better and more games. There would be more indie games released too, because publishers would be able to take more risks. Otherwise the publishers will just forget about PC gaming and make games for consoles. MW2 was already a little bit in to that direction.
At least they're stated this (which can be considered legally binding)
What if Ubisoft decides not run these online services in the future? Will my game stop working?
Ubisoft is committed to being a forerunner in providing new exciting online service. If any service is stopped, we will create a patch for the game so that the core game play will not be affected.
Geez, I thought Steam had shown the way and we'd got over this idea of needing a permenant internet connection for single player games. Obviously not then...
Pirated games are simply superior.
Pirated games treat me like admin of my own computer.
Legitimate game do not.
I really do not need any other reason to refuse to use anything but pirated games.
It is MY hardware, not ubisoft / Ea / etc
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
It's as though somebody managed to take everything that sucks about cloud computing and combine it with everything that sucks about local client computing.
All of the high system requirements and per-machine installation(and probably a dozen background processes and some kernel-mode driver that breaks your DVD drive) of a local application, combined with all the vendor lock-in, violation of First Sale, and high connectivity requirements and costs of a cloud app. Good work, guys.
I suggest a slogan. "Ubisoft: We make single-player games that require more internet access than Gmail, for fuck's sake."
This is either stupidity or an intentionally over the top "announcement" designed to soften people up so that when they release the actual platform people are relieved that it only phones home every hour instead of continuously.
Very few people are going to accept requiring 24/7 connectivity to play their games; given the number of times a day that I lose connection to Steam for a couple of minutes for whatever reason, if it had a system like this I'd never be able to play any of my games without interruption. And God help you if you're playing a multiplayer game and you lose connection to Ubisoft but not to the server you're playing on; forget blaming lag, you can just blame the fact that your game was paused for 30 seconds while it re-established a connection to Ubi.
Oh and we're sorry we deleted all your save games, but these things happen and the agreement you signed means we don't have any responsibility to protect your data while it's sitting on our servers. Again, Steam has it right here with their cloud settings, you *sync* the information with the local machine, you don't store it all remotely.
I'm not the first to say this, and I certainly won't be the last, but this sort of copy protection nonsense is just another reason I'll be cracking games that I've paid for. Services constantly running on your computer are not acceptable. Punishing people who give you money because not everyone who plays your game gives you money is not acceptable. It's not as though there will ever be a magical, uncrackable copy protection system. Furthermore, this will push some people who would have actually bought the game to download a pirated version instead.
That'll keep those damn crackers away from your profit margins!
I sometimes wonder if the major publishers Technical Advisor for content protection is actually just a guy with a speaking ET toy.
"Phoooone hoooooome."
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
I blame this ridiculous "Cloud computing" craze. If it worked poorly in the 60s, why in the hell would we want to go back to it? The move towards thick clients is the only reason all the security breaches and viruses haven't been as bad as they could have. Storing all your eggs in one basket is just a stupid, stupid idea given the current situation of the world today.
Oh, and no more Ubisoft games for me. I don't support stupid ideas.
To Not Appear In My Home. :(
Fighting an option by making it better is simply stupid.
I'll just stop buying Ubisoft games unless they release a Steam version with the possibility of offline playing.
They want the advantages of a MMO? Then make a fucking MMO. (Which I wouldn't play, but that's besides the point).
And rest in peace, Ubisoft.
Seriously, take a stand. If it works for them then all other publishers will do the same. Stop buying their games _now_.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Now you will have even more people pirating your games because they will be bothered by your antipiracy measures, even though they bought titles legally.
Just like everyone who buys legal dvd needs to watch fbi warning, despite the fact he didn't do anything bad. That's ingenious.
Why don't they just use the old "dongle" approach?
If part of the game is inside a usb-stick, with some added cryptography to spice it up a little, it can be just as safe.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
I'll just play fun indie games instead.
It seems to me, that some big shot looked at Steam's success story, decided "hey, we can cut out the middle man (Steam), place even more draconian restrictions on gameplay and make more money!" without considering any of the real issues involved.
The corner of a round room
I hope they will put this requirement clearly on the boxes of any DVD/CD media, so I can avoid them.
Yes, I'm one of those people who still prefer to buy games as dvd/cd, mainly because I want to avoid giving out credit card/PayPal information, when I do not have to.
Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!
...when my connection is down.
When I have the net, I usually surf the net. My connection isn't very good. I get outages once-twice a week. This is when I launch a game. I have the content offline, and I don't need the connection to enjoy it.
I'm not concerned with Ubisoft's move. I'll just make sure never to buy their originals. I'm pretty sure the cracks will remove the necessity for network connection. OTOH, I will keep purchasing games that don't require network connection to run.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Let's see...
