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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.
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.
No, the only thing that works is to stop buying the product and stop downloading it as well. As long as 10s or 100s of thousands of people are downloading it for free Ubisoft is going to just go on thinking they need more and more intrusive DRM to fight piracy.
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.
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.
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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!?
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.
You don't have to download it to be called a pirate - their logic is "we should be able to sell 20m copies but only sold 5m - 15m must have pirated" regardless of if anyone downloaded a less than legitimate version or not.
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
BS, The Witcher 2 had no DRM from gog.com and was pirated heavily.
From what I remember, pirate versions of Witcher 2 were available before gog.com released it; I presume that was the Polish retail release which came out a day or three earlier.
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
You're not giving them money either way. Not only that, but do you really think they believe that DRM helps stop piracy? I believe they know that it doesn't. And if they don't, I'd say it's ultimately their own fault and that they are fools.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
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.
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.
How would they know then that people want it?. You would have to not buy it, not download it and making they know (how I don't know) that you'd have bought it if didn't have DRM.
How many people are going to do that? Not many I guess.
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?