Slashdot Mirror
Ubisoft's Authentication Servers Go Down
ZuchinniOne writes "With Ubisoft's fantastically awful new DRM you must be online and logged in to their servers to play the games you buy. Not only was this DRM broken the very first day it was released, but now their authentication servers have failed so absolutely that no-one who legally bought their games can play them. 'At around 8am GMT, people began to complain in the Assassin's Creed 2 forum that they couldn't access the Ubisoft servers and were unable to play their games.' One can only hope that this utter failure will help to stem the tide of bad DRM."
I don't know anything else that should be said here.
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
Down or DDoS? We all know exactly how easy it was going to be for an outsider to screw everyone.
Skid-Row will soon have a fix for this problem. This will also lessen the strain on Ubisoft's servers!
Digital Restrictions by Those Who Screw You Over The Most", or DRbTWSYOTM just doesn't have the same cachet.
Why would this stem the awful DRM? They have the money, gamers are still going to play, life moves on.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Stop supporting games with this kind of DRM
1. Give The Game away free (sans DRM and assorted BS), let people pay for it on an honor/donations basis if they like playing it.
2. That is all.
Seems pretty open & shut.
I'm sorry, I'm having a little trouble feeling sorry for people who support DRM (those who bought the game).
They paid for it. They got what they wanted.
Find someone else's sholder to cry on.
First time I've heard of a DDoS attack being used to break DRM...
Do I smell a class action lawsuit? Seems like it might make sense.
Can't find it now, but definitly NOW the DRM protection WILL be the discussion topic on the schoolyard. And maybe company lunchrooms too. People who bought the game will ask around, especially their "IT clued" friends what they could do to play what they paid for, and they will be informed about how to get cracks.
People who never pondered cracking will now be introduced to it. So far they did actually buy their games. Either because they simply didn't know about it or, worse, because they didn't want to go through the hassle and thought that paying 50 bucks is easier, faster and less of a problem than futzing about with cracks and copying this and cracking that and executing this registry tuner and writing that into the registry...
Now they learn that buying games leads to more futzing, more frustration, more "it doesn't just work" than finding it in P2P and downloading it. Legal copies just lost the only edge they had over cracked ones: Ease of use and "just working".
Great job, UBIsoft. Just as the software industry finally regained some footing in the battle against copying, you go and aim the bazooka at your (and the industry's) foot.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You knew the game had this DRM, you knew that it was susceptible to server crashes, you whined about it endlessly, AND THEN YOU WENT OUT AND BOUGHT IT ANYWAY. How stupid can you get? Ubisoft must be laughing their heads off.
I think we all know it won't. Sure, a few companies here and there seem to get it, but most don't or won't. Not until we make them quit by refusing to buy their products and telling them why. If they can sell that many copies of ACII despite this crud DRM being announced beforehand, then there's very little incentive for them to not include it, even with the problems.
Hooray! Now out of the pool of people who thought it was a good idea to buy this steaming pile at least some of them will now be thinking twice: and more important talking about it with the equally uninformed.
Shh.
It's as if nobody learned the first time about DRM when Microsoft shut off its MSN Music Store DRM servers, thus having people locked out of their own music they bought legitimately.
For those who got burned, it's not like people weren't warned. If you bought the game, you got what you deserved.
--
BMO
1. Give The Game away free (sans DRM and assorted BS), let people pay for it on an honor/donations basis if they like playing it.
Actually my experience with Silent Hunter 5 (having played the game somehow for a frustrating hour or so) is that I don't want it even for free. The game sucks balls. I guess the only good thing about this whole experience is that I updated my video driver.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Please do not post about illegal activities and or downloads.
The response summarizes the situation appropriately:
WTF I posted a link to google that shows how to play since UBIcraps servers are down and you call it ILLEGAL activities? RAbble rabble! I will never buy another ubisoft product and I advise you to do the same!
Several DRM schemes have only involked a reaction in the tech community such as slashdot while the general public carried on not caring.
This shambles has made it painfully obvious to the masses of the dangers of DRM.
The 45 page thread is evidence of it and is quickly filling up with hatred. Comments such as "I'll never buy from you again" which usually tend to be hyperbole this time ring true.
Hopefully the end result of this is that the public won't have a short attention span and make true on their threats of not buying from them again.
http://www.themousetrap.co.za/comics/index.php?cid=26
When I saw this story: *laughing for 5 mins* *gasping for air* *laughing for another 2 minutes* wooooooooooooooooooooooooo! ha ha ha
Seriously, obey, or you will be fucked by it.
Disagree != mod troll.
The guy behind mIRC did this, and I still remember reading an interview with some guy probably years after the first release where he was one of the early people who had actually paid for it assuming that he had to. He was like number 10+ or something such.
So yeah, works great having people pay if they like the product, or not ..
We should all send flowers or candy or something to Ubisoft Headquarters. They've done more with one game launch to torpedo the use of DRM than a thousand indignant ./ stories and editorials.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
I do that with pinball play it for free on the pc and pay to play the same games on the real games.
I need to find the guys DDoS'ing the Ubi servers so I can buy them a beer.
Actually I read "management" in "digital rights management" in the same way I read "management" in "pest management".
So in other words, "management" means mangle-ment.
Well, that probably won't work either because, well, people are cheap. Let's be frank here, maybe a few people who know what effort and work is associated with creating a game will donate, but most won't. And there's a few millions to be recovered.
But how about, you know, selling the games for 50 bucks a piece, without DRM? I know, it's a radical idea, but think about it that way: No 20 bucks per unit for worthless DRM and no customer service troubles due to faulty DRM resulting in a smaller support department. The amount of sales you lose due to copying is easily balanced by a lot lower per-unit costs, basically meaning you have to sell half the units to net the same revenue.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This is a preview of what will happen someday when Ubisoft goes bankrupt and you still want to play AC2.
Advice: on VPS providers
the german law 69d UrhG allows cracking of software that you legally own and that won't work otherwise...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
It is clear: Ubisoft have released a game (network client) that performs a DDOS on their own servers.
It's just like Apple and Microsoft both pushing DRM that wasn't compatible with each other. It's good for consumers, in the long term, because it teaches them not to trust it earlier rather than later when it really matters. Thank you Ubisoft, I hope you learned your lesson as well.
you're only thinking of the hardcore that knows to hit forums. All it takes is 1 phone call or email and they've lost all the profit on the sale, even if the call consists of "Servers down, try again later!".
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
If you're going to link to XKCD, link to the page so we can see the mouse-over comments...
http://xkcd.com/488/
No sig today...
So let me get this straight: the pirated[sic]/counterfeit product is superior to the real thing, just like with Windows?
I'm shocked. SHOCKED!
Well, not that shocked.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Knowing all of this, some idiot still actually bought assassins creed 2.
just fucking pathetic.
I'd take it back and try to get a refund or exchange it for a different game. The company broke the contract and the item after a week is broken.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Correct. You also have a claim against the vendor (the store where you bought it, not Ubisoft) because the product is defective.
The DRM Monkey is the newest weapon in the fight against piracy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8avOiTUcD4Y
Eighty years ago the French engineers built a wall to protect France from Germans. The Germans walked around it and invaded the country.
Ten years ago the French engineers built a nuclear aircraft carrier that was too short to allow planes to land on it. It was also exposing the crew to radiation.
