Slashdot Mirror
Ubisoft Ditches Always-Online DRM Requirement From PC Games
RogueyWon writes "In an interview with gaming site Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Ubisoft has announced that it will no longer use always-online DRM for its PC games. The much-maligned DRM required players to be online and connected to its servers at all times, even when playing single-player content. This represents a reversal of Ubisoft's long-standing insistence that such DRM was essential if the company were to be profitable in the PC gaming market."
The full interview has a number of interesting statements. Ubisoft representatives said the decision was made in June of last year. This was right around the time the internet was in an uproar over the DRM in Driver: San Francisco, which Ubisoft quickly scaled back. Ubisoft stopped short of telling RPS they regretted the always-online DRM, or that it only bothers legitimate customers. (However, in a different interview at Gamasutra, Ubisoft's Chris Early said, "The truth of it, they're more inconvenient to our paying customers, so in listening to our players, we removed them.") They maintain that piracy is a financial problem, and acknowledged that the lack of evidence from them and other publishers has only hurt their argument.
'nuff said.
I'll believe it when I see it, not when they say it.
Hmm, maybe that doesn't stem from piracy so much as the constant firehose of low-quality games from Ubisoft?
You can fool people for a while, but eventually they're going to notice you're charging $50 for what other companies would release as a $10 DLC.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Finally somebody starts to get it. When you make it more convenient to pirate the game than to pay for it there's something badly wrong.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
Just wow.
Did enough people say f u ubisoft or is there another reason?
The truth of it, they're more inconvenient to our paying customers, so in listening to our players, we removed them.
No shit. I haven't bought a game with always online-DRM and I never will.
If they patch existing games to not use this as well, I may consider purchasing one (Heroes 6). I've held off on this purchase specifically because of this.
...to pirate. This will make no difference in the piracy rate, but it's nice for their user base.
In general Ubisoft has some pretty good games, the DRM always bothered me & I hate origin. At the same time there is no denying that this is a step in the right direction. Perhaps Ubisoft, perhaps I will once again be a customer of yours.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
DRM serves to inconvenience legitimate users and does little to stop pirates: all it takes is one smart cow to open the gate and all the other cows can follow.
Steam seems to provide a good service to game sellers and players: reasonable DRM to reduce casual piracy while not being hideously obnoxious (you only need to be online once to activate the game, after that you can play offline), fast downloads, decent anti-cheating protection for multiplayer games, frequent sales, millions of regular viewers (so promotions are more effective), automatic updates, very simple click-to-buy procedure without any hassle, etc. Why wouldn't game developers sell games on Steam rather than creating their own obnoxious systems?
If we could only get Blizzard to do away with the requirement for Diablo III.
I never thought I'd see the day... I was expecting Ubisoft to crash and burn first.
I think that's entirely the point. DRM or no DRM does not affect the piracy rate but it DOES impact the end-user. If the end-user's experience is affected by something that does not affect the illegitimate users then they need to re-evaluate their goals. There are extra costs in development and overhead with the implementation of DRM which must be factored into the ROI. It appears they are coming to the realization that their implementation negatively affects the end-user experience, impression of their brand, and does not provide any additional sales (which is the whole point, really) so they're on the wrong end of that ROI.
You will still need a palm flower crystal of the appropriate color however. Oh dear, please report to a sleepshop.
Good. Let me know when it's patched out of Anno 2070 & I'll buy it on Steam.
There is a war going on for your mind.
They haven't actually ditched anything. They've merely claimed that they are going to. This claim is backed up by absolutely nothing.
I'm sure that the amount of people who bought it was larger than the amount of unique connections to their servers, that must've been a hint. People who legally paid for these games have found it more convenient to apply a crack themselves.
I love when companies try to force new ideas that are obviously flawed, based solely on some projections and high ups getting creamy over their great idea to end piracy. Instead of getting anything out of this DRM strategy, they just look like dicks.
Indeed, yet legitimate users will now have a better product.
True pirates don't pirate because of cost, they don't pirate because of DRM, they don't pirate for any other reason than the thrill provided from doing something that the original creator never intended. You will never, ever manage to get a true hardcore pirate to buy your game short of completely open sourcing it and providing all the toolkits necessary to make it still fun to hack with.
