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Ubisoft's Draconian DRM Patched?
An anonymous reader writes "It appears that Ubisoft's controversial DRM scheme launched last year that required players to have a permanent connection to the Internet has been patched to no longer stop the game when connectivity drops, though an Internet connection is still required when starting the game."
While I previously had a fast constant internet connection, this year I moved to Asia and got to see how bad the internet connection can be at times.
Requiring an internet connection to start the game isn't really a problem, there aren't really that many situations where I would even want to be without one, but if the connection drops or becomes really slow at times it creates problems.
While I don't know how long this has been in effect, I haven't had any problems with my copies of Settlers 7, Assassins Creed 2 and Splinter Cell. Now I'm also more happy to buy HAWX 2, which I've been thinking of doing for a while.
That being said, I can predict this story will once again have just comments dissing DRM in general. Personally, I just want to enjoy the games and I'm getting too old to just rant about it while I can have actual fun too. As long as the DRM works, there is no problem for me. Combine this with the easiness of Steam and I'm more than happy to buy games.
Crackers get the better stuff while legal users getting banned.
So I recommend those annoyed by this game to play those instead.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
The guy who thought this up is a dope.
"Hey, let's make our product shittier and harder to use, I bet that will make us some money!"
I hope Ubisoft fires the moron who first pitched this idea to them over a year ago. I haven't purchased an Ubisoft game since they announced this last February.
As we all know, DRM puts a stop to copyright infringement. If they make it less effective (you have to try to piss off your customers as much as possible when developing a DRM scheme), then they'll surely crack it (completely unheard of)! This was just a bad decision all around. What they need to do is have it so all of their customers must beg for access to the game before they are allowed to play it.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
They patched this probably more to reduce server load than to field customer complaints. Stupid idea in the first place, of course.
...actually buy a game and run a cracked version just to get around the DRM? i confess to be one of them. not ashamed to be one.
Reminds me of a UserFriendly.org comic from a few years ago...went something like this:
"Someone is force-feeding you 5 bricks while kneeing you in the crotch. Suddenly, they decide to feed you only FOUR bricks. Do you THANK them?!?"
"Microsoft killed my company, I hold a personal grudge. I don't use Microsoft products and neither should you."-JWZ
Given how badly the pc version of Black Ops was pirated I don't see much of a future for pc games with single player campaigns
You missed the 'from big publishers who just regurgitate last years game with slightly better graphics' part. If the big publishers abandon the PC for consoles and leave it to the indie developers, I'd be quite happy... I've bought more indie games than big name games in the current Steam sale because so few of the big name games had any appeal.
Of course that will suck for ATI and Nvidia if no-one has a need for the most expensive 3D graphics cards. But there doesn't seem to be much use for them now when most games are designed for consoles with antique GPUs and ported over to the PC.
I don't buy DRM shit anymore. Over Christmas I've spent $25 on 2x Humblebundle (one for me, and one as a gift). And I tell you, games like Aquaria and World of Goo are nice and refreshing. Hell, I wouldn't pay $5 for some DRM riddled shit like Assassin's Creed 2. With Aquaria, I will be able to enjoy them 50 years from now when I'm old and senile :) :) :)
On similar note, a friend very much enjoyed Assassin's Creed, but she noticed that the game "lagged". After disconnecting Internet connection, the game played perfectly smoothly. It turns out that their DRM causes delays in player input. After that experience, she never got Assassin's Creed 2 *because* of DRM. She said she would have spent $60 for that game, but since they added even more draconian DRM than the first (in 1st, it caused lag), it was a no-go. And yes, this is a true story.
So yes, I play games like EVE Online, World of Tanks, Quake Live and now I discovered great Humblebundle games like Aquaria, World of Goo and the rest of the pack :) I'm very pleased with Humblebundle and looking forward to next one!
When my ISP went out for a day and a half, I wanted to play some games to pass the time, but the games that appealed to my state of mind were all on steam-- and thus useless to me. (Yes, I'm the anti-social type--I prefer single player scenarios).
That's funny, they conclude with
"Well as a publisher I’d have to ask myself why bother releasing a game for the PC at all? Why don’t I just give it away for free?"
After stating a minute earlier that the PC version made nine and a half million euros in sales. Given it's on an xbox already, the art and level design is all done, etc, etc. Yes why not not take 9 million euros that's on the table, that'd be rational.
I didn't realize how crappy my connection was until I started playing WOW...before with Steam only needing occasional access I didn't notice.