Now they designed a network-based DRM, which was cracked almost immediately, until (surprise!) the servers went down in flame.
Bunch of buffoons.
lucm, indeed.
there must be a lot of pirated copies out there. jamming up the servers.
Subscription model seems to work pretty well for WoW.
Free basic game with in-game purchase of add-ons seems to work pretty well for Wizard101 and its ilk.
Yes, either system leaves room for abuse of various sorts... maybe the real challenge is to come up with anti-pirate systems that work for offline games.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
To publish games for the PC! Should have cut their losses and stuck with consoles. Which are really just hardware DRM implementations. I don't support any sort of DRM in the least bit, but aren't we being a bit rabid regarding the situation? The game work again ... someday?
You should look into Stardock. They're an independent studio/publisher based in Michigan that have some pretty top-notch games. They're also widely known to have a very pro-gamer stance on DRM.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
No doubt the same thing is going to happen with Starcraft 2. Then we'll get to see it - South Korea will declare war on Blizzard! Talk about breaking boundaries.
As for ubisoft... think they'll decide to keep the new drm or not based on the outcome of the class action lawsuit that should be filed in 3...2...
Like many interested observers, I have been waiting to see how this DRM implementation would play out. Despite all the doom and gloom prophecies, I really wasn't expecting the game to be cracked in a single day, or for Ubisofts authentication servers to fail so quickly. Regardless off the reasons behind the server being down, a failure to anticipate hostile reactions in the form of DDOSs, or grossly underestimating your own authentication codes effects on the server, are Vanguard-level failures.
/.'ers is a very real one: How do they find a way to minimize pirating without pissing off customers who pay for a copy and can't play it due to ridiculous DRM restrictions?
Which brings Ubisoft back to the drawing board. The problem they face, despite the protestations of the vast majority of
The "don't treat me like a criminal" line is very cute, and while everyone who posts on DRM topics always says they pay for most of their games, the truth is that many, many people pirate games and software. Publishing DRM free games is not an optimal business plan because even the most casual ThePirateBay'er will just download your game and you miss out on those sales. On the flip-side, publishing games with intrusive DRM systems is the best way to make you hated by your customer base.
So, what DRM systems can you think of that would strike some kind of middle-ground balance, but also be relatively difficult to crack?
At this point, if I ran a major game publishing house I'd probably focus on two things.
1) Console gaming: Much more difficult for the casual pirate to rip off your games. While I'm not a game developer, I think if this problem was facing me I'd approach it by using an in-house engine that was optimized for console gaming but could also be used to publish for PC in a streamlined way that, despite whatever flexibility I'd lose to streamline, would greatly cut down on the total cost of publishing for PC.
2) Pc gaming: Much has been said about dongles, but they're not around anymore (for the most part anyways) for a reason. I've lost hardware dongles, had them stop working on me, conflict with systems, etc etc, but the worst part is that the games can be stripped of DRM and dongle protection by an able group like SkidRow, and then the pirates have a better user experience than those who are stuck with the dongle. The problem here is that pirate groups just need to get their hands on the code to crack it. I think the way I would combat this is by trying to get together some of the larger publishers and maybe even ATI or Nvidia to go a different kind of hardware based software distribution (cartridges perhaps?). If enough of the big names in game publishing and graphic cards supported a standardized piece of hardware, something that would connect to your PC not as a dongle but as a means to read the new hardware game mediums, then it would be easy to spread the cost of research and development and to subsidize it at next to nothing to the gamer ("if you buy 3 Ubisoft cartridge games, the cartridge drive is yours for free", etc). The whole idea would be to stop digital copies of the game from floating around for long enough to capitalize on your game release, instead of trying to make an uncrackable game. It would require as high encryption as would be possible to protect the code, and steady streamlined firmware updates to stay ahead of the pirates. Hell, replace the actual drives every year with backwards compatible models that have new hard-coded security features, and at no cost to upgrade for any customer with an old one.
people who bought this 'game' or Ubisoft management who thought this will work?
I check their page every week for new games. They should start cranking a bit, I got everything that I want from them already.
Ahwell, time for some more Sins. Anyone up for a game?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's funny that people bitch about this kind of DRM yet completely forget (or ignore) that Steam functions in a similar manner. Granted, you don't have to be online to play or save a single player game, but you have to have Steam just to play a game you purchased. You have to be online at least to activate games that require Steam and believe it or not, most people still don't have high-speed internet access. If I can't get my game to run from a CD Key or less then I'm not going to invest money or time into it. That leaves out a huge portion of the PC market for me (Ubisoft, anything on Steam and requiring Steam), but a lot of the PC games I have already sustain me in terms of high replay value and, since they're older games, DRM isn't an issue for me.
People also seem to forget that, when it comes to playing the games they bought, that there are DRM-free options that have been proven to work. Good Old Games is an example of this.
But like several have already said, people get what they pay for. I'll be enjoying Doom and Quake while others struggle and fight to play Assassin's Creed 2 and newer titles.
gamers are no sheeps. gamers are technically affluent, organically connected through innumerable communities, and somehow have a common culture.
in layman's terms, they dont take no shit.
in the past numerous big companies had to eat their word in various issues related to gaming and drm and whatnot, due to the response of gaming community.
this, probably will be an even bigger case than others.
Read radical news here
you are talking about the elite of the elite of the most elite in the underground circle.
no chance in hell it would happen.
Read radical news here
in europe you cant put 'you cant sue us' bullshit in eulas and get away with it. that only * may * work in usa.
in eu if you sell something, you have to deliver it. else, your product gets shoved in your butt by Eu regulations.
Read radical news here
people are cheap, because our current socioeconomic system forces them to live lives they are not happy with, even they havent chosen, and in return pushes them crappy, mass produced products from all fronts.
but, ANYONE, when chances up with something s/he really likes, really really holds onto them. thats why we have grown up adults who are still clinging to some bands/games/products etc from the past decades, despite having moved on in all other fronts. they keep these and use these, because they like those. its as simple as that.
lets see now - there are ~80 songs in my permanent playlist. honestly, most of these, i wouldnt pay, in any way. they are 'ok'. but we do not want 'ok'. we want 'good'. for about 9 of these songs however, i would probably regularly go donate to their creators, have they had some format like what Radiohead did.
ah and by the way, Radiohead's experiment tramples all kinds of 'people are cheap' arguments. they made what they would have made in a year, touring, in approx 3 hours there, with no sweat.
Read radical news here
They brought out 5? 4 was such a PITA, I didn't bother looking for a 5. Wait a year and four patches and it might be worth giving away.
imagine ... and that's a game that is more targeted at younger audiences too. an entire generation will start with assassins creed 2 crack, and then move on to becoming a mainstay for the underground nature of the internet.
Read radical news here
I have one inviolable principle I hold to when purchasing computer software and e-books - absolutely no DRM is acceptable, EVER! I don't care if it's the neatest thing since sliced bread. I can live with a license key that I can move with the software from system to system, but online authentication (I might want to run it somewhere there isn't an internet, like at my sister-in-law's house in the back-of-beyond mountains of Chiapas Mexico) has made me drop products that I used to use. They now get no update fees from me, and I no longer recommend their products to friends, family, colleagues, etc.
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.
This is just like New Orleans. Nobody could have seen this coming. Nobody. What a tragedy.
