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."

Comments

Great

[click2005]

Another games publisher to avoid.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Everybody should avoiding Ubisoft since long ago.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

I have boycotted Ubisoft since they started with the always on internet connection DRM.

Re:Great

[Penguinisto]

That decay has been going on for well over a decade now.

It may be just grumpy-old-guy syndrome, but in spite of the cmoparatively crap graphics, the old 1990's era games were a lot more fun to play (yes, bugs and all). The reason why have to do with elements that have little to do with the technical:

* Most of the old games (Quake/II/III, Unreal/UT, Half-Life, etc) were devilishly customizable, and the software companies actually encouraged modifications
* With only a few games of a given genre, you had a *lot* more players
* dial-up may have sucked, but it did equalize the field by quite a bit (everyone had lag to some extent) - OTOH, this is obviously more of a bandwidth thing and not a game design thing.
* the good games back then were more concerned about flow and content, and less concerned about "balance" or graphics
* most of the games were hosted and played freely online, not kept behind a pay-gate
* Some folks complain about bots and griefers back in the old days, but hell, they're just as common now as they were back then, if not moreso... just that the cheats are more subtle now, and the greifers less so.
* nobody gave a crap if you 'pirated' or copied the game, because odds were very good that you'd buy the next iteration when it came out (see also id Software)

Only opinion, but I'm blaming around 2000-2001 as the time when gaming began declining. CD Keys were only the barest hint of the DRM to come. More and more games got shoved into pay-for-play mode. The flood of games meant a growing fragmentation (even among folks playing the same title... You had Unreal Tournament, UT 2003, UT 2004, etc... all running w/ players at the same time). LAN parties became less and less common, and the ones still going only meant that there were UT players, Quake players, BF 1942 players, CS players, etc... and each new game or iteration meant less folks in a given LAN that could play a given game (or that wanted to, instead preferring their own game/version).

Sure, the consoles kept things going for awhile, but IMHO (and nothing more), it only pushed game publishers down paths that meant more DRM, higher prices, and pay-to-play online experiences. Not even going to touch on the remakes/reboots/re-whatevers that means the majority of games coming out are some re-iteration of something you've already played before.

Certainly, there are bright spots in this dark prose... games that stood out and demanded attention, and/or broke new ground (games like GTA). That said, most of the big ones just became more fodder for sequels, each not quite as good as the last.

Ah well... enough rambling. :)

Re:Great

[NotBorg]

Beyond the DRM bullshit (there really is no other word), the gaming industry is suffering from the Disney movie effect. They just keep making sequels or remaking the same. Newer Unreals were the same game as previous ones just with better graphics. It was no more exciting than Aladdin 23 or Parent Trap 9 (or what ever Disney is up to now). When the games differed in more than new graphics they added extra complexity to the game that just didn't add anything to the game play. Many argue that the playability of earlier Unreals was better. Yes the first Aladdin was great, but you can over do a thing. That's what the gaming industry has been doing for the past decade.

Again parallel with the movie industry... if you've seen a few popular 80's horror movies, you'll never need to see another. Same tricks with the music, lighting, creepy camera follows just with higher definition (Despite all the technological advances they still manage to somehow make it less realistic than the movies that were made 30 years ago. WTF?). The movies with an interesting story line have much more replay value.

You can incorporate every feature known to mankind in a game, but is it fun? No? Then those features don't mean anything. Classic side scrolling Nintendo games with a small fraction the bells and whistles can be just as much fun. Simple graphics, simple mechanics, but so much fun. It's not the nostalgia talking either. I think they worked harder on game play when equipment was much more limited in capabilities.

Maniadrive can be funner than the most advanced racing games with all the physics and graphics that cause the wimpy systems to bleed.

Re:Great

[AmiMoJo]

Most of the old games (Quake/II/III, Unreal/UT, Half-Life, etc)

Man, I'm 31 and to me Doom/Quake were when games stopped being fun. I grew up in a world without First Person Shooters and never really got into them. I suppose we all just like what we liked when we were kids, and I'm sure in 20 years time when consoles plug directly into your brain today's children will be moaning about how the new stuff isn't as much fun as Halo 2 was.

At the risk if sounding really old one of the issues I have with many modern games are the complicated controls. Gamepads have hundreds of buttons because FPS games need them, but it seems like every developer has decided that they are going to use all of them now just because they can. It is hard to just pick up and play a game these days, instead you have to learn the controls which usually entails a long unskippable and utterly boring tutorial.

Mod me troll now, I guess.

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

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.