I switched providers once I realized how bad my connection was. I just don't think it is a smart thing to do to require constant connectivity...unless most other people have much better connection experiences than I have had. Seems like a recipe for disaster.
Ok, without a required connection during the game, it will be quite easy to crack this scheme: simply make a copy of the machine state just after starting the game. (For most people, this will be not so simple, but crackers can easily do this).
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
The only reason "no one has a need" for these things is that the engines utilizing said gpu features require such expensive liscenses no indie dev can afford them, not because they wouldn't utilize it if they could. (Some of these engines + dev kits come with DRM of their own notorious for wreaking havoc on dev machines).
It's really just a symptom of an industry that's rife with corruption and incompetence. The only reason why they're getting anything out of DRM at all is that they were able to buy enough legislators to get the DMCA passed. The DMCA includes weak protections for consumers where they exist at all.
Beyond that I'm not sure how to interpret the success of Indie developers that release sans DRM or GOG.
As long as the people still buy the games from Ubisoft, they will not drop any DRM. My guess is that it was calculated (i.e. x% are pirats, y% are pissed, z% will still buy) and it makes more profit with the DRM then without. A lot of people just don't care until the servers are stopped or changed for a new game. In that case it will be just a press release "We are very very sorry but we have to terminate the activation service. Look at the EULA it's perfectly legal and you can do shit about it. So please just forgot this game and buy our new games now with more DRM because the pirates are forcing us to protect our IP.".
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That's fine and good, but you really shouldn't be rewarding draconian companies like Ubisoft with your money. Either abstain or find a rationalization for your piracy. My favorite is, "if they're going to treat me like a criminal then I'll act like one."
I'm all for it. If the big names move to consoles, so much the better. They won't be missed in the PC arena. In the console arena, they can put out a new Madden each year, and people will buy it in droves, just because it has higher detail on some wide-receiver's pants.
It is laughable. The big names in the game business whine all the time about "piracy" while they put out such buggy crap that they have to find an excuse why gamers just don't bother, while the true success stories (Blizzard, ZeniMax subsidiaries like Bethesda) just do the job and do it right. If all the other big names vanished from the PC gaming sector, I'd miss Neverwinter Nights and AD&D games, but other than that, there wouldn't be any tears shed.
I'd love some indie firm that is able to get a license from Hasbro for the AD&D IP, and do another Baldur's Gate-like game with a good amount of hours of gameplay. Hell, put out a Neverwinter Nights 1 with updated graphics, sound, tiles, and ability to have zone servers for persistent worlds, and watch the game sell for years at a steady pace, rolling in the bucks for a long time. NWN1 made a hit because the CD-ROM DRM got patched out, and the only "DRM" was a CD key permitting access to multiplayer facilities, which makes sense.
Relevant: http://www.yearwithoutdrm.com/
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
If PC gaming is declining, it's because it's getting more difficult to play the games you payed for. It's what keeps me from playing on PC, not to mention that I won't be guaranteed to be able to play the game in the future if they stop supporting the game and server support is therefore discontinued. Steam is ok but it doesn't cover everything, and that's part of the problem. Different games require effort in different areas in order to get the game to run, and it's too much trouble in general so I stay off the platform completely.
PC users do have a much higher rate of theft than console users; there tends to be more dishonesty there. So I can understand the concern.
PC users do have a much higher rate of theft than console users; there tends to be more dishonesty there. So I can understand the concern.
Wait - do you mean that having a PC increases your chance of being burgled, or that people at a higher burglary-risk are also more likely to own a PC?
It may not be as bad as pirating, but what you're doing is sending them a strong financial message: "It's ok to do this shit! I don't mind! I'll give you exactly as much money as I did before, I'll just be slightly more annoyed!"
If a game has enough DRM that I'd have to crack it just to play the way I want, or to protect my system, I'm not going to buy or play that game. I'll buy a different one with either no DRM, or DRM I can live with.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Mine can only be put in offline mode when I am online. If I am offline, it says to start in offline mode, but then it won't, and says it needs to be online.
If I remember to turn it to offline mode before I go offline, it works fine, and I can stay in offline mode for the month I am at work, and play just fine (on my offshift hours of course). If I forget that before I leave home, I am screwed for the month.
Given it's on an xbox already, the art and level design is all done, etc, etc. Yes why not not take 9 million euros that's on the table, that'd be rational.
I'd like to have a dollar from every gamer geek who has complained about a console port to the PC.
No, he's saying that if you own a PC then you're more likely to go around burgling other people.