Everyone else is just a poseur.
When companies start realizing that they're not losing money to pirates because pirates aren't customer (or even potential customers) they can focus on things their real customers are interested in.
I bought Assassin's Creed 2 on sale a while back, even downloaded it a few weeks ago, but only recently tried to play it.
Holy crap, did it take forever. First it had to install roughly twenty million different runtimes and libraries. Then it had to install some "UPlay" bullshit. Then that had to update itself, despite having been just installed. Then it had to "update" the game, something I would have thought Steam would do automatically (I'd bet money that someone at Ubisoft had to actually force Steam to not update it, rather than it being some failing on Steam's side).
After waiting about twenty minutes for this all to go on, I gave up. Cancelled it out, started a different game ("Stacking") and was in-game within a minute.
Yeah, them getting rid of their pointless DRM is good even if all it changes is how long it takes to start playing.
Now if only EA would actually learn to let their customers access the DLC they paid for without going through more hoops than the average basketball...
On the contrary, there will be more satisfied paying customers. Piracy rates may even go up, but their customer base will increase, which in the long run is the more pertinent of the two figures as far as Ubisoft should be concerned. More customers means were money. Saying that it'll make no difference to the actual piracy rate is ridiculous and irrelevant.
The people who are pirating will probably keep pirating, but it's not because of some other justification. It's because the vast majority of them are in a country or culture where it's the norm.
To countries like Armenia, they don't even consider that there is DRM in a game at retail because they usually are acquiring it via bootleg salesmen or pirated downloads. It's as if the DRMed game never existed.
And that's why the one, two, and sometimes three or more layers of DRM doesn't do anything but hurt the customers in the culture where paying is the social norm.
How long will it last this time?
They've scaled it back in the past and it just comes back in another game. In six months or a year, if they've kept that crap out of their games, maybe I'll consider giving them money again. Maybe.
The confidence of ignorance will always overcome the indecision of knowledge.
"I want it for free."/"I can't pay for it."/"It isn't sold in my country."
There. Those are motivations, but justifications aren't necessary. Any 'pirates' who claim otherwise are imbeciles.
I've trained myself to just ignore games with Ubisoft on the label.
Due to their past transgressions, I will still never buy an Ubisoft game. I'm sure they will consider my lack of purchasing as piracy instead of voting with my wallet, but I don't care. Companies need to learn that years of treating your paying customers with contempt will take a LONG time for people to get over, even when the company finally starts to do the right thing.
Eh.... I wouldn't be so quick to say. Especially if one is to believe that piracy is around 93%+ like they (?) claimed the other week. I mean, sure, the lion's share will still pirate. However, if even 5% of people are pirating because got sick of having to deal with the DRM and/or crack it anyways, that would represent a relatively significant sales boost. Not to mention it may cut down on perceived piracy because less buyers would be downloading cracked versions (though this depends on how they are measuring it, of course). And it might even bring back people who just swore them off altogether. So overall, I think there's a lot of positive potential.
However, dollars to donuts, this just means they'll be using some nasty root-kit or something instead. They probably figured it'd be more effective than the online DRM and this is just PR spin.
Produce a game I want to play, and make it a program that I don't cringe as I try to install it.
It's not hard. Hundreds of them are on my PC at the moment. I don't think there's a single Ubisoft one among them (except some really old games before they started bundling pure shit along with their shitty games and trying to sell it for full price).
The DRM doesn't stop the pirates.
The DRM does stop me.
If it's taken you this long to listen, believe and understand what people have been saying to you for YEARS, I see no reason to reward your years of ignorance now.
True pirates
"No True Pirate..."
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
And no, I haven't pirated any of their titles either. I prefer to undermine my arguments in an ethical manner.
Ubisoft still makes shit games so what does it matter if it has online DRM or not? I still wont buy their games because they kind of well, suck. They are like a poor mans version of EA where all they do is shit out the same old games, whore out DLC and occasionally make a unique game that still sucks.
