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Ubisoft's Draconian DRM Patched?

Posted by Soulskill on from the improved-to-terrible dept.

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."

15 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Ubisofts DRM by amiga3D · · Score: 5, Insightful

    DRM shouldn't get in the way of enjoying the game for legal owners. I hated companies that made my old 1541 disk drive hammer itself into oblivion with their crap copy protection. I'd end up finding a cracked copy that would load in 15 seconds instead of 4 and a half minutes. I don't mind paying for something useful but I hate buying crippled shit. I really don't play games anymore but if I did I wouldn't want anything that forced me to put up with a bunch on needless BS.

  2. Re:Ubisofts DRM by ScytheBlade1 · · Score: 5, Informative

    "When it works" isn't what bothers me. What bothers me is this disclaimer at the bottom of the steam page:

    > A PERMANENT HIGH SPEED INTERNET CONNECTION AND CREATION OF A UBISOFT ACCOUNT ARE REQUIRED TO PLAY THIS VIDEO GAME AT ALL TIMES AND TO UNLOCK EXCLUSIVE CONTENT. SUCH CONTENT MAY ONLY BE UNLOCKED ONE SINGLE TIME WITH A UNIQUE KEY. YOU MUST BE AT LEAST 13 TO CREATE A UBISOFT ACCOUNT WITHOUT PARENTAL CONSENT. UBISOFT MAY CANCEL ACCESS TO ONLINE FEATURES UPON A 30-DAY PRIOR NOTICE PUBLISHED AT http://assassinscreed.com/ ... which to me says, "we can nuke your access to the game at any point in time, provided we give you 30 days notice on a website you're never going to check."

    I own AC1, but I don't own AC2 or HAWX 2 for this very reason.

    DRM is likely here to stay, at least to some degree, but this frightens the ever living crap out of me. Why would I throw money at a game where they can cut off access to it at any point in time for ALL of their customers, just because they don't want to pay the bill on those servers anymore?

  3. That's what bad with DRM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Crackers get the better stuff while legal users getting banned.

    1. Re:That's what bad with DRM by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And that's exactly what's wrong with copy protection: It hurts the honest customer and rewards those that copy the content. DRM is free market in reverse. And, oddly, the studios wonder why it fails.

      When you usually buy something (compared to buying it "off a truck"), you get something extra. You get warranty, you get additional goodies packed with them, mail in rebates (ok, dubious value, but still), you get support, you get all the "comfort" you will lack when you buy it from some shady source. The honest customer that buys it legally gets additional protection and additional bonus material for his money.

      With content and DRM, it's exactly the opposite. You don't get any sensible warranty anyway, you don't get any goodies anymore with your bought games (remember those good ol' days when there were some tidbits and trinkets packed with games? Or even a manual worth the name?), hell, you often don't even get sensible packaging. And on top of it all, you get your computer infested with drivers of dubious quality that sometimes also open up gapping security holes in your system.

      As someone copying the content, you don't get anything "extra" either (so there's no difference here), but you also do not suffer from those copy protection drivers, "insert CD" nagging, mandatory online connection or are subjected to other patronizing.

      Is it me or is it just plain STUPID to artificially devalue your product? Especially if you're up against someone who already hands it out for free?

      Dear studios: The old tale of sun and wind betting who could get someone out of his coat applies fully here. You can NOT force people to buy something. You can convince him, but for that you have to give him what he wants! How much does it take to get that through your skull?

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  4. Morons by potat0man · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Morons by hedwards · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Isn't likely to happen. Most likely that moron is the CEO.

      Personally, I won't be buying until they back off quite a bit more. I personally don't think that a failure to have internet access is a valid reason to keep me from playing a game I've paid for. Well, unless it's an online only game, like a game which has no single player game play.

    2. Re:Morons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      As someone who works at Ubisoft, I can guarantee you that this practice will NOT stop. The CEO pretty much said so ... often.

  5. Re:Ubisofts DRM by 0123456 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why would I throw money at a game where they can cut off access to it at any point in time for ALL of their customers, just because they don't want to pay the bill on those servers anymore?