"Way to Go, Ubi!"
up their ass ... im giving around 2 days. what's your bet.
Read radical news here
Treat your paying customers with respect!!!!! They're the only thing keeping you in business. Its just fucking bad and stupid to treat them like criminals with such hassles.
The suits at Ubisoft who put this DRM scheme into play should be fired.
To be fair, donations systems really only work on projects with low overhead. That's why it works remarkably well on music. I'd imagine games with very large budgets would have much more difficulty with such a system.
At least, I'd imagine those involved in such projects would be unwilling to take the risk that people would buy the game out of the goodness of their heart.
It also might trigger the 'interoperability' exemption of the DMCA. After all, cracking the program is only used to let the game work properly..
Assassin's Creed 2 on PC has a confirmed release date on Tuesday 09 March 2010. It is 1 days left until you can play Assassin's Creed 2 on your PC in the USA. View below for more Assassin's Creed 2 release date details.
For US gamers, it's not even out yet, so the only people playing in the US have illicit copies in one way or another.
Subscription model seems to work pretty well for WoW.
Oh yeah?
http://www.xtremetop100.com/world-of-warcraft
1) Gamers may try and return the game. I suppose Ubisoft could refuse to issue refunds but that opens them up to lawsuits. Like it or not, a sold product does have an implied warranty of fitness, meaning that it will work for the purpose you sell it. If it doesn't, customers can get their money back and if you won't give it to them, a court can and will force the issue.
2) It puts off people who haven't bought the game yet. Not everyone buys a game on the day it comes out. Plenty of people wait a bit. Well, they see this, realize that it is true if the auth servers are down there's no game to be played, and decide "Nah, I'll buy a different game." I mean we do not at all lack for good games these days, people can and will take their money elsewhere.
3) It can lead to these people refusing to be customers again. Sure you got their money this time, however a business does not live based on selling one product. You need repeat sales. People who get burned by this (or just hear about it) may decide to give Ubisoft products a miss in the future because of it.
The idea of "Oh well they got their money," is rather short sighted. When businesses operate like that, screwing people over and saying "We already got the money so who cares?" the end result is often the business suffering or going broke in the future.
I'm looking for the contact information for Ubisoft's CEOs and other high-ranking officials. As a gamer with a Xbox 360, I will not purchase any games from Ubisoft due to this horrendous DRM. My past purchases of Ubisoft games include, but are not limited to, Assassin's Creed, Rainbow Six Las Vegas, and Ghost Recon. I have never run a pirated game before. I will advise my friends to refrain from purchasing Ubisoft games as well. I hope that the loss of sales just from my actions are in the thousands.
'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' - Mao Tse-tung
That sounds highly redundant. I mean, has anybody invented "good" DRM yet? Didn't think so. Let's try to be a bit more concrete, eh? I believe the only way to describe DRM is to say, "effective" and "ineffective". And only one of those really applies at this point.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
allows cracking of software that you legally own
Too bad the users only license software. Which is, I think, at the core of the problem.
(Note: I have no idea what the status of software licences is in Germany, I'm referring to the North American system, which may be different.)
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
Buying or pirating the game (either) gives Ubisoft reason to use DRM. You want them to stop you need to refuse to ever use the game while the drm is there. All pirating the game does is prove they need stricter DRM to prevent pirates it does not prove the DRM is bad. Look back to the TurboTax DRM debacle. People voted with their wallets and TurboTax sales that year were down significantly (I myself didn't buy it that year), the company got the message and next year no DRM and even fewer restrictions in the EULA.
Pirating the game contributes to the publishers belief that DRM is needed, only ignoring the game will send a message. All you that pirated the game to "send a message" got your message through, the next game will have even more DRM. If you want DRM to go away you need to exercise economic punishment of publishers that use it and the only way to do that is not buy it, not pirate it and ignore it completely regardless of how good the reviews are. There are million games out there, you can avoid the ones with the bad DRM.
Ubi, verb, anal rape with insufficient lube. Onomatopoeia.
Those gamers really got ubied this time!
to the tune of 18 and life
ricky was a ubisoft dev. he faced specs in stone
worked 9 to 9, and typed his fingers to the bone
one day his boss came round, grunts "idea me have one"
those users steal our game, so we're gonna tie it down
he had no morals, oooh no girl at home,
he thew in some sick DRM which left users alone and then
3 days and change it lasted
3 days and change online
Their plan was fine until
3 days and change online
Just because your connection to Verizon is up doesn't mean their connection to some other arbitrary network is working reliably.
I use Time Warner and a cablemodem.
One day, my net connect starts getting "spotty". Connect. Disconnect. Repeat all day long. After a couple of days it goes down altogether. I put in the call. Guy comes out and looks at the cable and shows me where a squirrel had been nibbling at it. Replaces the cable bit on the pole, off he goes. Cable goes right back down again. Put in another call. Another guy shows up, twiddles something, gets a good meter reading, and bails. Repeat this for about three months. Last guy finally fixes the problem - a router box upstream was foobaring my entire block's connection. Nobody on my block was getting internet, cable, anything through TWC. Dozens of customers complaining daily and it took them three months to finally figure out "gee the whole block is down, let's go look at the router for this block."
So a few weeks later, a lady calls me. A customer survey drone wanting to know about my "experience". I tell her how frustrating the whole thing was. How does she conclude the call?
By asking if I'd consider a package deal to have my telephone run through their modem too.
This entire planet is mad, you know.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Even the Steam version of the game has this stupid system. Good thing I was waiting for this to happen before buying it. Now if Ubisoft backpedals enough I will buy it. Otherwise, they aren't getting the money I set aside for them. Someone else will. Good job Ubisoft.
Now I'm not saying we have to go Anonymous on them ... but can anyone (with Microsoft Network Monitor or Wireshark) post the IP Address of their Authentication server. I'm interested in where they're hosting it and what software its running ... dont let it be Windows. Actually if it was running Windows server that might be why its epically failing right now ...
right now... are the pirates?
that's just completely hilarious. I posted in the recent thread on this saying the pirates were the ones that were going to ultimately get the better product, and looks like I was right. I want my cookie now.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
What everyone predicted has happened. /b/tards decide to DDOS them for "pool's closed" - they only care that they cannot play the game they BOUGHT) it will become a massive one.
The servers fail just after the game is released, tens (hundreds?) of thousands of customers are highly unsatisfied, not to say irate.
This is already a PR disaster, should the servers keep failing (whatever the reasons - the people don't care if your servers are to weak to handle the load or if some
Oh, and since Silent Hunter 5 was already cracked I suspect a crack for Assassin's Creed 2 won't be long.
So in a way, Ubisoft, you decided to ignore the warnings, now your tears, they taste delicious.
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
There's no way that an home user can afford five nines internet access, so even if it isn't the authentication server end that's a problem, well, you're screwed anyway.
Do you really need to play "Assassins Creed 2" continuously with only 5 minutes of downtime every year? If so, I suspect that your Internet connection is the least of your issues.
Even three nines (eight hours of downtime per year) is more than reasonable for a normal home connection. That might even be good enough for a DRM server.
I'm at about four nines from Verizon FiOS (about 5 hours of downtime in the 3 years I've had the service).
