Slashdot Mirror
Ubisoft DRM Problems Remain Unsolved
ocean_soul writes "More than three weeks after the release of The Settlers 7, with the controversial 'always on-line' DRM, a lot of people still can't connect to Ubisoft's DRM servers. The forum threads where people can post if they are unable to connect keep growing daily. One reason for the lack of fixes or responses from support seems to be that the people responsible were on vacation during the Easter holiday, despite the promise of 24/7 monitoring of the servers. The moral of this story seems to be that it is a bad idea to buy a game just before a major holiday."
Or perhaps that it's wise to avoid games with such DRM altogether. So far, Ubisoft hasn't shown any sign that they're reconsidering the requirement of a constant connection. They've recently said it's "vital" to the success of their games and promised that their DRM would "evolve and improve" over time.
They've recently said it's "vital" to the success of their games and promised that their DRM would "evolve and improve" over time.
Improving the DRM won't improve the game itself. A game would have to be pretty damn good to make me pay AT&T $60 per month for the ability to play it on a laptop. I've bought exactly one game published by Ubisoft (Lumines for PSP, a franchise that Ubi has since lost to Disney), and if anyone working at Ubi is reading, I'm not buying any more until your company starts considering laptops without mobile broadband.
...where are all the class-action lawsuits? Here's a place where people should be suing the hell out of a company. Why isn't this happening?
"Software is like sex; it's better when it's free." -Linus Torvalds
This is because idiots keep buying them. People need to stop buying their PC games, and if they REALLY want to send a message, put their piracy statistics through the roof. Download the game 4 or 5 times. If Ubisoft ever removes the DRM from the game, then show them it's appreciated by buying a copy, and putting a nice spike in their sales graph. All the people at the top ever see are graphs and fancy numbers. Show them it doesn't work through those.
This is what happened with Spore, and EA has since realised that they can't treat customers that way anymore. They are now removing DRM from their games shortly after launch.
If piracy is as widespread as they say, and if pirated copies really detract so heavily from sales, then the sales of this game should be abnormally large. Are they?
I realise that's hard/impossible to measure, but it warrants some discussion.
If any of their games were selling particularly well I'm sure they'd be shouting from the rooftops: "See it works!" But they're not so I imagine its for the par at least. What will be really interesting is the five year outlook, I've already decided to do my part to kill Ubisoft: I will never buy another one of their games, theres always something else to choose.
Shh.
I just had a great experience with Ubisoft DRM a few weeks ago. I decided to replay Farcry 2, which I really didn't play that much when I bought it a year or so ago. I'm military, I move a lot, can't find the stupid booklet with CD key, so being a legitimate customer who BOUGHT the damned game I go on their site and ask for help. Game apparently needs a CD key that activates itself online and requires registration and account creation (which I did create, and logged in with that account...). Their reply summed up is "Send us 5$ + S&H and we'll send you a new CD key. Check/cash/money order will do". My reply was taking 5 minutes to find a 24k cracked .exe file that allowed me to skip through all their BS. That was the last game I buy from Ubisoft.
This new DRM scheme is even worse. For me for example, I deploy, I don't have internet everywhere. Which means I can't play an uncracked version of Settlers 7. I've never even played Settlers, I don't know what it is, nor will I ever get exposed to it because I know of their retarded DRM schemes. I imagine that this will turn away a lot of other paying customers from Ubisoft franchises.
PS: Farcry 2 sucks, no wonder I played it for an hour when I bought it a year ago.
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5496065/Assassin_s_Creed_2_Crack_(Final_and_complete)
Now more and more x360 games are coming with one time only codes that you need to unlock a significant portion of the game. Forza 3, for example, had a bonus track area and a ton of bonus cars. mass effect 2 had a very effective character locked out by default but was unlocked with a one use code. I would expect that in the near future this trend will accelerate.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
Let them stop porting the games.
There would be then more coverage of free and indie games. And that's good.
I can't help but think that consumerism took over the gaming and majority of people presume that only large corporations are capable of making interesting games. Sooner the myth gets busted, better.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Think hard, then name a half dozen DRM schemes that have lasted for years, and STILL WORK. I'll bet you can't do it.
I'm *NO* fan of DRM, but I accept your challenge...
-CSS on DVD's has been cracked and anyone who knows to look for any number of apps employing DeCSS can bypass it, but it's enough that commercial apps like Roxio and Nero won't do it, and a search for copying DVDs will yield 1,001 apps that either don't live up to their promises or install malware, so while it's possible, I'll give it half-credit because Joe Sixpack will have to do a decent amount of research to figure out how to do it properly.
-The DRM on WMA has held up pretty well; it had been cracked in the past, but AFAIK the latest incarnations of it are still largely intact. Whether that's a "they did it well" or "no one cares" issue, I can't tell, but the bottom line is that I'm unaware of an app that will unlock a song rented from Napster To Go if I download one today.
-While I've seen rips of iTunes videos leaked on a few torrent trackers, by and large I haven't seen a widely distributed app that will crack the DRM on the videos from iTunes.
-While not technically 'years', the comments on slashdot articles about the PS3 lead me to believe that games for that system are extremely-challenging-at-best to pirate. Is that true?
-iLok seems to be holding up pretty well; a few apps have been cracked, but it's no an app-by-app basis instead of a system-wide crack.
-Torq and Serato both have proprietary hardware that's used to enable all the features of the applications, and I haven't seen cracks for either that enable them to use generic ASIO sound cards.
-This one is pure speculation, but I'm sure that there are extremely high-cost, industry specific applications that are DRM'd and haven't been cracked. I'm sure Boeing doesn't use AutoCAD to design airplanes. I'm sure ConEdison doesn't use off-the-shelf software to regulate electricity output across Manhattan.
A bunch of half-examples? yes. Do they half-work? I'd say so.
One of Denmark's leading national news papers, Politiken, has a really fun review of Settlers 7:
Don't buy this outstanding game! (Danish article Translated article)
Even rated the game 5 out of 6 but the DRM 1 out of 6
And then they followed it up with one entitled " New Copy Protection Punishes The Law Abiding " (Machine translated article)