Ubisoft Has Windows-Style Hardware-Based DRM For Games

New submitter Man Eating Duck writes "Guru3D describes how the activation system in Ubisoft's RTS game Anno 2070 also tracks hardware changes: 'So yesterday I started working on a performance review. We know (well, at least we figured we knew), that the game key can be used on three systems. That's fair; the first activation is used on my personal game rig. The second we installed on the AMD Radeon graphics test PC and the 3rd on our NVIDIA graphics test PC. ... For the NVIDIA setup I take out the GTX 580, and insert a GTX 590. When I now startup the game, 'BAM', again an activation is required. Once again I fill out the key, and now Ubisoft is thanking me with the message that I ran out of activations.' Guru3D subsequently discovered that Ubisoft was less than helpful: 'Sorry to disappoint you — the game is indeed restricted to 3 hardware changes and there simply is no way to bypass that.' I, and many with me, will never buy games with such a draconian DRM scheme, as it's very likely that I'll swap out enough components to run into this issue. Even the Steam version includes this nice 'feature.' It's probably a good idea to let Ubisoft know why we'll pass on this title."

Comments

And they wonder why people pirate

[elrous0]

At least we don't have to put up with too much of this activation DRM hassle on the console versions...for now anyway. Of course, consoles do tend to follow on the heels of PC developments. And you can bet Ubisoft and other developers would love nothing more than killing off the secondary and rental market for consoles the same way they've killed them off for the PC market. I don't look forward to a day when I start up and console game and it saying "Sorry, you need an internet connection to activate this game," or the day when I can't loan a game to a friend or sell it (or buy it) used.

I'm not a pirate, but I can definitely understand why some otherwise honest people might turn to it (in light of the way honest people get screwed these days).

Re:And they wonder why people pirate

[tripleevenfall]

I agree in principle. I don't think I have ever pirated a PC game, but I would never buy a game that I can't continue to use in perpetuity. I understand their efforts to prevent piracy, but this rises to the level of me paying full price for a game and only getting a temporary license for it. No thanks.

At least if I buy a console game I can be sure I won't get zapped with a "Sorry, you have to pay for this game again" screen eventually.

It doesn't seem smart at all for Ubisoft to alienate their best customers, power gamers who probably make more hardware chances than anyone.

Re:And they wonder why people pirate

[Anonymous Coward]

I've downloaded many pirate versions or cracks for games I own and even bought on launch day because the DRM is an annoying piece of shit that interferes with my ability to play, and sometimes with other functions of my machine.
These other functions have even included being able to make functioning system backups or the ability to burn cds.

I've never tried to crack a game on Steam, because once it's installed and has had it's activation, I've never been annoyed by any Steam game. With the frequency of changing hardware and the occasional nuke & pave (something that happens when you test beta software), I'm sure I'd hit their fuck you, err, activation limit in 6 to 8 months.

Am I not what you call a pirate? Doesn't matter, I'm what Ubisoft calls a pirate, and their antics are the exact kind of reasons I use cracks. Not too likely to be doing it with their software now, they really pissed me off last year and I've vowed to not buy their stuff again, until they back off of the screw the customer garbage, because that DRM B.S. doesn't stop the pirates, it only slows them down, often by less than a few hours.

Re:And they wonder why people pirate

[TFAFalcon]

You won't be able to play it in 2 years, when they shut down the auth servers and forget to release a DRM patch.

Re:And they wonder why people pirate

[RMingin]

Quote: "I've never tried to crack a game on Steam, because once it's installed and has had it's activation, I've never been annoyed by any Steam game. "

Be careful. Being on Steam only guarantees it has the light layer of Steam DRM, it DOES NOT prevent the publisher from requiring other, more obnoxious forms of DRM as well. I bought that Pitch Black game on Steam (super sale, looked entertaining), but have never been able to play it because it packs in a non-64bit compatible version of SecuROM as well.

Re:And they wonder why people pirate

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure you will. Download a crack.

These game companies are a joke. They'll never outsmart the cracking groups.

Re:And they wonder why people pirate

[ArhcAngel]

Try playing a Microsoft Games for Windows Live title. I was right in the middle of a big fight in Batman Arkham City when I got kicked out with a message telling me I had logged in to another PC. Turns out my wife had fired up the Xbox 360 to watch a DVD. It automatically signed me in and BAM!