Legally bought: can only play it at home or wherever I manage to find a free and reliable internet connection that does not suck (which is a minority of them)
Cracked: can play it at home, in the backseat of a car, on the bus, on the train, on the plane, in the park, at the airport, ANYWHERE.
And the best part is that the cracked version is free! Why waste money on an inferior product, then?
The only downside is that the cracked version is only released about a week after the official version.
What if I want to play on a laptop on the go? What if my internet connection is down? What if I don't have/want an internet connection?
So they're doing this because of pirated games. Right... You know, they're just legitimizing cracking their own games. Unless the actual game is HOSTED on their servers, just using the net to substitute the countless "CD protection" methods is pretty damn lame.
Another thing, just while I'm at it. I think a better option than locking people down using a multitude of creative methods - make them want to pay for stuff. MMOGs have accomplished that. I spent at least 15-25 USD a month for the last 2-3 years on those.
Ubisoft, wtf?
o hai
I think the article missed one of the possible sources of annoyance, in that the games will not only need an active connection to the interwebs on your side, but also a listening Ubisoft server on the other side. What happens if Ubisoft's servers don't run, or happen to "not find" a savegame, or it gets corrupted or anything? Can we then blame Ubisoft and demand reparation? This strikes as such a bad idea on so many levels that it's hard to believe any company would go down that path. So, no more Ubisoft games for me, I suppose. (Oh, wait, the last PC game I bought must be at least 5 years old, and I much prefer playing table-top games (you know, the ones with social gaming built-in right from the start? ;-) ), or console stuff if it "has" to be electronic, so I guess I shouldn't feel concerned too much :-) )
Did everyone forget that EA's already doing this in a couple months with Command & Conquer 4? Citation on Wikipedia: "In addition, Command & Conquer 4 will require the player to be online at all times regardless of whether the player is playing single-player campaigns or skirmishes or online play"
A while ago I decided that I'll switch to PC only gaming.
This was for one reason: I will always be able to play the games I own.
Consoles break, hardware can become irreplaceable, chips can burn out, backup batteries die, ROMs have questionable copyright.
But PC's will be forever.
I can even play some older games on QEMU right now. In 50 years I will be able to play today's games on an emulated system with an emulated GPU & CPU.
Many (if not most) of today's games have the multi-player component as a critical part of game-play. Playing them on a non-networked computer would be virtually pointless. The benefit of this setup is that I could go to an internet cafe, a friends house or work and start up a game, while being in exactly the same place in the game as at home. But haven't some games had that ability for many years?
Either way, without stand-alone gameplay - I'm not interested. I want to make sure that someday (in the far future) I will be able to play the games I play today with my great-grand-kids, instead of receiving a message like "Sorry, Can't connect to server", "ipv9 not supported", or "Gameplay not available, server offline since 2011".
This is *exactly* the line of bullshit that made me buy a console. There is simply less of it there for now: compare GTA IV on PC and Xbox 360. PC is just a stupid situation. So, already bonehead decisions by stupid out-of-touch executives have already stopped me from purchasing PC games. Please don't extend that to the consoles because then I'd have to stop purchasing games altogether. Notice I said purchasing, I'm sure there will be versions available that aren't stupid. Way to go Ubisoft: you just connected yourself with "bullshit" in *my* mind, so *my* money is forever out of your grasp until you become less stupid.
Shh.
My dartboard/shuriken target needs a new hate-face. Does anyone have a decent photo of Ubisoft's current CEO? Preferably smiling slimily but grinning inanely will also do. Must be headshot sized.
Ubisoft can kiss any ideas about tapping into the african market goodbye.. South Africa, which has one of the more "advanced" telecommunication networks in Africa has less than 10% of its population on Internet, and most of those are dial-ups. The rest of Africa is so far in the dark that the countries finally embracing the world of Internet are bypassing fixed lines and going straight for cellphones.. I can hardly see them jumping on this idea soon.. Long story short : Permanent internet requirement == no 3rd World users
So Ubisoft is going mandate ridiculous DRM measures. Ubisoft. This is the company/publisher who, as far as I can tell, has barely produced one game that didn't suck in a long time. And that's just because compared to Assassin's Creed 1, it'd be hard for 2 not to look good. Yeah. So long Ubisoft, I can't say it was fun.
Maybe this is a good thing, though. Someone like Blizzard doing this would have people grumbling and moaning and everyone would still put up with it because they need their WoW or Diablo 3 or Starcraft 2 or whatever. If someone like Ubisoft does it, and it's just one more reason for people not to buy their crap, and they go under, maybe it will make other companies think twice before trying similar stupidity. Maybe.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Great to see that Ubisoft continues the time honoured tradition of screwing over the actual customers. Who ever thought they could make a system even more obnoxious than the code wheel? I'm not going to ask for permission to play my games so blow it out your posterior Ubisoft.
