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Ubisoft Hops On the Online Pass Bandwagon
Joining the likes of THQ, Electonic Arts, and Sony, Ubisoft has now announced plans to launch the "Uplay Passport," a $10 fee charged to buyers of used games if they want to play them online. They say the program "will begin in the coming months and will be included in many of Ubisoft's popular core games. In each new copy of a Uplay Passport-enhanced game will be a one-time use registration code that, when redeemed, provides access to Uplay Passport content and features. The code can be found on the insert card inside the game box. Gamers can identify Uplay Passport-enhanced games by looking for the logo on the back of the box."
Another games publisher to avoid.
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
So on top of charging $59.99 for games, upwards of $50 to "enhance" your nerfed game through DLC, this too? I'm really starting to become disillusioned with the gaming industry.
You can't hop this bandwagon without a ticket !!
Good games just aren't profitable enough.
Thanks Ubisoft for clearly Identifying the games I will not be buying (or buying used) with a nice Ubisoft logo on the box!
That is all.....
Enhanced? What is it enhancing? What is this $10 buying besides a spot in their wallet and not mine. Thanks but no thanks.
Seriously, I think this is good - as long as it's clearly marked on the box/digital 'packaging' so that people can make informed choices, let them. They'll lose customers, they'll also gain revenue - and they (and the market) can decide in the end if the revenues gained from second-hand sales make up for the revenue lost in first-hand sales.
I think it will more than do so - most people are basically inconsiderate in the end. If they get their gameplay out of it, they're really not going to worry about what the second-hand purchaser is getting when they go to gamestop to make their trade-ins. I suspect we'll see the second hand games resellers lowering both their purchase and resale price for these games over time.
Oh, thanks for the heads up guys. I'll go back to playing Minecraft / Dwarf Fortress / Some Other Indie Game now.
* For certain unconventional definitions of "enhanced"
Another attempt to kill the secondary market.
I'd say I'd stop buying Ubisoft games, but I have mostly stopped buying games except thru Steam anyway.
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
Where they didn't have multiplayer done in time, so they released it as a standalone FOR FREE?
Yeah, I miss that too.
Ubisoft. They will be hard... on your wallet.
Most I have discussed this with have talked about this being their last "console generation" if even half of them follow through and go back to pc gaming how do you think the publishers are going to explain away lost sales. Back when I was still console gaming a few years ago I would occasionally buy used games and when good they usually enticed me to buy the next title when it was released. Most that I know that buy used do so because they aren't willing to pay $60 for a game so they wait until it hits a price point they feel comfortable playing and either buy used or new depending on what drops first. I dont see this doing much to raise revenues if anything I see it dropping initial revenues and then maybe if gamers attention spans last long enough increasing the sales when it hits bargain bins.
Seriously, do companies need to profit on everything we do? They're as bad as the government. Tax when you get paid, taxes on the things you bought, taxes on the money you give, taxes on money you save, taxes on property you own. A single dollar gets taxed for like 50% of it. Gaming companies are trying to do the same! Pay money when you buy the game(I support that) Pay money to keep playing it (I understand it, content updates, servers, you know, mmo stuff) but now money when you sell it to someone else? They have to pay to use it? You have to pay for items in game in a lot of games now too! 3rd parties need to back off, get their hands out of my pocket before I snap it off. I'm tired of all these third parties trying to get their grubby little hands in your wallet EVERY time you bring it out.
"Uplay Passport-enhanced games"
Or rather: Uplay Passport-crippled games.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
I wont touch a ubisoft game because of their retarded DRM stunts
fuck sony
THQ? what do they make aside from crap wrestling and movie games, and the occasional total shit port to another system (road rash 64 pops to mind)
And yes EA I am still pissed that nearly 10 years ago I bought Tiger Woods Golf for my pretty new palm 5 (and it was a great game), but you stole from me around 6 months later. (there is a cd key but it does not work with the game, you go to a long dead website, enter that seed, and get the current key for your seed+date or something, so you could not use the same key over and over again, which I might add is a real pain in the ass on a device without persistent storage)
Whether this movement is a good thing depends on one major factor: the price of used games.
If, because used games have less value thanks to not being able to go online, resellers drop prices, then I actually like the idea a lot. For me, who doesn't give a shit about most multiplayer components in games, I'd much rather get a single player-only game for cheaper. Mark down the prices by ten bucks and let me decide whether I'll get the MP component or not. In fact, that kind of modularity would be nice even at retail. Maybe it'd show publishers that you don't need to cram a multiplayer mode in every damn game.
Now, if resellers don't drop prices, then they'll see a dearth of customers and the entire thing will suck. Let's hope they'll take the sensible approach.
Uplay hacked and now redundant as using the hack is undetectable as they can't tell the legitimate from the illegitimate codes. Queue restart of used games market. It is kind of like having a stick with a carrot on the end of it except your stick can be hacked :P
Enhanced for who??? CERTAINLY not the user.... Marketing ploys suck.
obvious misnomer; more accurately be "U-Pay Passport." You don't pay, you don't play.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
The Answer is Crowd-funded FOSS computer games and expansions. There are some wonderful projects on Kickstarter. If more people embraced this model then we wouldn't have to put up with any bullshit from the big software companies who only really care about making money.
The thing I love most about gaming is ENTERING FUCKING LONG CODES and dealing with complex registration and login bullshit (UBI and EA tend to be the most fucking convoluted).
I love that the big publishers are doing this. It alienates consumers and makes small indie products even more attractive.
Keep digging those graves, you greedy bastards!
This word works great in other contexts as well:
Hurricane Katrina flooding = enhanced swimming.