If ubisoft didnt have assasins creed brain dead zealots buying it like crazy at every release then they wouldnt even be in business. AC is essentially just call of duty for them where they dont make anything good or that sells but they thrive on constantly re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-releasing the exact same game every year to millions of mindless drones that praise it for being the same old shit.
How ubisoft has managed to last this long is a mystery to me.
The much-maligned DRM required players to be online and connected to its servers at all times, even when playing single-player content.
I am tired of hearing the marketing term "content" everywhere. It's, "a single-player game," or "single-player mode."
And don't even get me started on consumer replacing person.
I may be unique, but I am single (wait, this is /., so not so unique) with disposable income and now I'll be more inclined to buy. This may affect piracy rates, but to decrease them... :)
I have determined that my sig is indeterminate.
There are several cracks and patches online that ditch it for you.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If it's true, I'll start buying ubisoft games once again!
Can someone explain to me (because I don't own any Ubisoft PC games) how this is different than being forced to log into Battle.net even if I only want to play Diablo 3 single player?
If it's not any different, why is Ubisoft on the receiving end of such unbridled nerd rage, but not Blizzard?
I am a pirate. I frequently pirate games because I want to play a game for free and I don't feel like spending $60 on it. I'm not poor or in another country, although I don't think I could reasonably afford to spend hundreds of dollars a year on games either.
Of course, I have bought games before, and I will in the future. High quality games that get good reviews from friends, or games that are sequels or expansions to great games I have pirated will get my money.
Still, 9/10 games I have pirated and I imagine that will continue to be the ratio.
The fact is, if I couldn't pirate, I just wouldn't play those games. I won't spend 60 dollar, or 5 dollars even, on something that I don't know if it will waste my time. There are some things I can't avoid that with: food and girlfriends are two such, but games are not.
I'm not going to pretend I pirate just to find the right games to buy, but I can tell you that some games I pirate will result in sales, and only because I liked other games I played for free from the publisher. I could have lived my life without playing Fallout 3 or Mass Effect 2 or Portal, but once I actually got a look at them and got attached to the storylines or game play, I definitely wanted to support those. Mostly.
I don't really feel all that bad about pirating a game that broke all sorts of sales records. For the most part, I consider the entire business model of computer games to be based on people who have too much disposable income. They will support the games so I can be entertained. They will deal with the DRM and I will shrug and play the pirated game. If sometimes the game doesn't work perfectly, or crashes shit, that's my price I pay.
I am a pirate. I am not your customer. I don't care if you live or die. But you might, if you're clever and good at what you do, make a buck off me. Maybe.
People will pirate every game, that's for sure. But in the end of the day, what matters is how many will find some justification to buy it. And being less of an ass to your clients will make it easier for them to justify giving you money.
Rethinking email
Continue in this vein and I might eventually buy a game.
For those of you who are hardcore against DRM, the are ONLY removing the always-online DRM.
They still plan on using a DRM scheme, it's just you only have to verify it once.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
You realize that requires the argument be made that none of XYZ do ABC, which is then followed by "But this one XYZ does ABC", and then following that up with "No *true* XYZ does ABC".
The argument presented is simply that people who are claiming to be pirates (or are called pirates) that simply pirate to not pay for something rather than for the enjoyment of it aren't really doing it to be a pirate. They're doing it to be cheap bastards.
I wouldn't claim that there all no pirate would pirate to save money, but I WOULD claim that if the only reason you're pirating is the be cheap you're not really a pirate--you're a cheap bastard who pirates.
In other words, a cheap bastard would buy your game at the right price. And if that's what you want, you should call your campaign a "get cheap bastards to pay" campaign. If you want a pirate to buy the game (or, really, legitimately use it), you'd do better going after the angle of open sourcing it.
Lowering the strength of their ridiculous DRM a full year after they made the decision, all the while accusing the vast majority of PC gamers (aka their customers) of being malicious criminals. Good show, really :P
Rainbow Six was one of my most favourite series but I'll never buy another one again so long as Ubisoft's name is on it.
Hey, Ubisoft...