Re:And they wonder why people pirate

[NeutronCowboy]

I fully understand the used game market hurts the developers;

WRONG WRONG WRONG. I'm sorry, but you've been bamboozled. The used game market doesn't hurt the developer. The used game market is a secondary market that exists in parallel to the primary market, wherein owners exchange goods in return for money. Any time a game enters the used game market, the developer has already received money for the game. Furthermore, if it's a true used game market, the games in circulation are originals, and don't involve CD-Rs. Therefore, from the perspective of the developer, any game that is in the used game market is identical to a game that is sitting in the closet of the first buyer of the game.

The argument that the used game market hurts developers is identical to the one that people who don't buy multiple copies of a game hurt a game developer, or who don't buy the same game every 6 months, or every 3 months. It is fundamentally based on the assumption that developers have a right to your money, and that you do not have a right to the product you're buying from them.

It is absolut bullshit, and every developer who pulls this argument gets put on my personal do not buy list. Yes, I'm down to buying a few games per year, mostly from small time developers. I still buy the occasional big-budget title, but after ME3, I'm probably done for a long time.

Re:And they wonder why people pirate

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Ubisoft needs to take the rose colored glasses off.

If I go based on JUST the equipment in my room right now...
8 PC's. These represent every PC I've used as my primary (excluding two) since 1997. I'm not going to rebuy a game a second time unless I REALLY loved it. I have physical copies of sierra games that don't work, so I bought the steam versions... which don't work(as in they don't work without tinkering.) This is what happens when the naive assumption of the existing hardware and operating system is used as a programming constant. I have physical copies of the Origin/Ultima/Wing Commander games, and I bought digital download versions where available.

Some of these games I had obtained at some point as a pirated copy, back before CD-ROM, you used to have to make physical copies of everything, this was a behavior instilled by Binary Systems - Starflight, and the early AGI Sierra games. Always play from the play disk, and never the originals. We no longer have the option to backup games, it's all "in the cloud", which means that should that company ever go bankrupt, or in the case of Sierra, all the source code to the game is lost, there is absolutely no way to play a game. At that point, only the pirate copies survive.

I'm actually rather fond of the "instruction manual" and "activation key" based installations, because you had to own the game at least once to install it. But after installing it, you still need to have the physical game to play it, not necessarily in the drive.

What's the best form of light-DRM?

Time-based activation IMO. Install the game with the code, give it 48 hours, and then the game tries to activate "online", or activates once multiplayer is engaged. Once activated, it only checks for simultaneous usage during multiplayer. This gives a wide enough window for people to try/rent a game, benchmarks, and swap out hardware to find the best working combination. As long as the "disc" is in the drive (or for download games, internet connectivity,) it resets the activation countdown to zero. If the game is already "in use" with that key, it just refuses to run without the disc (or until the other copy disconnects.)

The point of light DRM, as opposed to heavy-handed DRM, is to discourage casual copying (eg borrow from a friend, and then play from the installed copy in perpetuity.)

Heavy handed DRM assumes the user is a criminal and forces them to buy the software, or contact customer support again. Adobe does this with Photoshop, they write hidden sectors on the hard drive so that you can't casually hack the trial countdown. I've had to call Adobe no less than twice, and it's the only reason why I don't routinely reinstall the Windows OS anymore (I used to reinstall it every 6 months) because I have to call adobe and tell them I'm not running it on more than one PC.

Let's put this in perspective. If you pay someone minimum wage, eg 10$/hr to just field "I can't activate" calls for your games. You increase your support costs by having this.

Now I'm not saying that people don't pirate, because I've known more people who pirate PC games than I know people who never pirate. But there's behavior patterns that make it VERY easy to tell who's pirating the game, and that's a lot more cost effective to deny service to pirates. One way is to break the game so that pirate copies are effectively spoiled and useless. Put a timebomb in the game that is only triggered by skipping the activation step. Most "cracked" games simply NOOP instructions for doing the activation, they don't actually reprogram anything. So at some point in the game, something will look like a bug, but not positively identify that it's caused by piracy. The bug is then fixed by putting the original media or network connection in DDL versions back in the drive. Yes I'm aware that people make drive emulators, but that's not the point. It's actually an endless loop of having to install the unmodified game, patch, crack, reinstall, patch, crack to get past the timebomb.

It doesn't need to prevent the piracy.

Re:And they wonder why people pirate

[sg_oneill]

No, he's making a point. This sort of shit penalizes people who buy the software whilst doing nothing against pirates, because lets be honest here: This game will be on pirate bay within a week of release and the version of pirate bay will have the DRM as severed as charlie sheens tv career.

And thats whats so bizare. What rational consumer wants to PAY for a product that has judasware when they can download for free the same-product with the judasware removed.