Oh, yes, PC people pirate more often than console users. I'll have to ask the question the GP asked agains, since you didn't seem to have read it...
"Why take 9 milion euros that are just on the table if you could just not release on that market and have nobody copying the game for their PCs?"
If you noticed that I was comparing orthogonal values, well, you are very near a rational tought. Run.
Rethinking email
When they shipped a single product with this, they went off my vendor list.
Forever.
There are way too many companies making games for me to deal with one like that. Same deal as with Belkin and their router which randomly redirected sessions to an advertisement. You screw up that blatantly or obviously, even once, and you're off the vendor list unless you are a genuine monopoly on something I really need.
Since Ubisoft can never be a monopoly on much of anything, they're gone.
Note that this is not an attempt to make them behave better. That would be "off the vendor list until you fix this". That is a recipe for companies like Amazon, which patent troll and spam, then back off a little bit until the complaints die down. I don't want to deal with companies I have to watch constantly because they've learned to just go ahead and do evil stuff and see who complains.
For utterly replaceable companies, the policy is "you're gone, bye". If they eventually die, great! Everyone wins. If they merely stop selling me stuff, because I don't buy from them, at least I win.
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Well, I can understand why people did it. I mean, would you pay full price for something that could have been done as a 5 bucks DLC package?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Erh... how?
One of the reasons they could put more detail on some pants is that they simply assume that you have a better rig a year later, can squeeze more polys and higher resolution textures in and your machine will be able to render it.
Doesn't really work with consoles, does it?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The only reason for more copying on PC is that it requires a LOT less information on the user's part to copy. Even a soft mod requires at least rudimentary ideas how to a) get it and b) get it into your machine. Add the fear of bricking that 400+ bucks of hardware (because you can't just reinstall Windows if you blow it), the tendency to just fail (RROD et al) and you could see why fewer people copy on consoles.
Essentially, the reason is that PCs run copies out of the box, while you have to "adjust" consoles to really own them.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
When EA starts to take away all of Ubisoft's sales. Now maybe I'm wrong, maybe Ubisoft's sales won't be impacted, however the fact that they patched it implies that they have. Perhaps their new games have not sold as well on the PC as they wanted. They figured with their new DRM they'd have far more sales, and in fact have had significantly less. If that's the case, and people keep boycotting it, it may go away eventually.
After all EA has backed WAY off on their PC DRM and they seem to be doing quite well. They seem to have found a balance between checking for pirated copies but that doesn't interfere with legit uses at all.
I can speak only for myself, but I won't buy Ubisoft's new games. Assassin's Creed 2 and Settlers 7 were on my list to buy, but I have not sue to the DRM. I didn't pirate them instead, I've just given them a miss. There are plenty of good games out there, I have games I've not yet even installed that I own, so I do not lack for options. If others do like myself, well it'll continue to hurt Ubisoft and in fact have the opposite effect of what they want. Their DRM will cost them more money to implement (as it is fairly complicated) but they'll get less sales as a result.
I'll meet companies half way. I can accept some DRM. Steamworks is ok, for example. However it can't interfere with my ability to play and enjoy the game. Requiring a net connection to play counts. Part of the reason to have single player games is to have something to play when my net connection dies (which let's not kid ourselves still happens even with good ones) or when I'm traveling.
People who will take NO DRM EVAR remind me of OSS fanboys, who sit running very few applications and having to pick and choose hardware carefully to maintain the "purity" of their systems, all while claiming "It is better here! Really it is!"
Some people are pragmatic about DRM. I'd be one of them. I'm ok with it. While I question its usefulness, I understand that publishers need it to feel safe so I'm ok. I'll meet them half-way. My requirement for DRM is that it doesn't interfere with my gameplay. I need it to not mess with what I want to do, like being able to play whenever I feel like, install on my desktop and laptop, not jump through hoops, and so on. So long as it meets that, I'm ok with it. I'd rather it not be there and think it is kinda a waste of money, but I'm pragmatic. I won't be a zealot about no-DRM if they won't be zealots about draconian DRM.
So I'm ok with Steam. In particular because the package provides great benefits along with the DRM, notably the "Install as many times as you like from an easy, fast download repository." That's a nice feature. The whole Steam package is pretty nice (installs, achievements, communication, etc).
Thus I won't buy games with Ubisoft's DRM, but I will buy games with Steamworks. I'd rather zero DRM, but I'm not going to be a zealot about it.
Why not expect the minority of paying pc customers to pony up for an xbox if they really want to play it? I bet at least half of paying pc gamers have a ps3 or 360.