... but I think you're missing the point. It doesn't matter what the total downtime over the course of a year is (unless you're lucky enough to get it all in one sitting). The problem is that with a less-than-perfect connection, that downtime can happen a second or two at a time. It was my understanding that even one second of downtime is enough to boot you out of the game and lose all your progress. By extrapolating from your figures, that happens more or less daily even at "five nines". I think a once per day random chance of program failure and loss of progress is going to alienate and upset all but the most casual of gamers, and I have no sympathy for a company that treats its paying customers like criminals.
Knowledge != Intelligence
What about games that would work otherwise, but still be a pain to use? ie, are german citizens allowed to crack CD-ROM verification for software that they bought?
From Ubisoft concerning the announcement of the crack:
Please know that this rumor is false and while a pirated version may seem to be complete at start up, any gamer who downloads and plays a cracked version will find that their version is not complete.
So, apparently, this inability to play is the feature that those who pirate the game are missing out on...
Oh, was that my outside voice?
I preordered this game before this BS came to light, and for once I'm grateful for staggered release dates. I can still cancel my order since I'm in North America.
Nice going, Ubisoft. You lost a sale. It's too bad, because I was looking forward to the game.
The original idea of copyright, the whole "exchange" thing going on here, is that a content producer is granted a limited, exclusive time period to profit from a work before it becomes public domain, as the nature of any form of information allows unlimited copying anyway. In the US Constitution, this exchange is established to promote the advance of arts and sciences, and it is a reasonable way to encourage content creation as an actual profession. All understandable...
When a company places nasty digital restrictions management garbage on their information product, especially this kind of phone-home to use / read sort of nonsense, it completely removes the part of the exchange that the public receives. The public, the people, via government allowed a limited time for the content creator to exclusively profit from their work before it enters the public domain, and that is the concept of "copyright." DRM, especially this kind, breaks the agreement. It destroys the very foundation of the concept. Therefore, I do not consider any such work to be copyrighted. I am not a lawyer, etc... but I am someone who understands what copyright is for, and that it has become something else entirely. Unlimited terms (beyond a human's lifetime), means it is not under copyright. Permission-every-time sorts of access models mean it is not under copyright.
I know very well that these matters are settled by throwing money at lawyers and congress-creatures, and therefore, my opinion means nothing in a court of law. I also know that I do everything in my power to ensure that people understand the concept of "intellectual property" is against the very nature of information, and is a disgusting concept that has come about through purchased laws.
USB drives with onboard encryption and the game engine... all game items in/out along with the core engine are in firmware on a usb thumb drive... I bought a 4GB stick for like $12 yesterday, you could stick a lot of various games on one of these with a marginal hardware cost, that would be better than the software only solutions, and still have a more you bought it, you own it capability.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
I am so happy to see this happen to the company that shat on its customers by installing hidden device drivers on our PCs with previous games. I hope they fail spectacularly and the situation somehow gets even worse! Perhaps lawsuits are on the way? hopes hopes hopes!
At this point, only the pirates can play the game. They just need to make a list of everyone still playing, and start sending out some local law enforcement. Once all the pirates are in jail, they can disable all DRM everywhere forever. Hooray Ubisoft for making DRM unnecessary!
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
I feel really... really weird defending Ubisoft. I don't mean to, sorry ;-)
But here goes: I don't think this DRM would be a huge problem in my life*.
[(*) Assuming it worked "correctly"--i.e. the Ubisoft servers were never down and always said "let Jonas play" as long as I had a valid, purchased license to play the game. Yes, that's a stretchy, unrealistic assumption.]
The few hours/year my ISP is down (~one day total), I have other games to play.
And the few times where I (1) don't have internet access; (2) is in a good position to player computer games; (3) want to play a single player game; those times I can count on one hand. Maybe even one without fingers.
(1) was true staying in a cabin in the woods with friends, but then (3) wasn't true, I wanted to play with my friends rather than alone. (1) is true every day while I commute, but then (2) isn't true. And (1) looks like it's going to not ever be true again, given tetherable `tubes' on my next cell phone.
No, I don't want that kind of DRM in my games. But if it performed according to specifications (again, yes that's unrealistic), I don't think I would be inconvenienced that much.
DRM comes back to bite you UBI.
... see hordes of clueless gamers carry their crappy Ubisoft-games back to the stores demanding their money back? I doubt it ... most consumers are too nice to actually do something about being abused and f@cked in their @sses ...
If the government wasn't consisting of 101% of bought-out lobbying supporters, there might even be laws ensuring consumers' rights instead of just big business ...
Yes but your solution would also require a tamper proof hardware encryption chip on the stick, and those are not cheep. (If not, it would just be a storage, similary to a dvd, which could just be dumped to an iso image).
And even it it worked 100% at preventing copying of the game, at 12$ i think having this dongle would cost much more then the extra sale could cover.
On a not very related note, I am currently looking forward to Civilization V*. Civilization did not really include any DRM(Not even a serial key, so pirates can play online too) and yet they made enough profit to produce 2 expansions and Civilization V.
*Hoping it will work in wine, because I currently don't have a windows partition.
I remember the ignorance defence from a prior topic.
Windows user in 1992: I had no idea Windows sucks! How could I have known this was going to happen?
Windows user in 1993: I had no idea Windows sucks! How could I have known this was going to happen?
Windows user in 1994: I had no idea Windows sucks! How could I have known this was going to happen?
Windows user in 1995: I had no idea Windows and its applications suck and are dangerous to use if you're on a network. How could I have known this was going to happen?
Windows user in 1996: I had no idea Windows and its applications suck and are dangerous to use if you're on a network. How could I have known this was going to happen?
Windows user in 1997: I had no idea Windows and its applications suck and are dangerous to use if you're on a network. How could I have known this was going to happen?
Windows user in 1998: I had no idea Windows and its applications suck and are dangerous to use if you're on a network. How could I have known this was g
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I find that there's something bizarre and paradoxical when industry when a major publisher distributes a product that UNIVERSALLY FAILS TO FUNCTION, and, from the channels I've observed thus far, the reactions are:
Laughter
Smug self-satisfaction
Affirmation that this is overall a good step for the industry
and coming in dead last in terms of apparant frequency, people who are upset because they've just lost $60.
How strange that this almost has a positive connotation.
I don't think most people would do research about DRM. They buy the pc version, find out it has problems and see that their friends don't have those problems on their consoles. So what will the gamers do? Boycott all games that have DRM in their pc versions? Of course not. They will just switch to console gaming. The major publishers keep crippling their pc versions more and more until most customers have bought a ps3 or an xbox360. Other ways they do this include releasing pc versions later, release console-only dlc and removing fundamental functionality like dedicated servers. When most people agree that consoles are superior, they can stop making pc versions. Why they do this? Because it's cheaper to have only one or two platforms to support, and piracy is not a problem on consoles.
When you make a new game available on the market, just put it on any of the popular P2P file sharing services. Maybe even put your own P2P service online.
Make it totally FREE!! Anyone can download, anyone can play, no registration, no payment, no surveys no bullshit.
If someone likes it, put a link so he can donate ANY amount he see fits for the game.
Depending of the amount he is willing to give you can give him some goodies, any kind of merchandise, special subscriptions, or offer special services and extensions which would be also no DRMized once downloaded of course. You can also offer discount on real world events related to the game, game shows, competition, movies, concerts, etc.
Customer want affordable and hassle free software, and a convenient way to pay what they see fit or can pay.