FUCK. YOU.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
The entire article is marketing, pure and simple. Someone at Ubisoft realized that the current opinion of the company was below their projections, so they come out with an interview telling people everything they want to hear. Notice the dodges on the first question in the article regarding the 90-95% piracy versus their own declaration that their DRM was working. Basically two comments in direct opposition to each other.
They don't say they made a mistake, just an 'unfortunate comment'. Some very valid questions result in 'no comment'. It's ridiculous that they think an interview like this would smooth over their reputation, or that backing away from their draconian DRM practices would somehow result in people trusting the company again.
This company and more specifically, their CEO, recently said that many customers (90-95% of people who play their games) are PIRATES. Plain and simple. You now know what they think of you. Are you going to give them your hard-earned money? I'm certainly not. A company with that sort of opinion about their customers should be out of business faster than gnats fuck.
But the sad part of all this is: this will work. People will forget all about the always-on DRM, the Starforce intrusions, the various overblown piracy comments and STILL give this company their money. It makes no sense to me.
Why this announcement now? There were some interesting titles I would have bought one year ago, but not with these DRM constrains. Now it is too late. I have ditched ubi back when they started getting anal with their DRM.
Cheers,
-S
You realize that requires the argument be made that none of XYZ do ABC, which is then followed by "But this one XYZ does ABC", and then following that up with "No *true* XYZ does ABC".
What is a "true pirate"? These "cheap bastards" fit the criteria of a 'pirate' regardless of their motivation. The person above mentioned "true pirates" as if anyone not like them isn't a "true pirate." They don't have to explicitly say "No *true* XYZ does ABC," either.
I wouldn't claim that there all no pirate would pirate to save money
I saw where you (or the person who posted that) were going with that, but I did not care for that particular phrase. I'd drop the "true pirate" part.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
the problem with implementing tough DRM measures is that it removes the age-old excuse for lackluster sales: "the pirates are stealing all our profit."
i'm guessing that after maneuvering themselves into this uncompromising position, they found they still were unable to sell crappy games to an increasingly disenfranchised audience.
after becoming stuck between a rock (admitting their games are crap) and a hard place (admitting DRM doesn't work), they've finally decided that the minimal loss to piracy is far more preferable than the other two embarrassments.
Companies for years have been using RSA-like security for their VPN clients and now MMORPG's like Star Wars The Old Republic have come up with iPhone and Android apps as additional security to passwords. Why not use this type of authentication with a CD key?
Basically offer a good product, at reasonable price, that is very easy to obtain. Add just enough DRM you discourge any casual pirating. Heck even the 1990's solution of a code wheel was/is sufficent.
Someone that is prepared to put effort into pirating your software IS going to pirate your software one way or another. However that is besides the point, as that person is very unlikely to ever buy it anyway. So while it might make you angry, it isn't really affecting anything really.
So long as it isn't super easy (and I mean REALLY easy), most A) can't be bothered, or B) can't figure it out.
It has been shown again and again, no matter how much you put into DRM, it will be broken, easily. As they found out, the more restrictive you make the DRM, the only people you end up really pissing off is your paying customers.
The sure fire way to defete the pirates, is not to even make it worth their time. Make it easily available (STEAM for example), and make it a reasonable price (try charging 30-40$ rather than 70$ for example). You will probably sell more units and make more money that way in the end anyway.
Considering that the piracy rate is over 90%, I'd say that it's the norm pretty much anywhere. The problem is that the law here hasn't caught up with the culture. Our government is simply too corrupt to implement laws that would benefit 90% of those affected when it goes against the wishes of a small monied interest.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
...to pirate. This will make no difference in the piracy rate, but it's nice for their user base.
I doubt it, Ubisoft makes some really crappy games. I tend to pirate everything that comes out (always have, not to keep, but to check out whats going on) and I find most ubisoft games to suck badly to not be worth the download time.
Be seeing you...
I'm not sure if you mean Armenia when you say "the laws here," but in the US the piracy rate is 20% and is the lowest in the world. Similar western nations also have relatively low rates of piracy. If 20% of a people are observed not doing a given thing, I'd say that's not really the norm at all.