So I don't own my console because I haven't modded it to play pirated games? That's a strange definition of ownership.
I actually like supporting game developers, too bad the majority of pc gamers don't feel the same way.
The only reason for more copying on PC is that it requires a LOT less information on the user's part to copy
I don't think you've thought this through very far because the same thing can be said for consoles, lets start with the Dreamcast. Initially a boot loader disc was required to play copied games, as things progressed some of the games had the loader installed on them. Portable game systems have super cartridges available that you can load dozens of ROM onto. How about piracy on the PSP? Since when is getting a mod chip beyond the average user? Your average user doesn't know how to crack software either, they know how to download (or someone they know does) and they arguably know how to follow directions. Mobile phones can be jailbroken and you can install all the games you like... I'm sure the size of the PC user base has something to do with it as well.
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This is all pretty typical DRM saber-rattling.
Do any of you know that Ubi actually put the claim that DRM kills sales to the test before releasing their current DRM?
Prince of Persia 2008 released on pc with absolutely no DRM to see if people put their money where their mouth is. 75k pc copies were sold and over half a million players were playing it. They had to abandon the idea of releasing without DRM because the project ended up unprofitable, something that could have been avoided if less than half of those players had actually bought the game.
But given how much multiplats are pirated by pc gamers I'd say a few million at least will be upset.
If you wait 5 years to play a game, you get to save a ton on hardware as well!
Customer support is expensive.
Too bad they didn't have the due diligence to figure this out a year ago. Now if they remove the remaining startup check, they might be able to sell me a copy.
Not good enough for me yet. I don't always have internet service, and I'm not getting cable and DSL just to ensure my Ubisoft games work when I want them to. I'll stick with my 1990's manual-based DRM games, thank you very much. They haven't stopped working, and are actually more enjoyable. That or my wii.
The DRM was "patched" by pirates before some of these games even hit retail. I guess it's good that Ubi got around to doing for their paying customers what Skidrow did almost a year ago for everyone else, but I'm finding it hard to care.
I bought Conviction (on ebay, fuck Ubi) for the 360, but if I'd wanted to I could have downloaded the Skidrow multiplayer cracked PC version of that as well. Ubi's DRM didn't even last a single day.
The interesting part is that most people who own consoles will also own a PC, as well as people who don't own consoles.
OMG, all video gamers are mobsters and drug dealers! Ban video games!
So I don't own my console because I haven't modded it to play pirated games? That's a strange definition of ownership.
Preventing the DLC I paid cash for being deleted remotely is a strange definition of ownership? I "own" something that can be taken away at any time?
I should accept that the console can be patched remotely at any time to include 'features' that are annoying? And yet I "own" the console despite the lack of control over it?
I actually like supporting game developers, too bad the majority of pc gamers don't feel the same way.
Heh. You just keep feeling morally superior, "please Mr Corporate, jizz on my face, I just love it so".
Hint: Payment is a two-way street, if I give you good money, I expect to receive something of worth in return — I don't pay for the "privilege" of being held by the balls. Admittedly, I don't actually pirate much of anything myself since I find most games [and movies, music] to be overrated so just steer clear of them but I don't begrudge others who do.
Why not expect the minority of paying pc customers to pony up for an xbox if they really want to play it? I bet at least half of paying pc gamers have a ps3 or 360.
Easy. If you stop releasing products on a particular platform then you surrender that platform to your competitors. If Ubisoft stopped releasing games on PC, EA would eat their lunch for them. If EA, Activision, 2K, SEGA and the other big publishers stopped releasing games on PC, the indie developers would expand and found their own studios which would then compete with the big studios and publishers on their console home turf.*
For all the studios' bitching about how it isn't worth making PC games, they still do because the smart [business] people in the companies recognise that doing otherwise could prove fatal in the long term. Personally, I'd love for this to happen, it would effectively reset game development on PC to the early days before big budget publishers had taken hold and established status quos; it would open the way for a new frontier of original games.
* Your attitude clearly indicates that you believe people who own PCs don't pay for anything which is bizarre given the massive software industry of which games are only a small part. There is a very important difference between making enough money to build a mansion out of gold bricks, making enough enough money to live comfortably and not making enough money to avoid going bankrupt. Even if consoles are (1) and PCs are (2), it doesn't matter; profit is profit and as long as something is profitable someone is going to do it even if the big studios won't. This also excludes hobbiests who create the significant number of quality FREE games (those "crappy" Flash games everyone loves to hate on, some of them have art, sound and gameplay that beats the more pathetic big studio offerings).