Yes, internet connections sometimes go down. Yes, some people have gaming laptops.
Ubisoft know this. They know a portion of their player base doesn't have always on internet. They have market research people who determine how much this is going to cost them. They already know and have decided the benefits are greater than the cost.
And don't forget, when they decide not to support said game any more, you won't be able to play it any more either.
Game review websites and magazines ought to unite on this issue and give games failing scores if they do not allow for offline play when in self-contained single player mode.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
I own at least 1 game from Ubisoft: Chessmaster X. And it came with the annoying "feature" of having to insert the game CD each time you wanted to play (online or offline). In addition to this, it had the typical activation code (to play on-line).
They realized this measure was stupid because they launched (months after) a patch which disabled this protecction measure.
May be it is reasonable to require any sort of on-line checking, when you are trying to play on-line (e.g. CS or Quake-like shooter game). But it's absurd if the game may be intended to play off-line (imagine you just want to analyze a chess game).
Anyway. People would avoid all the cumbersome cracks (and associated viruses and trojans), if they had the chance to get their games (or software) for a reasonable price. More in the case of games, where a great part of user base is made of young people with a reduced budget.
Most current intellectual property "defenders" start from a false premise: people would buy your product if they could not get it for free. In that case, it is obvious that people would consume less products (and therefore authors would get less money either way).
What most current intellectual property "defenders" are trying to do, is making of the "intellectual property rights" a business on itself, and trying to milk the inviting Internet "cow".
Yet another example of a company attempting to make life difficult for pirates but managing only to annoy and inconvenience legitimate users. People who actually buy the game are going to be faced with restrictions that will, at some point, hinder their ability to use the copy of the game they legally bought while pirates will find a way to crack the system in less than a week and will then be able to use their ill-gotten goods the way they want.
I understand major media companies consider piracy to be a major problem. I understand we're not likely to ever change that opinion. But. It would be nice if they got everything in perspective and realized that they should not hinder legitimate customers in their war against pirates. All that will do is either drive those legitimate customers away or, worse, turn them in to pirates.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubisoft#Controversies
- use of the StarForce copy protection
- ceased to provide his games to a magazine that had negative reviews of their games
- admit to release low quality games that need additional promotion to be sold
im not going to buy a game if i need to connected to the net an absolute rubbish idea, unless im playing multiplayer of course :)
Blame *greed*.
They're the ones using it.
They did create some very good games, but I'm not buying anything with SecuROM in it, no matter how good the game. Now they want to add 'needs permanent net access'? If I wasn't already blocking them on my shopping list, I'd be doing it now...l
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
of ubisoft games.
Let n = required access to internet (so constant access = n->infiniti)
f(n) = 1/((e^n)^n)
An internal system operation returned the error "The operation completed successfully.".
Why is Ubisoft forcing their loyal customers to sign up for a Ubisoft account when they don't want to give their private data and only play single player games?
We hope that customers will feel as we do, that signing up for an account will offer them exceptional gameplay and services that are not available otherwise.
"services not available otherwise"
Yes, I'm sure customers will feel that.
(just like jumping onto a bike without a seat)
Hoist the black and white flag matey! Argh.
There are other ways to prevent software piracy without requiring constant internet access. Look up "Software Piracy" at the patent application section of the patent office. I have at least one proposal of my own. There are others. For one thing, having to go on line prevents parents with multiple children from enjoying multi-computer games with them. Allowing Big Brother to monitor what parents are doing with their children, or allowing what their children do, cannot be the right way to do this.
If you want to take a stand, simply do not buy their games. Boycotts never work unfortunately, but all you can do to hurt them, is not give them your money.
I expect this will just lead to massive pirating of Ubisoft games. Of course... I've never owned a Ubisoft game because most of them are garbage anyways.
The pirates will still get the games they want for free.
Because of 'rampant piracy' when Spore came out a few years ago, they designed an anti-piracy model for the progam, and they said it was uncrackable. It was cracked either that day or the next, I can't remember. The pirates could play no problem, because they had the technical know-how to set everything up and bypass the restrictions.
Legitimate purchasers of the content, however, met a wall of DRM restrictions, sometimes making it next to impossible to play the game that you paid for, because the disc or verificiation system gave a false positive for pirated content, or your CD-ROM drive wasn't right right type to accept the SecuROM (forgive me if they didn't use secuROM, it's just an example).
tl;dr: The pirates will still get what they want. The customers are the primary ones to suffer.
I literally don't want just these publisher's games cracked and released to the masses but I want these companies to suffer and go out of business entirely.
Less reasons to buy, more reasons to pirate.
I wonder if their Bankruptcy game will be realistic.