Unfortunately, because of the ubiquity of the internet Ubi and similar publishers believe they cannot make a distinction between US customers who may be willing to pay and Armenian pirates who never even consider payment an option. So, both countries, and everyone in between, get treated as if they are a culture with a 93% piracy rate.
The obviously big problem with treating all countries like that is that the piracy is still 95% in those countries, so the measures to prevent it are quite a bit short of effective.
Piracy numbers don't really count for much any way it makes no difference to the bottom line if there is 1 or a 100 million pirate copies (although if people do not want the game for free then realistically it is never going to be a commercial success). If you consider zynga many people playing their games do not pay but they do encourage other people to play and some of those will pay even if it's just to catch up with their friends.
The real figure that counts is the user base.
If Drm is having a negative impact on purchases then it needs to be removed. Arguably everybody has the choice to pirate or not to pirate regardless of drm. Pirate copies are available to anybody that cares to look.
So you really have 3 groups of people: those that would pirate, those that will buy with the restrictions of drm and then the third group who will choose not to buy with drm or pirate and instead will buy something else.
Logically since Piracy is an option for everybody those that buy with drm will buy without. the pirates will pirate with perhaps a number choosing to buy because the drm has been removed and a number of people will buy since they do not have to deal with DRM any more. You are logically increasing your customer base.
What about those that pirate to try before they buy if the game isn't great won't they fail to buy? The fact is they had the option of pirating regardless of DRM so no you don't lose them any more than you did before by putting out lousy games.
You might find a healthy pirate buzz around a particular title will be an indicator of it's eventual commercial success. Maybe it is even a good tactic to leak a game on to the internet anonymously of course otherwise the people who would buy might think you are ok with them playing for free and be discouraged from buying.
In the long term you have a reputation if your titles stink then your reputation goes down if you market a title hard enough even thou it stinks you might salvage something, however your user base is less likely to trust you about your next release and will go for the pirate copy and not buy because you conned them the time before. with a bad game you can refine it or if it is beyond rescue release it straight to the bargain bin, if its not worth $50 don't charge $50 for it .
Ubisoft is in trouble with its customer base people don't like them so much these days maybe drm removal will make them popular again or is it too little too late?
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
You are depriving me of the gasoline in the tank that you used while driving.
You are depriving me of road wear on my tires and brakes. And in my case, the clutch too.
And it was stolen even if you return it before I want it again. I am deprived of the ownership of the car while you have stolen it.
Now...if you had a maker bot that could print up a 3D copy of a car, and you filled it with your own gasoline and put on your own tires and brakes etc...then I would be 100% ok with that. Sure, make a copy of my car, I don't give a fuck.
:(){
Except that those "true pirates" are the ones who bought it in the first place in order to crack it. And they often exhort others who download the crack to buy the game if they like it.
I won't.
But it doesn't matter. Pirates aren't paying customers. It doesn't matter if pirates pirate, because at the end of the day, they weren't going to buy the game anyway. That's like complaining that men aren't buying tampons and other feminine hygiene products. This is synonymous with the stance that the fashion industry takes: we don't care about knock-offs, because people who buy them aren't our customers.
There are a few things that can very obviously be done to change pirates into customers. Typically people pirate for some reason, and there are a long list of reasons why someone might pirate. Solve those problems and those pirates typically will pay. There are a few people who will always pirate no matter what, and the best solution is to just ignore them.
A few examples:
1. Give people a way to try your game before they buy it. Charging $60 for a game that is terrible puts your company in the fool-me-once category, and a LOT of people will pirate your games just to try them before paying, because you have a history of ripping people off.
2. Price fairly. Versions 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18 of your game were minor patches or very minor content bonuses. Package these as DLCs and charge a fraction of the price, or release them free. People may not have bought your game initially because it didn't have enough content. When it has a lot more content, they may buy it (even people who pirated it and decided there wasn't enough content). If everything in your game is held up in DLCs, the cost of your game is $60 + $40 = $100, and that's an absurd price. DLCs should be for massive content upgrades, that aren't their own games. 2 new models and 1 map isn't a DLC. Stop doing that. And it's certainly not a new game. Stop that too.
