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Ubisoft Brings Back Always-Connected DRM For Driver: San Francisco
Last year Ubisoft introduced DRM for their PC games that required a constant internet connection, going so far as to terminate single-player games if the connection was interrupted. After facing outrage, boycotts, and DDoS attacks, Ubisoft seemed to have softened their stance, issuing a patch for two games that allowed offline play. Unfortunately, it seems the change wasn't permanent; Ubisoft's upcoming racing game Driver: San Francisco marks the return of the contentious DRM.
I'll re-institute my boycott of Ubisoft, and nothing of value was lost.
"3rd-party DRM: Ubisoft Online Service" http://store.steampowered.com/app/33460/
They return to using the same harebrained DRM scheme, we return to boycotting it. Why does UBI think it will be different this time? That we somehow magically now accept that kind of crap? If anything, the people who got burned by their previous attempt at it will now be wary and also abstain.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Don't buy their games.
They come out with the most amazing game in the world, but if they insist on doing this, they won't be seeing any of my money.
Seriously, they wonder why people pirate their games. Yes, there are people wanting it for free, but there is a growing number of people who pirate it just to get away from the DRM.
well, that game just went on my "download a pirate copy, just because" list.
I just realize that this has been a trend for me for years now. If I read "DRM free", I feel zero inclination to go on btjunkie - either I like it and buy it or I don't and don't. But the more DRM there is in the crap, the more I'm inclined to most definitely not give them my money.
Too bad we're not in the majority. Just imagine if putting DRM on your game were a surefire way of having close to zero sales, but being on the top of the torrent lists. The whole thing would disappear so quickly, we'd wonder if it was all just a dream.
Because in the end, these guys are just about money.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I'm already getting a refund for an Ubi game that has that DRM (The Settlers 7). They tried to push me back to Steam for a refund, but I pointed them to their own EULA, where it says you can get a refund if you don't agree to the DRM and the retarded Ubi launcher, and they're handling it.
No game is so good, interesting, or important to my life that I'd be willing to submit to this always on DRM.
But I do boycott overbearing DRM schemes. Seriously, this serves nobody's interest at all. It's now more difficult for me to even *look* at buying your games because I have to check if it has junk like this attached to it. So when it comes to purchasing decisions, if I see "Ubisoft" I have to expend more effort to check the product first before I buy it. That means that unless it's something fabulous, the chances are I just won't bother, and the name Ubisoft will put me off everything (it's already starting to now!).
And this time next year Ubisoft will be saying that sales of game X slumped because of completely unverifiable piracy when in fact it was just people annoyed with either previous or new purchases that have shite like that and either pirate or stop buying that and other, completely unrelated, products from Ubisoft.
Not everyone has a perfectly stable Internet connection, not everyone has a perfectly stable wireless connection, not everybody wants their PC constantly communicating online and taking up bandwidth for no good reason (how small the bandwidth is is irrelevant - it's more than it should be and adds up if every game were to go this route, you play a lot, and you have low bandwidth caps in the nation you're in). Just someone uploading photos as you try to do something can kill the average ADSL connection, now it means the game pause/saves/quits.
The people who don't have that stuff will be buying single-player games or games with lots of single-player content and still you force a completely ridiculous requirement on them.
A reliance on a constantly-available Internet connection to a third-party server in order to play a game is ridiculous. Hell, I might as well VNC into a damn computer on the other side of the world and play that way, there's little difference in practical terms between that and this DRM. Connection lost? Bye-bye game, or at best constant pauses and saves because it thinks it's gone.
In work, I have literally told companies to get lost after they tell me that the new iteration of their software is an online-only, access over the Internet, lose your session if it dies, affair. It's not that it won't work most of the time, but the point is that we lose control over when it does work. If local software dies, I can restore an image, or rebuild a machine, or do something to get it back and working. If remote software dies, we just have to twiddle our thumbs until their support line frees up.
It's a ridiculous thing and solves no problem that exists. Pirates will crack round it in days. Consumers don't have any problems without it but have massive ones with it. And console versions OF THE SAME GAME don't have that stupid requirement, despite consoles being online nowadays.
I loved the original Driver. The series got a bit lost after that but I was actually eyeing this up on Steam with the intent to buy it. Saw a thread on the steam forums pointing to those same articles, read them, saw the Twitter comment from Ubisoft itself and instantly removed it from my wishlist. My life is too short for that shit, my gaming time is gaming time, not tech support time. Ubisoft has forgotten that they are providing entertainment - that means "get everything out of my way because I want to have fun". Strangely, I don't want to be diagnosing my wireless/Internet in the middle of a game session, and will just choose a game that doesn't require that.
P.S. The game also doesn't support steering wheel controllers. A driving game. Seriously.
We don't want to keep wasting all those resources developing for the PC. We're going to make DRM on the PC a complete piece of shit situation. Nobody is buying the game on the PC, now. PC gaming is dying. We can't make money on the PC. We're only making titles for consoles, now.
A better (and legal) form of protest is to give the game a one star rating on Amazon and note the DRM problems in your review.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
It's not about the pirates.
It's about sliding us into a Guilty-Until-Proven-Innocent culture!
The TSA will like this. "To prove you are not a terrorist, you must be constantly connected to our Trusted Citizen network. If you lose your connection, then you lose your trusted status and will be treated like the terrorist you have become until we clear you again."
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
We're going about this the wrong way. We should all buy copies of the game and then return it the next day because it won't play without the internet. That will cost Ubisoft thousand of dollars handling returns / RMA's from their various vendors and send a clear message about the DRM.
Of all the OS's I've seen, I like the one that runs my mind the most!
they DO want to do something like a trusted citizen program but you have to opt in.
If you're in it, you're pre-screened and get on the plane quicker. If you're not in it, nothing changes, you go through the same thing you do now.
but forget about the TSA... Presumed guilty is the attitude of the credit agencies.
Try getting a good rate on a car loan when your last one has been paid off for 5 years, you rent your home, and you pay for everything with cash or debit card.
It doesn't matter if your income shows you can easily afford it... (and the lending bank KNOWS this because you have your checking, savings, and credit card with them!) ... You're more of a risk with no credit than with a bad credit history.