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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."
It will most likely be 10+ years. Most of the 10 year old games, never less the 15+ year old games even work on today's OS. Does that mean that when I bought the games I didn't value my rights as a consumer, because they don't work now?
It's a central activation server for all their games. I think there would be quite nice uproar if all of their games stopped working suddenly.
Nevertheless, if someone still plays them in 10-20 years, I'm sure they can buy a really cheap, current-OS-capable version from the likes of Steam for like $1, probably with improved graphics too. The classic games I play now are either fixed versions from Steam or GOG. Sure you pay that one dollar again, but who cares when they fix it for the new operating systems and hardware too.
I don't even play so many older games anymore, and when I do, you notice it's mostly just nostalgia about them and they're pretty meh now.
That point aside, is it stupid to buy it again? Sure. But it's really such a small thing to pay for one dollar again for an old game I love (and I've probably lost the cd's along the years too). Sure I could spend an hour to write an angry letter about it to the company, but I think my time is worth a little bit more than that $1/hour.
Your whole "general people are dumb as rocks" thing is what I hate about in us geeks/nerds. Not everyone has the time or interest to complain or fight against every since minor detail. Sometimes it's ok to just spend that $1 and play your game.
You conveniently left out how much their costs are. And who are you to tell how much companies should be allowed to make?
Mention them in the same hushed tones that ET for the Atari 2600 is mentioned with.
I don't get what the big deal is with that game. I played it as a child and found it fairly entertaining. It was no Vanguard, but people regard it with such scorn...
You can advertise in this sig from as little as £99.99 a month!
Come on, how am I a troll? Just because I don't kiss up to your greedy and selfish ways, I'm a troll?
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
The industry doesn't really matter. I'm sure walmart or mcdonalds has quite nice market cap too even if they aren't selling high tech fighting hardware.
What I was saying that General Dynamix probably doesn't make as much profit versus costs than Ubisoft. The fact that their ROI is better doesn't mean they wouldn't be allowed to make that profit.
That you know of. Remember that commercial AV packages have around an 80% miss rate, and some root kits go undetected on machines for years. If all you had to do was scan an EXE for viruses, we wouldn't be seeing botnets in the wild with millions of nodes - yet they exist.