Re:Mod me troll now, I guess.

[Hatta]

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.

There's a selfish motive for not buying games you can't resell at a high price. If I buy a $50 and resell it at $30, I've only spent $20 in that transaction. If I buy a $50 game and can only resell it at $10, I've spent $40. In either case I get the same amount of entertainment out of the game, but I'm paying twice as much for the undesirable game.

Re:Mod me troll now, I guess.

[click2005]

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.

How visible is this logo going to be on Ebay, Playtrade or any online marketplace. You can bet ebay sellers wont advertise the "you have to pay another $10" part.

Re:Mod me troll now, I guess.

[Intropy]

That all makes sense. But take it a step further down the chain. "I suspect we'll see the second hand games resellers lowering both their purchase and resale price for these games over time." That means that people who buy the game new will get less for their trade-ins. Not everyone trades games in, but that will yield a lower average value to the new game since some proportion of the buyers counted on defraying the purchase price with a trade-in. That will yield lower sales and/or lower prices on new games that use Uplay. Ubisoft, retail stores, buyers, and resellers will all adjust their prices to the new equilibrium over time. The end result will be a sharper divide between used and new game prices, lower prices on both generally, greater purchaser choice (since the difference between used and new games is itself larger - that doesn't mean to say that in any particular instance the choice you prefer is still available), and greater user annoyance at needing to deal with the uplay system.

Re:Mod me troll now, I guess.

[h4rr4r]

If the resale price goes down, then less people will be willing to buy the game new. As they will have less of that resale money to spend. They will lose customers and revenue. I now know to avoid them, but I don't buy games when they first come out anyway. On the other hand I do tend to buy the first version and the GOTY editions of really good games. I just wait until those products are available at the reasonable price or get them used. They need to realize they are not only competing with new games but with the last 20+ years worth of video games for my entertainment dollar. These antics are not going to make me more likely to spend my money with them.

Re:Uplay Passport-enhanced games *

[snl2587]

"Enhanced" as in "enhanced interrogation".

Re:Another attempt to kill the secondary market

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

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.

Isn't steam the wet dream of those trying to kill the secondary market?

Re:Another attempt to kill the secondary market

[vux984]

I'd say I'd stop buying Ubisoft games, but I have mostly stopped buying games except thru Steam anyway.

Wait you'd stop buying ubisoft because they are trying to kill the 2ndary market, because you buy on steam where they already did?

Hell.. on steam... you can't even lend or give a game away, never mind resell it.

Re:Another attempt to kill the secondary market

[h4rr4r]

It is, but it is a three edged sword. Used sales disappear, customers gain convenience, and as economic theory would suggest game prices are lower and must be to make up for lost value.

Re:Another attempt to kill the secondary market

[DanTheStone]

The nice thing about Steam is that everyone knows you have no resale, so (admittedly, sale) prices reflect that. Most people wouldn't care if they couldn't resell their console games if they sold for $15-20 instead of $60.

Re:Another attempt to kill the secondary market

[Intropy]

Steam doesn't allow a secondary market; that is true. But they make up for it by selling games much, much, cheaper than other retailers (I don't have figures, but I assume that their deeply discounted games greatly outsell the others). The ability to resell a game has a value to me. If you discount the new game by an amount greater than the amount of the resale value, I will happily prefer buying your cheaper, but non-resealable version. Go low enough and nobody cares about buying used either since nobody buys a used game because they prefer used to new; they buy used because it's cheaper. The losers are the stores that specialize in reselling used games since they can no longer profit off of arbitrage.

Re:Another attempt to kill the secondary market

[captjc]

With a vow to never spend over $15 and some patience (maybe as long as a couple of years), there is no reason why you can't get any game on there for cheap as hell. Usually by waiting for a major holiday.

However, for non-sale prices, Amazon (new and used) is usually cheaper, sooner.

This is a good thing...

[Cruciform]

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!

Enhanced

[Legion303]

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.

Re:Another attempt to kill the secondary market

[vux984]

I lend quite often. It's called I switch my password to something temporary to let a buddy play...

This is in blatent violation of the Terms of Service you agreed to.

And while your buddy is playing an online game, you can't login. Even if you own 20 other multiplayer games and wish to play something that is not in use....

or just signin once to their machine, download the game, and put the hack on to put Steam into permanent offline mode on their machine.

Effectively cracking the system to let your friend play it. Why not just have your friend torrent a cracked copy? How is what you've done any better?

Plus this method ensures you can't lend someone an online game, and/or that the lendee can't do any multi-player.