You may think you will be losing money by the ton, I think you will making money by shit loads, plus unbeatable publicity.
Man! You could even et money from previously pirated copies!!!
And you can ditch those blasted servers. The money you spare with that can be put to better use on game production.
If you paid for it, you own it. Learn how to install cracks to disable DRM for the software that you own. EULA are not legal because you already bought the software at the store based on the doctrine of first sale. You own that copy of the software 100%, don't let anyone tell you different.
If you get on a jury regarding anything pirate and DRM related, do whatever it takes to get on the jury and then vote innocent.
Despite all the nerd hate, I think this DRM eventually succeeds. As a reformed Everquest addict I've spent thousands of hours with a system that requires a constant internet connection. Yes, there were errors, and yes we bitched about it ferociously, but the complaints were quickly forgotten because the vast majority of the time it just worked. I think if Ubisoft or the next dev team manages a technically sound implementation that is noninvasive and generally reliable it will succeed. Not only that, it will be a huge cash cow when they license it to others. In BS sessions with friends I've long proclaimed this system was coming. I'll go out on a limb and say that by the end of the decade even your mobile devices will require always on internet to play your media. I'll preempt one objection by suggesting that populations in geographies where this won't be possible don't have enough money to effect the market anyway. So long as there are competing media authentication services so the consumer isn't too abused, I think this may even be a boon. How nice will it be to stream a song you bought on your desktop, ipod, car, phone, jetpack, etc without any copying or config, just a login?
That wasn't funny at all.
Your right. Although Sins is the only stardock game i own, it doesnt even require the dvd to be in the drive after installation. Much less any of this constant connection drm b.s.
And a game of sins sounds damn good right now....
--
The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable. -- John Kenneth Galbraith
Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
the german law 69d UrhG allows cracking of software that you legally own and that won't work otherwise...
Sure, but how many of the game's buyers have the skills and nerve to crack it themselves?
I'm pretty sure 69d UrhG allows YOU to "watch, inspect and test" a program you bought/licensed/whatever if it's neccessary to run it, but it doesn't say that you could pass that crack on to someone else...
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
Now is the time to send a message to Ubisoft that this sort of intrusive DRM will NOT be tolerated. If the servers had stayed up and people just refused to buy the game, they would have written the poor sales off as being caused by "pirates." Now, you have a chance to prove otherwise. Every single person who bought this game on PC should return it to the store. Yes, most will attempt to deny the returns due to policy, or to exchange with a new copy since that one is perceived as damaged/defective. Do not stand for this. Tell them that yes, it is defective, but ALL copies are defective. Let them know that the software itself works just fine on your computer, and in fact ran EXACTLY the way it was supposed to. However, you are forced to return it because it does not work properly on yours or ANY system, because Ubisoft's servers weren't online to allow you to play a game that you legally purchased and met all the requirements for being able to play.
Ubisoft won't be able to shrug it off as "piracy" when their sales numbers for this game begin to shrink due to returns and angry retailers. THIS will hit them in the pocketbook more than a simple, dubiously effective boycott. When they are forced to start handing money back because of their failures, that will speak much louder than never having been paid that money to begin with.
"So after all this, you make my case for me. To end this stalemate, you must die..."
By selling AC2 in Germany, Ubisoft has to adhere to German law there. So no matter what they put in the licence, where it conflicts with national law, Ubisoft loses.
Well, if they can get it under $5 pre distribution then I think it could work out. My main point is a DRM system that isn't an inconvenience to regular users. Having a physical media tie would be a fair compromise. I personally don't like DRM that f*cks with other software on my system. I also really don't like anything that would require me to be online. I still know a few people whose only connection options are dialup or wireless (high latency, frequent downtime segments).
As to WINE, there's been a lot of work in games and via Crossover, so it may work well... just depends on the level of technology. Personally, if they'd all drop the DRM, I'd go back to buying/playing games. I like the Free/OpenSource ones I play now fine, I'd just like to partake a bit more, but refuse to have a game take out Nero (for example) ever again.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Reminds me of some experiences with the German Telekom some years back. Though it must be said that they mostly seem to have cleaned up their act a bit in the meantime. But anyway it's enough to make me shudder at the thought of even my single-player games depending on Internet access.
Act 1: So I get pressured by a couple of people to get a "proper" email address, because apparently my web based one was "unprofessional." (Someone better tell that to Google too;) So I go to the Telekom's site, activate the email, go to a page which said it would change the password for the email. I change it to one of my handful of password. (I know it's bad practice, but I reuse passwords to keep the total number manageable in my head, mostly grouped by categories.)
Thereafter suddenly I can't connect to the Internet any more. Neither my old nor the new email password work.
Hmm, ok, let's assume it's PEBCAK and call their support politely. I agree with the guy that I probably mis-typed the new password and all, ask him to reset my password. Asks for my invoice number, says it's OK. As per their rules, they'll send it to my home address, they can't tell me the new password by phone. (Dunno why. I'm calling from the phone number that's on the same line and all.) Means I'll be without internet for a couple of days, but ok.
After a week, I still didn't get it. I call again, get another drone, asks for my invoice number again, I read it to him off the latest invoice from them. It's ok, I'll get the new password by post, bla, bla, bla.
After a couple of days, still no password, I call again, read the invoice number to the drone, bla, bla, he'll send it right away.
The whole circus repeats every couple of days like clockword for a month and a half. (By that time I had installed an old ISDN card in the computer and was using a pay-by-call service at another provider to at least get my email.) Eventually I lose my temper, don't believe them any more, escalate it until someone tells me the problem: when I had moved, I had received a new invoice number. Dumbly enough, different invoice numbers from their telephone department and the internet one. Since I receive a combined invoice, only the telephone one was written on it.
Essentially for a month and a half those drones had _lied_ to me. They'd see the invoice number doesn't match and wouldn't even tell me so, or point me at some other office to solve the screw up. I can show up in person at one of their shops so they can see it's me, or whatever, you know? Nah, they kept telling me that they'll send me a new password, knowing full well that they _won't_.
Act 2: My brother buys a new house, asks them to move his DSL account to that address. They ask for his address, invoice number, etc, gets told he'll have internet access in no time. Nothing happens. Calls again, same circus, nothing happens. And again. And again.
I should also mention that we had discovered he was VIP customer at the Telekom for whatever reason. Maybe because he and his wife are practically addicted to their cell phones, and get a bill on par with what some companies get. Dunno. But at any rate this was how they treat their VIP customers.
Eventually he gets tired and annoyed, escalates, finds out the problem. Let's say his house number is "42 D". (Not the real one, but for illustration sake.) The drone who typed it in had hit the key next to that "D", so it was "42 S" in their computer. Which didn't even exist. So again and again they'd see that the address doesn't exist, and didn't actually tell him. They kept reassuring him that they'd do it, then basically just ignored it all.
(At this point he was smarter than me and just started looking for another provider instead. He soon moved both his phone and internet access to a cable company.)
Act 3: So after that ordeal I get paranoid, you know? They keep calling me to propose to upgrade my speed, give me some great deals, I just keep telling them to keep their hands off my line. Don't fix what's not
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Micorsoft down august 2003
And their WGA server failed also sometimes ago.
I am suprised they were not sued for this.
I was going to buy this title but saw the last article on Slashdot about the DRM and decided that there was no way in hell I was touching this. I will not pirate it either, there are lots of other great games out just now so I will not miss this one.
