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Ubisoft Scales Back Driver DRM
We recently discussed Ubisoft's plans to bring back their controversial always-connected DRM for their upcoming racing game Driver: San Francisco. Gamers raised their voices in protest, and it seems Ubisoft listened, scaling back (but not removing) the DRM. Instead of requiring a continuous connection, the game will now require a connection only when the game launches. Unfortunately for Ubisoft, complaints are now arising that the company misled players with regard to the DRM implemented in the PC port of From Dust.
the damage is done. Ubisoft, you've shot yourself in the foot. In fact, I actually pirate your games out of spite (well, the good ones anyway). Not until you remove your always-on DRM schemes entirely will I come back to respecting you as a game maker and producer.
But people will still buy it, so no matter these little ups and downs, on the balance DRM will keep getting more intrusive.
The only thing that works is to stop buying DRMed shit. But that concept is too difficult for most people.
Our advice is simple: don't buy From Dust. In the future, do not buy Ubisoft games at launch until their claims can be verified.
And to take it a step further: Don't buy ANY Ubisoft games. PERIOD. This is not how you treat customers, and anyone who chooses to be a customer of Ubisoft's at this point simply is a fool.
funny thing is... the "always connected" and the "login and play" DRM approach is enforced only for people that actually BUY the game, pirates will crack the shit out of the scheme and play offline. so there. so much for your DRM. ubisoft needs to understand that the more appreciation the gaming community have for you as a company has a bigger impact than any ridiculous DRM plans they might have. just ask the Super Meat Boy guys. and for ubi... well they are not big in the gamer community.nobody actually appreciate they actions as a company. they should get gabe newell to teach them how to build a fanbase.
Still not buying it.
Nice try, marketing assclowns.
If I have to have a connection every time I launch the game, that's just as bad as needing it constantly.
Result: cannot play on laptop while in the car traveling.
End result: no sale.
I bought Silent Hunter V, which was my introduction to this draconian slavery scheme. So I ditched Ubisoft, and now I don't have to deal with shifting heavy chains around like old Jacob Marley.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
I guess if you're in the military and want to play Ubisoft's games and you happen to be stationed somewhere with a bad/non-existent connection, you can go ahead and fuck yourself.
each time the publisher would try to slip something like this in, and each time there would be an uproar, and they would back off (a little.)
my guess is that they'll keep trying, believing that if they do this often enough, eventually people would accept it as the norm.
perhaps there's statistical evidence to suggest that each successive uproar were... smaller than the prior?
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Extra DRM doesn't make pirates buy games. It just makes them put in that much more effort to crack it, and makes it more likely that potential customers turn to pirated copies instead. Forcing you to be online at all to play an offline game just doesn't make any sense, especially given Ubisoft's past issues with this kind of DRM (people being unable to play Assassin's Creed II for days on end, etc.). Plus, some people simply are without internet connections from time to time, like those who have gaming laptops or people with spotty internet connections.
I've yet to see any kind of correlation between DRM and game sales that implies DRM is actually remotely effective.
Anyone play the demo that is currently accessible to the consoles?
I recognize buildings and striped down neighborhoods but this has to be one of the worst recreations of San Francisco in video game history. It just feels completely wrong. The tiered street do not tier at intersections. The streets are ridiculously wide with some strange diamond pattern in the middle. What little of the city available in the demo feels flatter than the real SF. Did any of the developers ever drive in San Francisco? Too bad really, even striped down in size for a video game there are some excellent passages through the city that would be fun to drive in video game form.
I'm on a console, so the DRM thing is accepted, but I won't be buying the game because of the piss poor job they did recreating SF.
It doesn't matter. Ubisoft can stop support for the game or go bankrupt and people that purchased the game will be SOL.
I for one am not going to buy any Ubisoft games for the foreseeable future. Its that simple. Lie to your customers, don't get my business. Not that they have very many games worth buying, for that matter.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Dead simple solution. End of story. Their DRM will no longer affect you. And if enough people boycott them, the problem will go away entirely. Either Ubisoft will back down, or they'll go out of business. Even if that doesn't happen, you'll still be free of their crap.
That is still not an acceptable solution. If I install and launch a game, and suddenly my firewall is telling me that that game is wanting to phone home, my reaction would immediately be to deny the request and then uninstall the game faster than you can say "Go fuck yourself, Ubisoft". This is why I am a staunch believer in try before you buy. Fortunately in this case, we have already been warned that this game is spyware, so no need to even try it out first. Just give it a pass and find something better to play.
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Go choke on your precious DRM, its yet another sale you lost from me.
What broke this game for me was when they announced it wouldn't support steering wheels...
I mean, come on. A driving game with no steering wheel support?
English is not my first language, so cut me some slack -: Om du kan lasa det har sa kan du Svenska
Hokai, so we've got what, 30 or so neckbeards saying they won't buy Ubisoft games because of DRM, and no-one, NO-ONE has picked up on the fact that none of these people of basement origin can even run the fucking games under the steaming pile of turd that is Linux anyway?