Re:And they wonder why people pirate

[hairyfeet]

Shouldn't we really just call TFA "Hey guess what? Ubisoft is again proving they are douchebags" and call it a day though? Lets face it whenever we hear of a company leading the way in assraping the customers it is ALWAYS Ubisoft. They destroyed DVD burners with Starforce, they were the first that i know of to burn customers by making their games have an always on internet connection, now they are the first to have NASTY hardware based customer screwing. When it comes to being giant pricks ALWAYS count on Ubisoft.

BTW if any of the Valve guys are reading this? We need to talk bro. I want, nay DEMAND that you put an easy to see mark that lets me know without clicking on the main page and scrolling to the bottom some sort of sign that a game contains DRM above what Steam has so i can avoid it. The whole point of Steam is ease of use yet you are letting the publishers fuck that up by hiding the "this game contains extra DRM" shit at the bottom of the main page. i don't want to go to the main page when I'm browsing sales, okay? So far in the past month and a half i got stuck with GFWL and TAGES by not having an easy way to spot that shit when browsing the sales. if I have to go click on every. single. link with NO way to open new tabs in your client? my purchases are gonna go waaaay down dudes. So fix that shit, come up with an icon that says "This has extra DRM, maybe a red and white stop sign looking thing, just to let your customers know. I'm sure the publishers will bitch but you know what? let 'em. Remember these same douchenozzles would be happy to see you go under and just go to Origin and its your CUSTOMERS you need to be watching out for, not pricks like Ubisoft.

Also make a way for me to "ban" publishers from my view. There were several games during the Steam sale i got excited about only to click on it and find out its a Ubisoft game with extra DRM shit so I wasted my time, time i could have been looking at titles that i would actually buy. I don't want any Ubisoft, i won't buy any Ubisoft, so why not make a simple preference page that lets me banhammer them from my purchasing pages? Remember Valve the ONLY reason you are rolling in swimming pools filled with cash is that you made Steam easier than piracy, but if you make it a royal PITA to buy games there its not like we don't have PTB where we don't have to deal with phone home and other horseshit.

BTW for all the complaints and comparisons to Windows activation? I have NEVER had MSFT refuse an activation on a legit key EVAR. Hell the machine I'm typing this on is a Win 7 HP I installed in OCT 09 when i built the thing and I have changed out every. single. piece. of the hardware, and I do mean EVERY piece. the HDDs, the RAM, the graphics card,the PSU, the motherboard, and the CPU. The ONLY original piece left is the case yet I've only had to reactivate ONE time and that was when i switched out the ECS motherboard and quad CPU for an Asrock and 6 core Thuban. it took less than 5 seconds and went without a hitch. Working at my little shop I've had to call MSFT plenty of times when someone royally boned their PC and installed multiple times trying to "fix it" (Lord save us from those that know just enough to be dangerous) and it took me less than 5 minutes in every case. i'd say "The guy messed up his install and kept trying to fix it himself before bringing it to the shop" and the person on the line would be "Okay,put in this code" and that was it. No hassles, no bullshit, no muss nor fuss.

But I won't have a game that i can't switch hardware with so i don't care if this game is the second coming it won't be coming anywhere near my PC.How much you want to bet this will be in the top five of PTB downloads, along with Diablo III? After all Ubisoft thought that they'd have piracy stopped cold with the always on Assassins Creed and it took the Fairlight guys less than a month to have a 100% functional version. just more proof that often the pirate version is the better version as they don't have to deal with this horseshit.

Re:And they wonder why people pirate

[oneblokeinoz]

A PC is like my grandfathers axe: It's had 3 new handles and 2 new heads, but it's still a great axe. And there is still only one of them!

Re:And they wonder why people pirate

[Evil Pete]

The irony is that the pirated version would then actually be worth buying.

Someone said it on slashdot in an earlier case

[unity100]

When some idiot from ubisoft execs or something told that 'Game demos are a thing of the past' a year or so ago - when ubisoft was again throwing around drm stuff and accusing demos for piracy or this or that :

"As long as razor1911 has anything to say about it, we will have game demos..."

i think that applies to this situation as well.

There are already cracks for this specific game

[Karmashock]

the effort to control game piracy through DRM is futile.

The only thing that might work is if you keep the game online either by not releasing the server code for a multiplayer game or keep the the whole thing on line by using a system like OnLive to keep the whole game code in the cloud.

Short of that... it will be pirated.

That's funny...

[Anonymous Coward]

When I pirated the game, it didn't have that restriction.

Is it in the terms?