Having read this follow up I am very pleased with my decision. I won't be buying it on the 360 either. And I won't be buying any Ubisoft game in the future as I do not like their DRM policy.
Hopefully everyone else who thinkgs the same will do the same.
Many thanks to Slashdot for stopping me wasting my money on this!
You can either rent or buy. Renting implies many obligations which the software publishers don't want. A box on a store shelf almost always means you buy. You own what you buy. There are certain restrictions what you can do with software/music/movies created by someone else, but that doesn't mean you don't own your copy. (There are also limitations on what you can do with guns, cars, explosives, etc., and it never occurs to anyone to claim that you can't own these.)
Actually, I think that Digital Rights Management is actually the correct and honest-to-God description of it. They just hope you'll misunderstand whose rights they are protecting, and what those rights might be. A lot of people for example seem to think that if it mentions "rights", it might be your rights. In reality, it's about what rights they can give themselves to shaft you. E.g., their unilaterally self-given "right" to revoke your legal customer rights, by preventing you from reselling the game.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I set up a new HTPC and installed Rainbow Six Lockdown, Rainbow Six Vegas (both were Direct Downloads from Ubi store) and Rainbow Six Vegas 2 (DVD purchased copy). I tried to activate them Saturday and Sunday. Do you know how many of the 3 games let me play them uncracked? ZERO. They all reported activation failures (internet was otherwise working). I had to crack all three games. My plans to buy Vegas 3 just went out the window. I'm totally pissed!
I can tell you I won't be buying any games that require such a reliance on external connections to play. They need to release an update to remove this requirement. They cannot an will not be able to release any form of DRM that someone can't crack.
It had been said that some day the servers might go offline and strand everybody who purchased the games legally. Little did i know it would be less than a month.
Everything is porn to somebody.
It's a bit short-sighted to blame publishers for this draconian DRM system. Your complaints would be better directed towards the kids at piratebay, who brought about this whole mess. Also, if you can't cope with not having access to your games 0.5% of the time, you have bigger issues than DRM.
a shit-ton of money
Gotta love that imperial system. Wonder how much that is in metric.
There are two ways to attack this. Ordinarily, a metric ton is 1 000 kg, but a ton of money involves forex:
Two words:
Charge. Back.
Two words: Demon Customer. If you circumvent a particular store's return policy with chargebacks too often, the store has every right to ban you from its private property. Where will you buy food once you get banned from all the supermarkets in town?
Chances are pretty good that this outage was simply due to incompetence.
That said, it raises a rather interesting issue. It really demonstrates that there is a single point at which the game can be brought down.
I have to wonder if in the future, if other games include even more draconian DRM schemes that also require constant Internet access, if pirates might just intentionally attacking the servers involved (probably DDoS). I could see them doing this just to discourage such DRM (that may be harder to crack in the future, such as if more of the game data is held on the servers).
DRM could really be turned against the publishers. Ironically, by trying too hard to stop the pirates at launch, they may just be making it easy for pirates to destroy the launch.
"One can only hope that this utter failure will help to stem the tide of bad DRM."
Thanks, I needed a laugh this morning. What is it to them whether you can use the product or not, other than more calls on their help line in Bangalore? You assume they have any commitment to the product whatsoever after you've purchased it?
What will stem the tide of bad DRM is when we refuse to buy the products and companies start to go out of business.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Is that the Internet called, and they said "we told you so."
When this was announced EVERYONE said this was a bad idea. It is a bad idea.
Ubi somehow thought that they are smarter than everyone else in the world, and that it was a good idea.
Are they really all that surprised that this happened at all? Because if they are, they must be the biggest idiots of all time.
I mean really. Everyone saw this coming a mile away, I find it hard to believe that UbiSoft refused to accept reality.
Isn't the rejection of reality, substituting your own personal fantasy, a definition of being crazy?
I had money set aside for AC2. (I played AC1, liked it, but I'm not a console gamer so buying it on the PC is my only option.) But once I heard about the DRM they had planned, I knew I couldn't buy it. I work at a job where I travel, sometimes going to remote places in South America with spotty or expensive internet. At those times, my gaming laptop is my friend.
So now I have that money earmarked for Stardock. I've always been happy with their products and service and hey, I can count on their products. So I'll be buying Elemental: War of Magic when it releases.
Ever used CVS or Subversion? You check out your own copy of whatever you want, and it's on your local system. You do need network connectivity to update with other people's changes or check in your own, but I doubt Git works differently there. Mercurial sure doesn't, and that's the DVCS I've used a bit.
I'd rather use Mercurial (and presumably Git) than Subversion, but network connections have nothing to do with that.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
... who have zero support on weekends.. got a problem with a game key on Saturday? You've gotta wait until Monday to resolve it. Thanks Stardock!
HAHAHA .... Which is excatly why I refuse to buy a new UbiSoft game. No matter how cool Assassin's Creed is.
But ... those people who pirated it must be having fun ...
Okay, first off, let me just say that I don't support any DRM that takes away the rights of the legitimate consumer. So, this post should not be taken as an endorsement of Ubisoft's DRM.
However, that said, this is part of an arms race between game pirates and PC game producers that has been going on for years, and at this point most of the PC game world is now a casualty. There is a reason that the console is king right now, and the main PC game out there today is the MMORPG.
This article explains it better than I can, and anybody who really wants to understand this arms race should read it:
http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_1.html
Of particular note is this page:
http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_4.html
It is long, and I disagree with one or two of the author's final conclusions, but it is very much worth the read, and when somebody actually does a serious running of the piracy figures, it is very eye-opening.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
I bought this game for my 360 instead of waiting for the PC version.
The problem is, looking at this as an arms race in the first place is entirely the wrong perspective. IF this really were an arms race, they were doomed to lose from the beginning, and every dollar they have spent on preventing piracy is wasted. Anything they can build will quickly be broken. Even WoW has pirate servers out there, which proves that it doesn't even matter how much you tie your software to your servers.
The answers to the piracy problem are the same as they have always been: make the game worthwhile and convenient enough to purchase legitimately. WoW, for example, is worthwhile because the official servers work much better than pirate servers, and there's a huge amount of content, a huge amount of social interaction, etc. And it shows: they have 11 million active subscribers and counting. And the value is indisputable for those millions of players: in the US, for $15 a month you get all the entertainment you want. Compare that with your $30-$50 a month cable bill, or $8 for a 2-hour movie. Or even $1 for a movie rental. Only Netflix even comes close. But $60 for a single-player game that will last 10-15 hours the first time through, and probably less the second time, if it's even good enough for that? I have to say, that game better be damn good.
There will always be piracy; it's the nature of the beast. The problems that drive the beast include things like making games too expensive. So you have to sell your game at $60 to make a profit? Bad news buddy: unless your game deserves at the very least some kind of "best-in-genre-for-the-year" award, that's too much. Your problem is that you invested too much money in crap that doesn't make the game better. The answer isn't to stop piracy, because you won't get enough more sales to even cover the development cost of your anti-piracy measures any way. The answer is that your game sucks, and you made a poor investment. Perhaps for your next game, you should look at ways to make it better that cost less money. And if you can't do that, perhaps you're in the wrong industry.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Hahahahahahahahahaha All I can say is... Told you so.