This might mean something except they said something entirely similar on From Dust. They lied. They're now trying to cover up that lie (unsuccessfully).
Sorry Ubi, you shouldn't use the same lie twice.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
When the pirated versions of DVD-rips come with no trailers, warnings or other un-skippable segments, they are more desirable than the actual product. This concept is manifesting here in the games industry too, since it's easier to just download the DRM-cracked version of a game for free than spend money to get a crippled product. Sure, this is mainly a form of justification for people that are already pirating content, but surely there's a lesson to be learned here?
Are there any Ubisoft games out there that have not been cracked yet? I'm just curious why they would choose to continue inconveniencing the people that for their products when the pirates continue to work around everything they try?
I generally like ubisoft games, but after the crap I dealt with trying to play Assassin's Creed 2, there's not a chance in hell I will buy another one with this sort of DRM on it.
Steam is very good with the DRM... I haven't had any problems with it.
FWIW, From Dust is available on Steam, likely with the same DRM. Steam sometimes warns when a game includes "3rd-party DRM", and From Dust now includes that warning.
But what makes Steam work is that it's not just DRM, it also offers something for the customer, too. Set up a new desktop recently, I downloaded the Steam client, entered my username/password, and downloaded a game I was halfway through. Took half an hour to download (on fiber), and included all my settings (keybindings, even!) and savegames. I just fired it up, cranked up the detail (it was a new desktop, after all), and hit "resume".
Having some amount of mild DRM in return for that is a fair trade.
If it was just invisible, then no deal. I had no problem with DRM that checked my CD, but that's a ticking time bomb -- it'd break on new OSes where the game would otherwise run just fine (no reason a game needs to install a driver other than DRM), it'd break when the CD is scratched, etc. Steam is also a ticking time bomb -- if Valve goes under, for whatever reason, it seems unlikely we'd get the patches they promise, and difficult for them to pull off even if they have all the good faith in the world. It's just that Steam provides a few things that make it worth the risk.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I would expect it would be far easier to crack the game and maintain full functionality if there is only DRM on launch.
I don't think your data is so expensive you cant use your phone at the launch if you really wanted to play.
I refuse to buy anything from Ubisoft until they remove it completely. At least EA had the good sense to minimize their DRM, and in some cases removing it completely, when their new releases at the time went down in history as the most pirated games ever; more specifically Spore.
Ubishit games. If you buy them. You deserve anything you get.
And i will laugh at you.
I think i'll start now.
HAHA
I think someone has taken things a bit too seriously.
For those of us who don’t know, what exactly is the law that allows us a refund in this particular instance? (And is it a US law? UK? EU? USSR? Ok, maybe not USER.)
Wouldn't that be considered consumer fraud though? Selling a product based on an advertised value, only to deliver a faulty defunct product? Why hasn't anyone sued?
I dunno, the copy of FROM DUST i got from thepiratebay works flawlessly, i just had to use a cracked ubisoft launcher and insert a random number, wow ubisoft good protection there, it took what, 1 day to get it cracked?
Like someone said i pirate your games out of spite and seed them as hard as i can, i must have seeded at least another 3 copies considering the game is 1.4 gigs and i seeded 4 gigs after. Good times ubisoft, eagerly awaiting DRIVER. Oh btw, even if it took longer, i did play and finish assassins creed 2 brotherhood too, nice work there too with your drm.
If my internet is down I am most likely going to get bored and want to play a computer game. This would make me want to set the building on fire.
I've pretty much sworn off Ubisoft forever anyway when they started this crap... but even if I didn't, I would still not buy their game... I have to spend a lot of time away from the net (which is when I need games the most!), so continuous connection or just when you start makes no difference. I just can't use it. No point in handing over money for something that doesn't work.
I've been following this for a few days. Most of the world couldn't care less about the DRM. The problem is that the port is terrible.
Quite a few people pre-ordered the game on Steam to get a TF2 hat. Then they found out the port stinks, and now want to not have to pay for a bad game. Word got around that you could get refunds by claiming that you were hoodwinked w/r/t DRM. It then seems that EVERYONE started claiming this, and Steam clamped down on the refunds.
I dont think it makes sense to file a class action lawsuit.
But in case of Ubisoft I personally think, getting some lawyers to become rich might be justified.
a) They mislead their customers (even sometimes by fine printing it or saying false things)
b) They basically could not provide what they sold thanks to outages
c) They simply deserve it, if a multi million dollar lawsuit which shows in their final earnings hits them they might start to rethink their strategy.
That ubisoft, and all other game companies out there, actually think DRM stops piracy.
There are people that see that as a challenge to break it open, and a reason for everyday joes to pirate it to actually jump through less hoops than PAYING for it.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?