Ownership is defined (at least in my law) as having the full rights to an object. That includes being allowed to sell, rent, use, retain, modify and destroy it as you please.
If I may not do any or all of those things with an object, I do not own it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The bar is just higher with consoles. Even if all you have to do is go out and buy some "super cartridge", you have to go out and buy something before you can download stuff from $download_page instead of just downloading stuff from $download_page.
I hope we can agree that soldering mod-chips to a console is not really trivial for non-technical people. And getting it soldered in for you is again something that raises the bar (not to mention the borderline-illegality or outright illegality of it, depending on your country).
With everything but PC games you have to leave the house or at least buy something (goods or service) as a non-tech person to play your copies. PCs do it out of the box, as stated above.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I just looked into this a bit more, and if what I understand is correct:
These games do NOT require you to be always-on anymore
Splinter Cell: Conviction
Silent Hunter 5
Assassin's Creed 2
These games STILL requires you to be always-on
The Settlers 7
Prince of Persia 2010
Hawx 2
Probably a few others
As an aside, the the way they "fixed" the always-on issue is a bit interesting - instead of issuing new patches for the various games, they now download a separate program for each game that does what Ubisoft's servers used to do.
As much as I strongly dislike DRM of all kinds, I'm willing to accept that like most things, it's a "tolerable disadvantage" to an offering, IF they manage to offer enough positives to offset it. In the case of Steam? I'm primarily a Mac OS X user these days, and this operating system has suffered from a lack of quality games written for it. When Steam promised Mac support, I was interested. I had Steam for years on my Windows PCs before that, but for Windows, it seemed like little more than a hassle.
Now, I look at it in a much more positive light on my Mac, because these guys were able to bring me several great games I was resigned to booting into Windows to play, previously; Team Fortress 2, Left for Dead 1 and 2, Portal, and Half Life 2. In all of these cases, the price was very reasonable too (especially for a Mac, where we're used to getting charged full retail price for a port of a game that's been out for over a year for Windows already!).
Now, it may be true that I "don't know for sure if I'll be allowed to play the games in 5 years", if Steam goes under or decides for whatever reason to deactivate the titles I paid for. But at the prices I paid for the OS X games I bought so far (about $10 for "Killing Floor", for example, and another $9.95 for Left for Dead), I really won't lose any sleep over it either. I got my entertainment dollar's worth out of all of them already. They even gave me free licenses for the games I'd bought previously on Steam, like Half Life 2.
On the flip side? There ARE some titles on Steam right now for the Mac I'd never buy through their system. Civilization 5 comes to mind immediately. They want about $50 for it. At that price? #1, I'm not even sure it's worth my money for a game that's really just an update to a game I've played MANY times before. But more importantly, $50 is too much to gamble/risk for a game tied to some company's online authentication system.
Now, since DRM clearly drives away customers
The trouble is, if it drives away some customers who won't buy an artificially crippled product, but it also prevents more potential customers from casually copying in the playground so they buy instead, then the DRM is probably a good investment for the company. It still means the honest part of the market is getting screwed while the dishonest part is benefitting, but the bottom line of the company is benefitting as well. Even DRM that only works for the first few weeks before a crack comes out can still be worth it in pure business terms.
Sadly, we have brought this upon ourselves: it is what we get in return for years of accepting lame arguments from the dishonest people about how information wants to be free, copyright infringement isn't theft, the big media companies deserve it, etc. Instead of enforcing the laws that are there to encourage businesses to develop good products with a reasonable expectation of profiting in return, we have taught the businesses that a confrontational attitude is the most profitable one to take, and that those of us who dislike DRM enough that we really won't buy broken products are insignificant relative to the number of freeloaders who would otherwise get away with it.
I don't see this changing unless and until either (a) more honest customers refuse to buy encumbered products (e.g., if DRM gets too irritating or popular sentiment changes), (b) more dishonest customers are compelled to buy if they want to play rather than freeloading (e.g., if we make a serious effort to enforce reasonable penalties in law), or possibly (c) the law starts enforcing advertising requirements and/or penalties for products that don't work properly or cause other damage because of poor DRM implementations.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Well according to your law no one owns businesses, property, houses, cars or money.
Depends on the laws that dictate just what you can do with those things. I do not see a real problem yet.
You may sell, rent, modify and destroy a business you own fully. Where is your problem?