I never really played much if any of Ubisoft's games. That being said, if other game companies follow through with more crazy design ideas like that I'm just going to toss out Windows gaming all together from my list of things to do. These days people aren't building games that are worth all that hassle. Hell between Wine + older games that don't work on Win7 and the game selection in Ubuntu's software manager I can get enough games to keep me occupied.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Too bad if they go broke, don't keep the servers running and can't afford to release a patch - there goes your gaming bux.
A week ago, I nearly picked up a copy of CitiesXL, being a big fan of Sim-City type games. I decided not to, and to read a few **USER** reviews first (don't get me started on professional games reviews). Definitely was a good move.
The game includes an subscription model if you want to play online, along with a free standalone mode. Unfortunately, certain vital elements such as public transport are not available to non-subscribers, meaning your £30 game is next to useless unless you want to subscribe. To me, that is just appalling.
I'm not against subscription gaming WOW-style where what you're buying is known from the off. But tricking people into buying a subscription game when they think they're buying a full-price standalone game is blantantly dishonest. Very few user reviews gave the game more than 1 out of 10 (or whatever the lowest possible score was).
... I can summarize the comments here rather succinctly. Fuck Ubisoft and fuck their games.
Well no doubt about, the pirated versions of ubi games will be ridiculously superior to the actually buying the game from ubi
However, i don't really like to download pirated software for security reasons, so I guess I'll just NEVER AGAIN BUY AN UBI SOFT GAME.
Between the choice of paying ubi to screw me and not playing their games, it's a no-brainer decision.
I agree with what was said. The paying customers are going to be the one annoyed. I've always been found of Ubi but this is just stupid and I don't buy game to be annoyed, but to have some good time. So I guess I will not be playing these type of games. Or maybe they will offer so much more than just a solo game, something compelling for the customer like MMOs do.
I don't see how this will constitute a better anti-hacking measure, since it could be relatively easy to bypass (will know when it's there). It is also tempting to exploit. Let say someone makes a server pirates to enable the same functionality, noting prevent this hacker from storing and using all the information the server will grab. So out of a sudden Ubi just added another way for scammer to scam you and parasite all those PC... Good job Ubisoft you are going to annoy every one.
> and It's only going to get worse.
IMO, it will eventually stabilize at a the point where competition from other types of entertainment is making the game maker lose money. I hope it won't take them too long to figure this out (as opposed to approaching Congress to get some kind of kick-backs because of "revenues lost to piracy").
If technological progress will make it less capital intensive to produce professional games, one can hope that there will be rogue game production companies who produce games with less onerous DRM.
Wow, Ubisoft is really a visionary company! They make decisions that would make sense 20 years from now, as far as Internet connection availability is concerned....
The more annoying the copy protection, the faster it gets hacked. Now I'm not going to start the whole "piracy" argument (I am sure it has begun already). I will merely state that even owners of legitimate copies will be downloading the "crack" to remove this feature.
I can't see any possible way how this would boost sales, however. Before you used to have to look very hard to find these things. Today everyone knows where to get the cracks (and the whole program) instantly (ok so it takes a while to download 7GB). In fact the single biggest factor affecting sales will probably be whether the pirates only distribute the crack bundled with the program only, or stand alone.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Is this really any more restrictive than MMOs requiring an Internet connection to play? WoW requires you to be online, and your character resides on their servers - how are Ubisoft's requirements any different?
Did all of you MMORPERGERs piss and moan this much when you started playing?
While most stores allow you to return items easily without having a good reason it is in no way mandatory. If the item is defective, yes, then you have a point. But for a non-defective item you are limited to what the vendor offers you. That might be a complete refund, or a coupon towards future purchases, or even nothing at all. All sales are final, in principle.
I mean that from 2 points-of-view: 1. Goodbye from me as a paying customer, you will never get me to buy a game infested with this crap. 2. Goodbye Ubisoft, you are literally shooting yourself in the foot with this braindead idea. Pull your head out of your arse before it's too late.
"ERROR: In order to better accomodate our users' needs, we occasionally collect system specifications and demographic information.
This process has been temporarily obstructed and gameplay will be paused until it is allowed to continue. If the problem persists, please reinstall.
Err code 7uck3d: Bonzai Buddy helper object not found."
If the Internet Connection is unable to resume you can continue the game from where you left off or from the last saved game.
for how long?
also then should make that window a little bigger more like a week of no Internet.