    So don't. The more of us who refuse to buy games which allow them to cut off users at any time, the less games will be released with such draconian DRM.

    Personally I now only buy games that are DRM-free, or games which only use Steam for DRM as it can be run in offline mode.

  6. Re:Ubisofts DRM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    or games which only use Steam for DRM

    Steam cultist remind me of Apple fanboys. "Oh but it's Steam, it's GOOD DRM!" Hilarious! It's still DRM that can disable your games at any time of their chosing.

  7. Reminds me of a UserFriendly comic by Killer+Eye · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:Reminds me of a UserFriendly comic by 0123456 · · Score: 4, Funny

      I was thinking more along the lines of 'well mister, I ain't going to rape your butt no more, but you sure have a purty mouth'...

  8. Re:Just buy a console already by nedlohs · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  9. Re:Ubisofts DRM by skam240 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Whether Steam is or can be cracked is irrelevant, Steam is helping to push us farther and farther down the path of us "leasing" our games instead of buying them. As it stands now, when I "buy" a Steam game I really have no idea whether I'll be able to play the game five years from now or even a month from now when the game makes its mandatory check in with their servers. All I have to go on is the good will of some faceless corporate entity and the assurances of Steam fans that this could never happen or that there will be some wonderful work around that will be less convenient than just being able to install my game and play like I should be able to.

    The worst part is, it's as easy pirating a game today as it was 10 years ago when all that was on games was Safedisc. Really brings home how ridiculous all of these inconvenient measures are, right?

    --
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  10. Too little, too late. by seebs · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
  11. Re:Ubisofts DRM by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'll add another "legal user gets screwed" anecdote to yours showing why this crap sucks: Older Games. My older games play just fine on Windows 7 HP X64, hell thanks to MSFT's backwards compatibility they work without a hitch. What DOESN'T work is the &*^%*^&%*&%^* ring 0 DRM garbage! If you are lucky all you get is classic "insert disc" even though the disc IS inserted, and if you are not? Well lets just say I hope you have a dual boot or a very recent backup, because the ring 0 crap will turn your OS into a crashing unstable nightmare.

    WARNING: Many of the older SecuROM and Starforce ring 0 "drivers" WILL NOT UNINSTALL ON X64! which means if it makes your OS an unstable mess you better be able to dual boot to rip it out from another OS, or be ready to restore from backup. Their "uninstallers" hosted on their websites DO NOT WORK ON X64, yet their garbage ring 0 DRM crap will happily try to jam its X86 buggy poo code right into your X64 kernel. What fun! How they are allowed to get away with that kind of behavior I don't know, because it IS malware, no different than Sony's rootkit or any other nasty your would pick up from the web. Can you uninstall it? Nope, just like malware. Does it cause instability? Yep, again just like malware. Finally do you have to have detailed knowledge of its inner workings just to remove it, such as which reg keys to toss or which hidden files are buried deep in system folders? Yep, strike three and you're out. If it walks like a duck and quacks it is a fricking duck folks.

    That is why I pretty much shop exclusively at Good Old Games now. I like to be able to replay a game I liked, not just shitcan it because I have a new OS or the company doesn't "support" it anymore. With GOG there is NO DRM, NO phoning home, No limits to how many machines I can install it to that I own, NO limits to how many times I can redownload it and NO *&^%$*&$*& "Game Client" or other BS I have to run in the background just to use what I fricking paid for. If you haven't tried them they are having a massive holiday sale with nearly 300 games on sale, many of them half off their already cheap prices. They have something for everyone, shooters, RPGs, flight sims (including IL2 with all the expansions built in), puzzlers, platformers, you name it. So support the company that actually treats you like a customer and not a criminal, buy from GOG. This is a classic example where we can "vote with our dollars" and show companies that placing their games on GOG is a wise move. Oh and all games have been tested on X64 as well as X86 so no troubles! It all "just works" OOTB, but if you do run into a glitch their forums are top notch. Enjoy some DRM free gaming today!

    --
    ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.