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Ubisoft's Constant Net Connection DRM Confirmed
A few weeks ago we discussed news of Ubisoft's DRM plans for future games, which reportedly went so far as to require a constant net connection, terminating your game if you get disconnected for any reason. Well, it's here; upon playing review copies of the PC version of Assassin's Creed 2 and Settlers VII, PCGamer found the DRM just as annoying as you might expect. Quoting:
"If you get disconnected while playing, you're booted out of the game. All your progress since the last checkpoint or savegame is lost, and your only options are to quit to Windows or wait until you're reconnected. The game first starts the Ubisoft Game Launcher, which checks for updates. If you try to launch the game when you're not online, you hit an error message right away. So I tried a different test: start the game while online, play a little, then unplug my net cable. This is the same as what happens if your net connection drops momentarily, your router is rebooted, or the game loses its connection to Ubisoft's 'Master servers.' The game stopped, and I was dumped back to a menu screen — all my progress since it last autosaved was lost."
I can just see the following happening:
Player: I'm almost there... I've been playing Assassin Creed 2 for almost 12 hours non-stop and am just about finished... the end is in...
Game: We have lost connection with the Ubiborg mothership. I'm sorry to say that since you have not saved the game, we have no choice but to start you back at the beginning.
Player: AAAAARRRRGGGHHHH!
Even if it is just 1-2 hours playing (e.g. finally making it past a difficult section of the game after many tries), this is still going to burn players.
Next time, the players who have a negative experience of this will not spend their money on Ubisoft games next time.
Also, what about areas that have a crap broadband - or god forbid dial-up - connection. Broadband quality and adoption varies from country to country, and is worse in less populated or remote/isolated areas.
Here's a graph of how much of my money they're going to get over time
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I'll be there at 7
rewriting history since 2109
At this rate, the next gen of DRM will require everyone in the world with a PC to buy a copy in order to cut off any would be pirates at the pass.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
... more draconian drm...
Every time someone uses the phrase "draconian DRM" take a shot. Cue liver failure in 3... 2... 1...
...even then I couldn't play the game, bombing out with a nondescript securom error message. Turned out it considers sysinternals' Process Explorer a "dangerous thing to have running" - like, wtf?
Just wait for V2.0!
SecuRomV2.0 Error: SecuRom has detected your OS is fully-patched and up to date, you have a properly-configured firewall & antivirus, and your OS appears to be free of malware/spyware. You obviously are far too competent at computer administration to be allowed to run this game as you present a high piracy risk. Please downgrade your computer-related knowledge & abilities and re-install.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
And I'll be robbing your home