[Anonymous Coward]

If this isn't made clear to consumers before purchasing -- or licensing, I guess -- the game, this is a great opportunity to make DRM even less profitable for Ubisoft:

1) Buy game. Keep receipt and copy of terms.
2) (Legitimately) Update/change your hardware more than 3 times over the course of a a year or two
3) When the game stops working, ask for an activation
4) When they decline, ask for a refund
5) When they decline, sue in your local small claims court. It's usually free to do
6) Let Ubisoft either issue thousands of refunds or defend thousands of small claims cases

(Note that if the issue is described but is buried in fine print or displayed as grey-on-black, it's likely still arguable as such a material condition that hiding it is itself deceptive).

Re:Is it in the terms?

[firex726]

EULAs are not as binding as many would think.

In part due to how way the transaction is handled. I am expected to hand over my money and buy the game THEN get to see the terms, if I do not agree to them I am still out my money with no recourse.

Look at any other agreement and the terms are known up front, even if in legalese.
Taking out a loan? You'll see the terms before you sign.
Singing a lease? Again you get to see the terms.

In both cases you can walk away with no harm done.

Re:PC gaming

[Jaysyn]

The ability to mod games & to use a mouse & keyboard are the main reasons I'll never bother with a console.

That being said, I swore off Ubisoft sometime after they ruined the Might & Magic franchise.

Three hardware changes?

[PCM2]

People bitch about Windows activation, but on the few occasions I've experienced where Windows needed to be re-activated because of a hardware change, the process was completely painless. As in, "I'm helping out my mom on Christmas Eve and dinner is going to be served in a half hour" painless.

The first couple of times I called, I spoke to an Indian man who asked me a few questions and gave me a code. More recently, it was a fully automated system. I don't think the process has ever taken as much as five minutes from beginning to end. It seems to me the for individual users, Windows Activation is more of a way to scold you than anything else: "You do know you're only allowed to use this copy of Windows on one computer... right?"

Now, if Ubisoft is really claiming that you get three activations and after that your software is useless, well, that seems like something else entirely.

Reviewer's sweet revenge

[K. S. Kyosuke]

"Sadly, all four games from Ubisoft used in our benchmark failed to work on six out of our nine configurations."

Re:Reviewer's sweet revenge

[PIBM]

I was about to suggest the same. I just hope all the reviewers start doing this for games in general, so that any review published will be tanked so low that no one will buy them in the first place when DRMs are encountered =)

Re:so glad

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised that Steam allows the additional DRM scheme on top of the Steam system. It totally wrecks the value of Steam. Now we have to research which titles are draconian before a Steam purchase. I haven't really worried about it up to this point.

STOP REVIEWING THEIR GAMES, duh

[cavtroop]

The article has an update:

Update monday Jan 16 - 2012: We have been contacted by bluebyte over the weekend, the company that developed the Anno series. Our key has been pretty much unlocked allowing us to properly work on this article. To be continued ....

Uh, NO, NO, NO! Ubisoft and other vendors will continue this trend of archaic stupid DRM until it hits them in the wallet. The 'review' industry should take a stance - no reviews, no press, nothing, until Ubisoft (and any other vendors that do this kind of shit) stop the excessive DRM.

Do you really think the developer of the game will give out an 'unlocked' code to anyone OTHER than a high-profile website reviewer? What if you ran into this at home, which with a grand total of 3 registration attempts, is easy to do over the course of a short period of time: "When contacting Ubisoft marketing here in the Netherlands, their reply goes like this: 'Sorry to disappoint you - the game is indeed restricted to 3 hardware changes and there simply is no way to bypass that. We also do not have 7 copies of the game for you'.:"

THATS what average joe-user will get, a simple 'tough shit'. STOP REVIEWING THEIR GAMES

I'm out

[DerCed]

I've actually spent quite some money recently on games produced by EA and Ubisoft. When I learnt about the bad behaviour of the Ubisoft activation scheme, I stopped playing the game immediately and reinstalled my workstation to clean up. Shortly afterwards I wanted to sell an EA game and got told on the hotline that there is no way I can transfer the activation key to another Origin account (Steam à la EA, with lots of privacy issues). I told them they have just lost a customer who paid lots and lots of money for their games. Because of the privacy issues I again reinstalled my system and I will not buy games from large producers anymore. I will either choose DRM free indie games, or ... well you know what the other option is.
Video game industry, you can thank EA and Ubisoft for not getting any money from me anymore.

Of course they do

[Brain-Fu]

Many pirates pirate because of DRM. Some also pirate out of an interest in trying the game before buying it, some because they feel entitled to their license even though the CD got scratched, some because they have no disposable income of their own (or no room in their budget for it), and some out of sheer sloth/greed.

But to say that DRM doesn't create pirates is to completely fail to grasp some of the most basic principles that drive human behavior.