9/11 = enhanced travel services.
rape = enhanced snuggling.
concentration camps = enhanced lodging.
Now of course I'm not comparing Ubisoft to the holocaust. That would be absurd. Ubisoft is worse than the holocaust.
Is it just me or did anyone else read this as "Ugly"?
Is there any list of good publishers (for all platforms), i.e. ones that don't have idiotic DRMs, online passes, etc? I'd be happy to get their games.
I think people are missing the obvious. When the person who bought it new purchased the game,Ubisoft was already paid for the ability to play the game online. Let's say they sell 50000 copies of the game and all 50000 people played it online, they would have to make sure their network could handle 50000 people. Before they came out with Uplay, if half of those people sold the game to someone else, they could no longer play it themselves, but the new owners could play online. In other words, we still had only 50000 people playing online. They were already paid to support 50000 people through new sales. Trying to charge people who bought the game used is just a money grab that will backfire on them.
these online passes are nothing short of greed. if the purchase of a new game covers online play, then a used copy would not add to the overhead: it is the same disc. then again, its not surprising. hell, in 20 years, we will have to pay for every single individual listening/viewing/etc. of all media anyways. might as well start now.
...
Make Scott Pilgrim an online game, dammit.
I'd happily shell out $10 for online support for that.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
I will not buy any game from any developer with this restriction. Not just because it is greedy, anti-consumer and shows contempt for customers but for practical reasons. They've devalued the games to the point where I can't play them. I usually don't even play a lot of multi-player but my son does. I have a strategy that has worked for some time. Buy the game on Amazon for $40 - often games that sell at Gamestop for $60 can be had on Amazon for $40. Play the game until we are sick of it (usually not that long) then put it back on Amazon for $20. All told the experience cost me $20 and some of my time. In a lot of ways this reminds me of the tactics employed by Netflix recently. It will have the intended side effect of destroying physical media sales while promoting online distribution. Businesses have decided that all you have to do is piss off the consumer, force them into a position where they won't pay such a crazy price and then give them the alternative you wanted them to choose all along at a better price. Over time you control the distribution and completely end secondary markets.
My local game store has already stopped taking used PC games because of all the unpredictable DRM infesting them, and this is just more of the same. It's certainly not an incentive for anyone to buy and sell used PC games.
used products but as someone who has multiple XBL accounts in the house. I'm not paying the publishers extra money just because my son, my daughter and I like to have separate achievements. Figured this out when I went to play the latest NFS... worse, I own it on my PC but there's no way to go, "Hey, I own two copies of this, let me play!"
Fuck the people who do this. The games are already shoddy pieces of crap which are unimaginative, buggy, and overpriced - now you want more? I'll just stop buying - for me, my son, my daughter, my wife. 4 consumers, lost. See you on the flip side, suckers.
My reality check bounced.
I don't get their thinking. At all. How do they even begin to think they can justify the $10 charge to the consumer?
Under this model, if I buy a Ubisoft game, register it to play online, then later decide to trade it in at Gamestop, I no longer have a copy of the game to play. This means that if someone later buys my used copy and wants to play it online, that is still one copy of the game accessing Ubisoft's online services. From Ubisoft's perspective this is no different than me taking a hiatus from the game and then wanting to play it again at a later date. All Ubisoft has "lost out on" is the revenue from that 2nd sale. Their cost of maintaining an online service for their customers has not changed one bit as their user-base has not increased at all. This amounts to nothing more than a cash grab designed to offset the mythical "losses" incurred from 2nd hand sales.
When will game publishers realize that if a person likes your game enough, they will pay retail for it. If your game is mediocre (like 90% of Ubisoft's fare usually is) then many people will simply wait until the retail price drops or they will buy it used. It's a sad state when the MSRP of a game is usually double its actual market price. The solution is never to screw over your customers (as the RIAA is all too proud to continue proving) but rather to change your business model to survive. Either produce higher quality games or produce them such that you can afford to sell them for a reasonable price at release. I can rent a movie for $1-4 dollars now and be entertained for 1-3 hours. Why on earth would I want to buy a game for 15-60 times that when it takes 10 hours to beat and has zero replay value?
The only thing that this fee will accomplish is in diminishing the value Ubisoft games have 2nd hand. They will be worth exactly $10 less to a 2nd hand consumer than other games not participating in this racket. Why pay Gamestop $25 for a used Ubisoft game that you'll need to fork over another $10 to play online, when you could buy a used copy of a Square-Enix game for the same price and get online play for free? Ubisoft games won't move at those prices and the 2nd hand dealers will have to charge less for them to resell them. Which means they will pay you less when you come to trade it in. Which means if you plan on reselling it when you get bored, it is now worth $10 less to you as well. So effectively Ubisoft will lower the price ceiling for 1st hand sales for a certain market segment. Smart. So now you're relying on that used copy to sell, and also that the buyer wants to play online to make that $10. Brilliant. The only way this method turns a profit at all is if you have more 2nd hand sales (that turn into online access sales as well) than you have 1st hand owners selling their copy. Simple math and problem solving tells you that this tactic does not deter 2nd hand sales, but rather requires 2nd hand sales to even make the same revenue you would have before! Who came up with this idea!? The lower 2nd hand sale price also has another added benefit for the consumer. If there are any Ubisoft games using this model that have decent single player campaigns and you don't give a toss about the online part, you just saved $10.
So no-one worry about a model like this. Mark my words, any company that uses it and fails to see the light of day will ultimately run themselves into the ground. Which in Ubisoft's case, might not be such a bad thing.