You may sell, rent, use, retain or destroy property. Now, I do not really know how to destroy something like real estates (at least not in a way that does not impact the area around it that does not belong to you), but if you can, so you may.
Same with houses.
You may also sell, rent, use, retain, modify and destroy your car. It might no longer be allowed on public roads, but that doesn't mean you can't turn your car into a police car or make it look like a giant dildo if you so choose. The only problem might be that you cannot use it on a public road anymore, but that does not mean you cannot modify it as you see fit.
Same with money. This ain't the UK, modifying and destroying money is not illegal. Dumb, maybe, because it ceases to be legal tender when modified and it ceases to exist when destroyed, but hey, your money.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Same with money. This ain't the UK, modifying and destroying money is not illegal. Dumb, maybe, because it ceases to be legal tender when modified and it ceases to exist when destroyed, but hey, your money.
Actually, it is a violation of US Code to destroy US currency.
The USD may be "the" global currency, but so far it's not the local currency. And afaik destroying Euro bills is not forbidden. Then again, I am not sure, it's not really something I looked into, I kinda doubt that I'll willfully and deliberately go ahead and destroy money I hold.
You might also notice that you're actually not the owner of the bill. It is issued as a representation of a value and you are (from a legal point of view) only the holder, not the owner, of the bill. You own the money it represents, but not the bill representing it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well, that's certainly one way to look at it. Problem is that, while game developers focus on the lucrative console market, the PC versions of their games will suffer in quality (don't believe me? Read the amazon reviews on Black Ops). That is if they even bother to develop for the PC - many game developers simply do not have the technical ability to produce games for the heterogeneous PC platform (PS3 and XBox hardware is pretty much fixed and easy to target).
I want my PC games to be made for the PC. I hate not being able to save my game at any point in time - these "checkpoints" used by console ports are horrendous. I also want to be able to configure my game to take advantage of my PC's hardware - console games are made for a fixed set of hardware, meaning that they rarely support the better graphics capability of modern PC GPU's. I also want PC games to be released after proper QA, not as an afterthought.
Is there a single AAA game developer left that still focuses on PC games? I may be wrong, but I have not seen a big PC-exclusive announcement in ages.
I've been a PC gamer since the early '90s and I've lived through all the years when PC gamers became ever more reliant on hackers to defend their rights to make backups and sell to a third-party.
When Ubisoft announced this last DRM scheme of theirs, I simply boycotted them. Why should they get a cent of my hard earned money if they're going to treat me like a criminal before the shrinkwrap has even been removed the box?
Well you all know that Ubisoft aren't the first to treat us this way but in my case, I also had a dodgy unreliable internet connection. So it occurred to me that Ubisoft had invented another way to victimise me and blame me for it in the process.
So I said: 'Fuck Them'. The rest was easy. I don't care how 'awesome' anyone thinks their games are. I couldn't give a flying fuck how many webcomics are being so topical about their games. I could possibly piss on the reviewers who've stopped trying to be objective and factual.
If Ubisoft want another cent from me, they must reveal the names of those who came up with this idea in the first place, sack their entire upper management and publicly pledge to abandon all forms of DRM while the company exists.
Repeat this statement 1000 times and you know they'll start listening.
Ubisoft's CEO deserves to be driven into poverty and homelessness.
Let him off himself and give the rest of the world clean hands. :D
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Depends on the laws that dictate just what you can do with those things.
You cannot do as you please with those things. There are endless restrictions on how you can modify houses, businesses and property. Cars cannot be modified endlessly either. Catalytic converter modifications for example must be done by a shop and have to meet regulations.
Try burning the bill and getting money from the government then. Burn one hundred pounds and then demand the value in gold.
Seems people have forgotten to mention (or a simple reminder) that the Humble Bundle 2 was offering 11 games for less than $10 bucks ... ALL with NO DRM!!!
I, too, was looking into purchasing some Ubisoft games, but instead of dealing with their DRM while paying 50+ bucks for a single game, I found myself getting pushed toward these indie developers who are selling non-DRM games of decent quality on the cheap! Even better, is that the Humble Bundle 2 had the option for me to decide to pay more later to reward the developers if, as I'm playing through these games, I found the developers did an awesome job and deserve more compensation for their hard work for a job well done (rather than being ripped off from the start if it in fact ending up being a poorly developed game)!
If you some how haven't heard of the Humble Bundle 2, you can research about it and sign up to hear about the next Humble Bundle release here.
I have made it a personal choice not to ever buy a product Ubisoft, companies like them ever again; no matters the product, and this is easier than you would think since we are talking about game companies.