Hell, I don't buy their games now & they haven't had anything I've even been remotely interested in since Beyond Good & Evil in 2003.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Everything the tech industry is up to these days leads me to believe that they just want to run their industry into the ground. I am the sort of person who has been heavily into games, computers, and the latest and greatest gadgets since a kid. I was the first computer user on my block, was an early adopter to the internet, and played every game I could get my hands on. I am at the point, with google spying on me for the government, games threatening to store my data on a remote server, Credit bueros threatening to use any online presence of mine against me, ISPs funneling my browsing habits through NSA hubs, Cell phones being tapped and triangulated, emails being rifled through, etc.. that foregoing my love of technology seems more beneficial than the spit in the face and twist of the arm that tech companies deliver in the modern day. It simply isn't worth the obscene invasion of privacy that modern tech involves. No longer do they provide a valuable service that makes my life easier. In recent time, they offer less and less useful functionality and quality, while nickel and diming me any chance they get, and spying on me at every possible juncture, for every possible reason. They don't respond to the free market demands, as they should in a free society. . . in reality, they force their will on the consumer with or without their consent, and destroy any of their free market competition to ensure market dominance, and use their connections to buy off politicians in order to strongarm me even further.
Where are anti-trust laws to protect the free market, and prevent these 2 or 3 pole market monopolies? Where are privacy laws in protecting our personal information from being illegally extracted from us? Where is innocent until proven guilty?
Ladies and gentlemen, we are in a fascist society, if I've ever seen one. The rhetoric is friendlier, and the excuses are updated for our modern culture, but how is this much different than Soviet Russia? There aren't any concentration camps. That seems to be the only remaining step into utter depravity. Everyone is treated like the worst criminal, regardless of how law abiding they are. Everyone is subject to living as if they are in a prison, except in prison, they get free food and lodging. What detterrent does society even have anymore for comitting crimes, you are treated like scum whether you are comitting criminal acts or not.
Who are leading the charge? Tech companies. All I know is THIS former tech junkie is starting to look toward the low tech, organic alternative as much more beneficial and desirable. Thanks a lot, gadget/tech/gaming industry. You ruined it. Bastards.
Change you can believe in... indeed. BAH!
Ubisoft has been ridiculously hostile to PC gamers in the fairly recent past. You can't even play the ending to one of their games on the PC because of the piracy bogeyman. It's well within the realm of possibility that Ubisoft would take it one step further. Maybe this will encourage them to start releasing DLC for their PC games. But I doubt it.
Rob
Yet another concern I have is that if my game has to constantly phone home, what happens when they stop providing service 10 years from now? I want to buy games, not rent them.
Either way, without stand-alone gameplay - I'm not interested.
Another convert to games from smaller publishers, I take it.
I am not ready to pay $30-$50 for any Ubisoft game, that I can play forever. I don't play their game at all, though.
Yet, I pay $30 for 2 EVE online accounts. Every month.
Hasn't anyone learned from EA's mistakes? Wasn't Spore like the most pirated game of 2009? These publishers need to quit being greedy. Make a good game, rid it of ANY DRM, and sell it. You'll get your money.
In the beginning, there was null.
Game review websites and magazines ought to unite on this issue and give games failing scores if they do not allow for offline play when in self-contained single player mode.
Then watch publishers of PC games remove the "self-contained single player mode" from the gold version and add it back as DLC after all the reviews have gone to press. A reviewer who failed, say, Blizzard's World of Warcraft for not including such a "self-contained single player mode" would have lost credibility.
But, if there is something I've learned for the Modern Warfare 2 release, it's that people who are unhappy about aspects of it still BUY THE GAME. The reality is that for all the righteous indignation bandied around on forums and so forth, it still means a very minor percentage of people will actually put their big words into action. So, like it or not, they can get away with it. Remember all the woe of WoW users? So few of them quit. As I say, like it not, people can be exploited. If you have hype and you can get away with a lot of naughty stuff.
I wager this will result in a crescendo of personal affirmations of how you've never bowed down in such a situation. Well, that's great. You are in the minority.
I record my sleeptalking
Ubisoft are not the first company to do this. My previous employers, Jagex, launched a games portal about two years ago where all the games required a continuous internet connection... including the single player games.
I'm not going to compare and contrast the technical details, as I don't know Ubisoft's secrets and I'm still bound by a confidentiality clause from Jagex. The social effects, however, are discoverable from publicly available information from multiple online game providers, not just Jagex, and are therefore not something I have to keep silent about :)
So I really don't understand why Ubisoft thinks I'm going to buy a non-MMO game from them that I'll never be able to play.
if you want something you can count on, pirate it
There have been a few games I almost bought in these last years after playing them through alternative means because I liked them that much. But then, inevitably, I found out they had DRM. So I didn't buy them.
PCs are not consoles. With this ubisoft announcement they are really ensuring I won't be purchasing any.
What happens when I find my old game and want to play it say 10 or 20 years from now and they don't have their server up or the company doesn't exist anymore?
I'll start off by agreeing that a single player mode game should not require internet all the time.
However, the argument of not having internet all the time does not stand up either.
My first thought when reading the article is they are trying to fight piracy which won't work because everything gets cracked eventually. To me it looks like Ubisoft has seen how many people play MMO style games (WoW) and want in on that market. The fault I see is that Ubisoft hasn't considered how many people are actually addicted to the MMO they play already so their idea will fail.
will people on sat internet be lagged and faped out of this?
will people on dial up be to slow to play at all?