*sigh*
"The answers to the piracy problem are the same as they have always been: make the game worthwhile and convenient enough to purchase legitimately."
Here's the problem - that works wonderfully as a theory. It fails utterly in practice.
If you read the article, you'll find that the value added approach was tried - it had no impact on the piracy rate whatsoever. In fact, Ubisoft tried to use no DRM for Assassin's Creed and Prince of Persia to see if that would help. Far from driving the piracy rate down, it skyrocketed it. In fact, as the Tweakguides article states, the only thing that has had any impact on lowering piracy was very restrictive DRM, and that was a hit or miss thing (more often a miss).
(And just to point it out, that last bit about the occasional impact of restrictive DRM surprised the hell out of me when I read it. I would never have called that one in a million years - I would have counted on a backlash making it worse.)
In fact, the only thing that seemed to have an impact on how much a game was pirated was popularity. The more popular the game, the more piracy. So, it's a freeloader effect in the end, with a pirate ideology to boot, and that makes it an arms race.
(And here's the thing about the pirate ideology - it's not about fighting the system, it's all about free swag. There are a lot of excuses, but it comes down to feeling entitled to take whatever you want, regardless of if it's yours to take or not. And that's a message that has to be fought, tooth and nail.)
And, we're seeing the impact of the arms race right now. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 had a console piracy rate of around 6 legitimate copies to every pirated copy - around 6 million sales to around 970,000 illegal downloads. On the PC, it was around 11 pirated copies to every legitimate one - around 350,000 sales to around 4 and a half million illegal downloads. So, with the goal of DRM now being to hold the pirates off as long as possible - with a week being considered a success, and a month being a tremendous victory - it's no wonder that most of the big game companies are concentrating on the console market. And frankly, it would not surprise me in the slightest if Ubisoft announces that these next couple of games are the last ones they're producing for the PC market. That would be the correct business decision - the PC game market is poisoned to the point that the only way to stand a chance of avoiding being hammered by piracy for at least a week is to treat your customers like criminals. When that's the case, it's time to walk away.
The PC game market is being reduced to subscription games only. Just compare it five years ago and now. It's a shadow of what it once was. And, let's put the blame where it belongs - the game pirates.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
I'd love to be at the shareholder meeting when they discuss this.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
Here's the problem - that works wonderfully as a theory. It fails utterly in practice.
Really? Based on what metric?
The simple fact that PC game developers are still in business and still making money, despite wasting who knows how many millions of dollars every year on failed anti-piracy measures is all it takes to prove otherwise. And that's not even mentioning the small developers that are being successful despite using no DRM whatsoever. Here's just one excellent example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sins_of_a_solar_empire. Here's a bit I'm quoting from the page itself: "As of September 2008, Stardock's CEO, Brad Wardell, has stated that the game has sold over 500,000 units, with 100,000 of those being digital download sales, on a budget of less than $1,000,000. It sold 200,000 copies in the first month after release alone." And since the sources for that quote are extremely relevant here, I'll link those as well. http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=20026 http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/14383
The only possible metric you can use that would make what you said in any way correct is the one the big corporations use: that every pirated copy is a lost sale. So I guess it "fails utterly" if your metric is that they aren't making near as much money as they "could" be.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
"Really? Based on what metric?"
Based on piracy rates. I never said that a game couldn't be a success in the PC game market. I pointed out that, as the Tweakgames article stated, only two things actually had an impact on piracy rates:
1. The popularity of the game. If the game was more popular, the piracy rate was higher.
2. The presence of restrictive and intrusive DRM, which if not broken, actually does have the impact of lowering piracy rates until it is broken.
Nothing else made a difference. If a $20 game was as popular as a $60 game, it had the same level of piracy.
Did you even read the article I linked to?
"The simple fact that PC game developers are still in business and still making money, despite wasting who knows how many millions of dollars every year on failed anti-piracy measures is all it takes to prove otherwise."
Are they?
That's not a glib question. I started computer gaming in 1989 (and yes, I started out as a game pirate - I outgrew it by the age of 17, though). The PC game market is a wasteland today compared even to then. Only about ten years ago console ports were rare - now they're become more and more the norm. Most of the PC game market is concentrated in MMOs now. While there are still some big releases for the PC game market (eg., Starcraft II and Diablo III), most of the non-MMO releases start out on the console market, and the PC version comes out months later.
It's not rocket science to predict the trend. The PC games market that I started out in is long gone. The market from five years ago was far more rich and full than it is today. Yes, there are some big players still there, such as Stardock and Blizzard, but even Bioware is now starting its games on the console before the PC. The PC game makers are in the process of walking away. That's not a prediction - just an observation. It IS happening.
And, taking Stardock as an example, you haven't presented the whole story. Here's picking up after 2008:
March 27, 2009 - Stardock unveils a low customer impact DRM solution named GOO (Game Object Obfuscation). Source: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/stardock-goo-drm-copy-piracy,7390.html
May 1, 2009 - The Escapist, and a few others, report that Stardock has major piracy issues with Demigod (which does have DRM). Of 120,000 games connecting to the servers on the opening weekend, only 18,000 are legitimate. After the team spends a couple of days working on the servers, the CEO declares a victory against the pirates. Source: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/91400-Stardock-CEO-Demigod-Beats-Piracy
Now, that's a far cry from the DRM used by Ubisoft. But, it is important to note that Stardock DID end up implementing a very customer-friendly DRM solution, and got hit badly by piracy issues.
"The only possible metric you can use that would make what you said in any way correct is the one the big corporations use: that every pirated copy is a lost sale. So I guess it "fails utterly" if your metric is that they aren't making near as much money as they "could" be."
And with that, I KNOW you didn't read the article I linked to. That is a complete mischaracterization of the economic argument. You'll find a proper description here: http://www.tweakguides.com/Piracy_3.html
Please read that before you reply.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
Or just sell the non-DRM version for $60 and the DRM version for $20 on an as-is and unsupported basis. Or really, Sell the full (non-DRM) version for $30 or $40. I'd buy that. Here, games cost $90+. That's bullshit. The Aussie dollar is at .9 $US so there's absolutely no excuse except that they can. So fuck 'em. I'm not buying their crap game. Specially when it has horrendous DRM. When they come out with a game that I really decide I must have I will buy it, patch (crack) it and play it but that's a couple of games per year instead of the dozen or more I'd buy in North America at half the price.
Oh, and I buy Stardock games, games from GOG, games form the specials bin on Steam, the Orange Box because it was great value. They're all good value. Is that too much to ask.
While I'm ranting off-topic, why does some DRM refuse to allow me to play my games if I have certain programs installed ? If the DRM is there it's because I bought the game. Once the game is cracked the DRM doesn't get to check. Yes, I have a program that can read ISOs but if you were an ISO you'd be cracked but thankyou for showing me the error of my ways. I'll find that crack now and uninstall your stupid DRM. DUH !
The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat." Lily Tomlin
Did you even read the article I linked to?
No, I hadn't read the article before now because I already knew I didn't need to. I already knew what I would find there. I read it. I found it. It changes nothing.
It's irrelevant, because you really can't judge exactly what factors influence piracy, for several reasons.