There's nothing bizarre or bewildering, It's just greed at work, they wanna make sure games have a 'best played before date'. They pull the plug on the server after couple years and launch the 'new' version of the game force people to buy their new crap which is the old stuff which has been slightly redone with more boobs explosions and walky talkies as guns..
How about college students, who can't afford an internet connection, but want to play their games? Or ones who don't have a reliable connection because of the amount of others using the same connection? Whoops, lost another part of your audience.
It amazes me how some of you can rationalize pirating. Just because they have some shitty DRM system that is a reason to pirate......no.....it is a reason to avoid the game all together. Piracy = theft. Someone had to write the code for these games and that takes time and we all know, Time = Money. I often get disgusted with the slashdot community when it comes to issues like this. Piracy is wrong, it is that simple. If you can not afford a car, you do not go and steal one, you just do not have a car. If you cannot afford a game title you should not go steal the game. It is pretty much the same thing, theft is theft.
we don't think that we're losing sales due to piracy, and we have no intention of trying to fight it.
Huzzah! Someone was hit by sense instead of marketing for once!
I reserve the right to have a physical object so I can sell it later, and recover my money.
So buy it on play.com, and use steam when there's a deal.
Also, watch for packages. There's a big one for $99 that includes:
Half Life 1+2, plus the HL2 extra episodes
Team Fortress
DoD
Left 4 Dead 1+2
(a bunch of other little addons etc)
At Xmas that was on sale for $75. Not back for all the games you get.
You guys that are thinking that this has anything to do with piracy are dwelling in the last decade. MMO's have changed everything. The current game needs to be online only, needs to bar unauthorized mods, and needs to be released in episodic portions. This is the only way a game company is willing to compete, because the MMO model has proven to be ridiculously better, for the game company, than the 'first sale' model ever was.
This means Ubisoft, EA, and every other game company everywhere. This will migrate to the Xbox, PlayStation, and Wii. There's just no compelling reason for a games company to skip out on perpetual revenue.
As for the 'sometimes I am not connected' position, I can speak to that. My crappy cable internet goes down constantly, and I can't play anything when that happens. Or, rather, I can, but everything I have is old and boring by then. I can't download anything, I can't surf Facebook, I can't read, I can't use fully 90% of what I normally use my computer to do. The industry types know this. They know that if my internet is down I'll be screaming at someone other than the game company about not being able to play.
They could support the 'on the train to school' customer. However, their market research probably tells them that you are more interested in using your iPhone, netbook, or similar device in that situation than a full-powered laptop. Half of you don't have good enough batteries to make the whole trip anyway.
In short if you're jumping to 'OMG PIRATES' as the excuse of the day, you're just blind to how much we are changing as a society.
I was an early adopter of Steam. If you are like me, and have not been a habitual pirate, Steam is awesome. I don't have to have boxes of games and manuals lying around, no more swapping CDs, my computers install all of their games on their own...Steam has made games so cheap I find myself buying some and never playing them. I'm collecting them like baseball cards, or candy.
The point of all of this is I am the customer the gaming industry wants. I'm the one buying their games, and buying games for my wife and kids. They cannot afford to piss people like me off. Here is the part that everyone who works in the gaming industry should read:
IF I HAVE ONE MORE EXPERIENCE LIKE I HAD YESTERDAY WITH MASS EFFECT 2, I'LL TURN PIRATE, AND NEVER LOOK BACK. I paid full price for a game, so I can listen to my buddies who pirated it talk about it for days before I get to play it, and when I finally go to unlock the game already installed on my HD, I can't play it because EA's auth servers can't handle the load THAT ALL OF THE PRE-ORDER SALES FIGURES INFORMED THEM WAS COMING. I personally view this as incompetence or indifference on a criminal scale. As a paying customer, for the first time I felt abused, and I'm not going to put up with that again.
Clean up your act, EA. Come back to reality, Ubisoft. You are killing the golden goose.
Dear Ubisoft,
you are now the first developer on my avoidance list because of your archaic copyright controls. And this at a time where some developers/publisher start to see the light.
This will only piss off paying customers because your protection will be cracked eventually, probably within a few days after a game release. To the average pirate it will be just another NO-CD/No-Internet patch to others it will be cause frustration.
Thank you very much, fuck you.
Everyone who buys Wild Hunt will receive 16 specially prepared DLCs absolutely for free, regardless of platform.
I recently registered a DAW in which I could send them my serial number any number of ways, and the company then gave me my registration code. This could be done by email, phone, automatically during installation, (I presume) by letter, etc. They now have personal contact from me stating that I have in fact bought this specific piece of hardware (the cd) containing their software, and they give me explicit approval to now go forth and use that software, now that they know I have in fact bought it.
If they simply register who I am and put that with the serial number, all they have to do is ask me to prove that I'm me the next time someone asks to register that serial number. Simple as that.
This was $500 software. What Ubi. is making off of these games is substantially less, both in per-sale and gross profit. If this works well enough for a company that has half a grand at stake in losing a sale, why is it not good enough for folks who make $65 games?
How could you continue to play with the internet connect? You save your game to their servers. I guess they could make temporary local save, but isn't that just like doing half the work for the crackers?
I would be interested to know what the legal ramifications of a minor agreeing to the TOS for being monitored like this. Seems to me since a minor cannot sign a binding contract Ubisoft would have some liability for monitoring my computer without my permission since my son cannot legally agree to it.
Statistics show that around 90% to 95% of players on PC use pirated copies...
It's either they don't ship on PC because it's not worth it anymore or put some protection like this.
Stop pirating and there won't be a need for this type of security...
This is dissapointing because UbiSoft are one of the few remaining PC games companies that haven't been bought by EA. Ubisoft truly missed an opportunity to differnetiate and scoop sales from EA by NOT using any DRM. I guess Ubisoft will fold soon because no-one at all is stupid enough to buy anything with this amount of restrictions.
I guess the UbiSoft execs are using piracy as a convenient excuse for poor sales, when in fact most Ubisoft titles are mostly crap to begin with. As far as I can remember, there really has only ever been one really good UbiSoft game (Far Cry).
Its very ironic that DRM this restrictive will ensure piracy of Ubisoft games becomes the norm so the Ubisoft execs will be proved right in one sense, that piracy of their products is so high that it indeed justifies their excuse to have DRM. Their own self-righteousness will ensure they never accept that they actually made it happen.
Oh, yeah! That's what I want - coupons off of the next game that I buy. Seriously, does anyone get anything from class-action suits? Apart from the lawyers, of course, and sometimes the company itself. You see, I was involved in one class action suit, and all I got for it was a coupon off my next purchase of a ZIP drive. I mean, really, I got burned once, Iomega. Why would I buy your crap again?
I actually know someone who has a cabin off the grid and out of even phone service coverage, his main reason for his generator is to run his Gaming PC. I think it's funny as hell myself, but it's true. He spends thousands on his computer, upgrading regularly. He enjoys his remoteness, despite dust and heat being regular issues for his equipment failures. I wouldn't mind being able to do the same, but I'd need a good internet connection. Guess he won't be an Ubisoft customer.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
The same way Microsoft figures your copy of Windows (WGA) or Office (OGA) will suddenly become illegitimate.
Maybe after Steam gave an online mode to allow the military to use their stuff while deployed, the cheese eating surrender monkeys (it is a French company) decided to strike back by making an even worse arrangement for those who serve.
Sig under construction since 1998.
I sincerely cannot imagine this system lasting long. If UbiSoft have even remotely anticipated the number of gamers that will be playing Settlers 7 and Assassin's Creed 2, they'll know that this will place an extreme load on the servers. We're not just talking about one-time activation. We're talking a constant stream of packets. The traffic will be horrendous.
Of course, there are legal considerations as well. Of all the companies that have made use of Digital Restrictions Management, most have 'promised' to release a patch that neutralises the DRM some day but absolutely NONE have enshrined this in their EULA or any binding agreement. That's right. Zilch, zero, nada. Strange, innit?
In any case, I do not buy any games contaminated with DRM. These will be no exception.
Between the constant refresh releases of Tom Clancy titles, PoP and shitty movie tie-ins, Ubisoft hasn't exactly released anything I want to buy/play anyway. Now with this BS, fuck 'em I say.
No sig for you!!
...but with all the stuff these companies are pulling I do believe it is time to go back to dungeons and dragons with a bunch of friends, a pizza or three, and a lot of soda. These big game developers are so out of touch and it has all become about profit.
"This new system renders all customers beholden to Ubisoft in perpetuity whenever they buy their games."
And Ubisoft management says, "You say that like it's a *bad* thing."
I worked on a major AAA game title recently. We sold millions of copies for console.. a few hundred thousand for PC. We had 20 times as many unique IDs on our server, as copies sold.
Only 5-10% of PC gamers actually pay for their games. The rest just pirate them. (There are lots of reasons for this, I don't want to debate the reasons, I just want to refute your claim that nobody knows what percentage of copies are pirated.)
We should not forget the flip side to all of this. At any time someone wants, they can DOS all players of the game by DOSing the auth server. Maybe during the product launch, for instance? Not that I would ever advocate such a course of action of course...
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
I've tried explaining this to many people and so many of them don't get it. Once I buy an item, it becomes mine - that's how property rights work. The company still has the copyrights / distribution rights to the game, so I cannot legally give away or sell copies of the game, but I own the copy that they sold me and can do whatever I want with it for my own use.