1. You have no way to determine exactly how many people pirated it. Sure, you can go on a few popular torrent sites, and find "250,000" different downloads. But you have no way of knowing how accurately that even represents torrent piracy, nevermind other online piracy, and you haven't a clue about sneakernet piracy. No one has gone through and checked to see how often the same IP address shows up on different torrents for the same item, in an attempt to get a different or better version. And no one can possibly check every torrent site out there. So who knows which way those results are skewed? No one.
2. You can't truly determine the effects that pricing, quality, availability, ease of use, etc. have on piracy, because as soon as it's available... it's already too late. You'd have to be able to generate a parallel universe to get a definitive answer on it. As soon as you release the game at $60 for the first week, you no longer have the ability to test to see what the results for that game would have been if you released it at $20 for the first week. Sure, you can release a new game at $20 and try to compare, but the best you can do from that is make an educated guess. You can draw some conclusions based on correlation, but that's it. Maybe there's not as many people who consider the second game as worthwhile as the first, or vice versa. Who knows? No one. The same applies to any other market factor.
Are they?
You tell me. Can you make a profit selling 500,000 copies of a game that cost just $1,000,000 to make?
If your question really wasn't glib, then I feel sorry for you having wasted that much time and effort on such a pointless, easily-answered question.
It's not rocket science to predict the trend. The PC games market that I started out in is long gone. The market from five years ago was far more rich and full than it is today.
There was also a lot more unexplored territory left, and a lot more companies taking advantage of that, and making innovative new games. Most of those companies were so profitable that they got bought out by bigger companies, which explains why you see primarily just a handful of bigger publishers. But those handful are much bigger now than they've ever been. The problem with that is the same as it is with any company that expands beyond a certain point: the focus is entirely on money, and no longer on finding out what the customers really want, and providing good quality product. Big companies are far less willing to take big risks for big rewards, and as a result we now have a glut of rehashes and reruns of the same crap we had 5 years ago. It's a direct result of the small, DRM-free developers being too profitable and being swallowed up by the giants. Very few PC game developers have ever gone out of business while they were still producing a quality product that had sufficient demand. In fact, I can't think of a single one.
The PC game makers are in the process of walking away. That's not a prediction - just an observation. It IS happening.
And that's not surprising in the least, given the huge amount of money they've been wasting on useless DRM. To which I say, good riddance. The PC games market isn't going anywhere. Every big conglomerate like Ubisoft or whoever that walks away just leaves that much more opportunity for a small innovative developer to make a splash.
And, taking Stardock as an example, you haven't presented the whole story. Here's picking up after 2008:
March 27, 2009 - Stardock unveils a low customer impact DRM solution named GOO (Game Object Obfusca
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Well, at this point, I think we have to just agree to disagree. I can see how you've come to some of your points, but I also think you're wrong. I additionally think you've bought into a couple of arguments that are shaky at best, but time will tell which one of us is right. It may very well be that I am looking at this from a business perspective (as a business owner myself), and you are looking at it from a gamer perspective.
However, I must say that I do not like having words put in my mouth. You made a statement about what could reduce the piracy rate. I pointed to an article that explored those very things, ran figures for them, and noted that those things had no effect on the piracy rate at all. I was speaking entirely of the ratio of pirated copies to legitimate copies, and you kept trying poke holes in the argument that a download is equal to a lost sale. I never made that claim, the article never made that claim, and frankly the claim was irrelevant to the ratio. That makes it a straw man.
I will point out, though, that if the sales figures for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 are representative of a successful game - over 6 million copies sold for console vs. approximately 350,000 sold for PC - then the reason that the big game makers are going for the console market has a lot more to do with the size of the market than it does with the financial cost of DRM. Console games are less complex to develop (the PC game platform is really something like a hundred similar platforms, all with their own quirks, whereas a game that works on one X-Box 360 will work on all X-Box 360s), have fewer piracy issues, and a far larger market.
Or, put bluntly, why would any developer put the effort into selling around half a million copies for PC if they're REALLY lucky when they can put less effort into selling a few million for consoles first?
And that is my last word in this discussion. I will not reply further.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
However, I must say that I do not like having words put in my mouth. You made a statement about what could reduce the piracy rate. I pointed to an article that explored those very things, ran figures for them, and noted that those things had no effect on the piracy rate at all. I was speaking entirely of the ratio of pirated copies to legitimate copies, and you kept trying poke holes in the argument that a download is equal to a lost sale. I never made that claim, the article never made that claim, and frankly the claim was irrelevant to the ratio. That makes it a straw man.
And I pointed out that we really have no way to know at all whether or not those "things" really had an effect on the piracy rate, regardless of what graphs your article has. And that, as a result, your claim of those "things" being an "utter failure" at affecting piracy is such an extreme statement that it's only valid if we were otherwise assuming every pirated download as a lost sale. Not a straw man at all, nor was it putting words in your mouth.
I will point out, though, that if the sales figures for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 are representative of a successful game - over 6 million copies sold for console vs. approximately 350,000 sold for PC - then the reason that the big game makers are going for the console market has a lot more to do with the size of the market than it does with the financial cost of DRM. Console games are less complex to develop (the PC game platform is really something like a hundred similar platforms, all with their own quirks, whereas a game that works on one X-Box 360 will work on all X-Box 360s), have fewer piracy issues, and a far larger market.
Well first, you got your facts wrong. http://news.vgchartz.com/news.php?id=5826 I dunno, maybe you have a bad source but according to my math, 12% of 7 million comes to 840,000, not 350,000. I also find it quite amusing that you would choose MW2 as your example of poor sales on the PC. You are aware that several hundred thousand gamers boycotted the game, precisely because it didn't offer the value that it should have? http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?dedis4mw The main reason though that some developers are finding it hard to get PC game sales to match console sales is because PC gamers are too busy playing games on their PCs that simply can be done properly on console. Namely, MMOs. Or to be specific, WoW. And yet, despite all the boycotts, despite all the piracy, despite the millions of gamers who previously would have been their target audience that are now plaing MMOs, they still managed to sell enough copies of MW2 for PC to make it the most successful PC version of Call of Duty ever. http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/modernwarfare2/news.html?sid=6241052 Yep, I guess they should just pack in their PC gaming devision because it's clearly not profitable enough.
Or, put bluntly, why would any developer put the effort into selling around half a million copies for PC if they're REALLY lucky when they can put less effort into selling a few million for consoles first?
Maybe because the game they want to create just won't work well on consoles? Or maybe because there's already so many games for consoles available, and with the big publishing houses focusing more on consoles it's a lot easier to make a profit on PCs? How about because the installed base for PCs dwarfs that of all modern consoles put together? Not all games have to be cutting-edge 3D you know. The PC game market includes far more than the retail boxed products, and way more than consoles could ever hope to offer.
And that is my last word in this discussion. I will not reply further.
Good for you.
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The low sales figure might also have something to do with the fact that the game was released for consoles first, because most pc gamers also have a console. And the fact that they removed all the things you expect from a pc shooter, such as private servers and the ability to mod the game.
And as long as civ 4 can sell >5 million copies(http://baltimore.bizjournals.com/baltimore/stories/2005/11/14/daily33.html) i don't think it's anything close to the death of pc gaming.
People (at least those with more than two brain cells) were arguing that this was potentially non-trivial DRM, not that it absolutely was non-trivial.
No, because it's not true. If you think it is, go log into your cracked copy of WoW or Eve Online and get back to me.
Maybe because their backup servers are run by Akemai, which runs Linux?