No other industry is allowed to get away with trying to claim ownership of a product once it has been sold and it's completely ridiculous.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
Once they do this, it's a small step to streaming in-game advertising.
Are they trying to discourage or encourage piracy?
How pissed are the Settlers 7 devs going to be for ubi throwing them under the bus during this "test"? I mean seriously, this game is going to have terrible sales.
Actually, they're cutting off their own nose to spite pirates.
This holy war against pirates needs to end. They think that every downloaded game is a lost sale, and that every single person who can't pirate a game will buy it.
Do they honestly think that if they lock down a game to the point of near-unplayability that it will magically result in millions of dollars in sales?
There's a a few DLC items that you get for free depending on where you bought the game, or whether you pre-ordered, or whether you got the collectors edition, and there's some that you have to buy. Any one license purchase only gets you something like 2/8 or 3/8 of the available DLC (AFAIK), and the rest you're supposed to buy. So in the end everyone who wants to be a completionist has to pay a tax to get the entire game.
I expect that the $240 figure was hyperbole. Bioware: "ooh ooh we've got all this content for the game ready to go! Should we include it? No! Let's make it optional and charge a small fee! Hizzah!
Well they are probably concerned with piracy but we all know this system is unlikely to stop it. There is a 2nd benefit for the publisher at the detriment of the consumer. From Ubisoft.
Can I resell my game?
Not at this time.
Can I say, FAIL?
The most dangerous drug
Well, folks, this is the future of cloud computing that all the big companies want to shove down your throat. It means exactly what was described above, nothing that you say, do, or buy is yours. It is designed to allow the entire internet to be taken out of the box and exposed to whatever scrutiny anyone desires. It leads to lost data, because no system is perfect, lost time, because no connection is perfect, lost privacy, because no security can't be broken ( at least at home you can disconnect a drive, eh?), and misrepresentation and twisting of the truth, because there are already too many idiots out there that don't get all the facts on someone/something before the accusations begin. If you can't physically own something you pay for, then why pay for it? The concept of a game isn't what I bought, I bought the entire game, as a legal copy, to do as I wish for my entertainment. When I can't do this at will and without fear of problems from somewhere else, then I don't really control my software anymore, whether or not if its a game or my business. The real sticker for this is that if someone sued for stolen data, data loss, or interruption for a game, it would get laughed out of a court. Only when it happens to a business is it going to be a major case. Besides, data access for a business is already here, thats why you log into a site to get that data. I can't really see the advantage, at all, of the cloud.
Ubisoft does not care much about Indie / FOSS Hobbiest types. Ubi is a large and successful company, but they know that they are not the only ones making games. Yeah, its possible some hobbiest comes up with the next smash hit concept. But it is not that likely, and they have enough money that they can probalby buyout a hobbiest pretty easily.
This is about DRM. It is not very likely that they can find a DRM solution that cannot be hacked around and that wont cause undue problems for legit users who want to install on multiple computers. But internet access is not prevalent enough that it is not an unwarranted suggestion. In terms of validating a legit install, it is much more effective to have the game phone home. If it is multiplayer, then the access is not an issue. To their thinking, it is a perfectly viable solution.
Besides, if the user does not have an internet connection, I do not think Ubi is worried about bad press from that user going into online forums to complain. If they have the connection and the install is legit, there shouldn't be any real problems for the user to notice.
But if Ubi screws up and the scheme does not work, then there will be massive blowback.
END COMMUNICATION
Data is information. Taking in information you did not pay to take in is not stealing.
If you write down the words of a song and post them to your myspace (which is copyright infringement), what have you "stolen"?
If you get a tattoo of Mickey Mouse on your leg without paying a royalty, that is copyright infringement. What have you stolen?
Well, you could disable the Online content and start with a new character. But it is still annoying.
I bought a game from a company that has the same type of system, I will not buy another. As it is I bet that one can read the terms of use and it will say that Ubisoft will not be liable for the lost of service , internet or servers that store the information about the game. And that means One will not have the use of there game or games that they have paid for . This is a bad Idea and will not work nor be fair to the persons who bought the games. I know as I have tried this type of system and it completely restricts the buyer of the game even when it is not his or her fault that you cannot access the company servers. It is not unheard of in our area for out internet to be down for up to a week, or to get a service person out to fix the issue. That means that I would not have access to the games that I bought. Not worth it , I can tell you first hand. We are not leasing the games, as it is now we are buying the game and then being told how and when we can play said game. The legal system and courts are going to have to step in and stop this before it becomes the norm. This is no different that buying a auto and the dealer say's where and when you can drive the auto, and what day's it can be used. Your right, do not buy from any company that sets this type of system up.