3. Oppose DRM. I should be able to play your game without an internet connection, on any computer I own with the correct operating system, and without entering a license key anywhere. At no time should my play be hindered by being required to do some action just to run the game. These mechanisms have been shown with a MASSIVE body of evidence to not prevent piracy. An authentication step is also not acceptable if it requires I must have a persistent internet connection to launch your game. An acceptable compromise is to require me to register once (a one-time auth step) and then be able to play offline, which is similar to putting Steam in offline mode. This is especially important of multiplayer games. If it's a multiplayer game, put a LAN mode into it. Remember 5-10 years ago when EVERY MULTIPLAYER GAME, EVER, had a LAN mode? Lans used to be AWESOME. They encouraged gamers to play together and network. This lead to us learning about games we didn't know about (what's everyone playing?) and go buy it. Bring that back, stop worrying about piracy.
4. Open the game to the community. This means mods. Map makers. Internal tools you've already made. A lot of pirates will buy your game JUST because they can make their own game inside of it, change it around, or use your engine/tools to make their own games. In the end, a very successful mod means more sales for you. Seriously, why the fuck don't you understand this?
5. Release everywhere in the world at the same time. This argument as a basis for piracy is weak, except in cases of certain movies/tv shows that release MONTHS apart in different regions, but there's no technological reason you can't release a game to the entire world digitally. Unless your game is banned or something in some country, release it the same day you do the primary release.
6. Listen to paying customers. Sure, a lot of us might be whiny little punks, but where do you think most of your money is coming from? This is especially important of games that expect a subscription or any MM* game. If these games have any potential balance issues, fix them immediately and as a first priority, or you'll drive people away and NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO, YOU W
Where's your evidence that the U.S. PC game piracy rate (for Ubisoft games, or just any games in general) is as low as 20% ?
I believe it's over 80 or 90% even in the U.S. Most game piracy in western nations is done by teenagers and college kids who don't have any money. By some kind of serendipity, they also have more time and desire to torrent dozens of pirated games and play them all, than most of the older adults who can actually pay.
However, my generation (I'm in my mid-30's) grew up pirating PC games and most of the players I know who aren't in the game industry, never seemed to reconsider that behaviour once they grew up and had money and could afford to actually buy the games. They don't give it a second thought, unless they have to come up with some rationalization to post on the interwebs in stupid piracy discussions. We raised an entire generation of PC gamers who steal games just because they can.
You know why the big publishers constantly proclaim that "the PC is dead"? Because they can't make hardly any money off of it with their AAA games, because most of the players are just not willing to pay for them when they can torrent it for free without any consequences. Those 90%+ piracy rates are real, dude. We can see it when the games connect to our servers for matchmaking, to download patches, to report back statistics, whatever. Its disheartening when there's 5x more players actively connected to the servers than the number of retail copies that have even sold through.
People love free stuff, and this entire generation of players has been raised in an environment where they could always get free copies of games and even though they were constantly breaking copyright laws, they never got punished for it.
P.S. I know slashdot is about as pro-piracy as a tech site can get, but please... help feed your friendly neighborhood game developers. Show some respect for their years of effort, and just pay for their games or else don't play them at all. If you pirate them, you're just a selfish entitled hypocrite, full stop.
Am I the only one who thinks this is only a ploy by Ubisoft? They'll release some crappy game no one wants without their DRM. They'll then have their "Fun-gineers" come up with some press release showing how the DRM-less game made very little money compared to their DRM laden games. They, and other anti-piracy groups, will then use this as a club to beat up the public for the next decade or two.
"It doesn't matter if pirates pirate, because at the end of the day, they weren't going to buy the game anyway. "
This is, and always has been, an un-proven assumption. If by some miraculous technology, something like Halo came out and was uncrackable, some of the people that would have otherwise pirated would be plonking down their cash to get it.
It was the same way in the 80s when cable piracy was so easy. Then the cable operators made piracy too difficult, and people didn't go without... they started paying.
It doesn't matter if pirates pirate, it matters whether they buy.
It's not an assumption. It's been shown to be quite accurate by polls, both formal and informal, and is true of many pirates by their own admission. I can tell you right now that there are plenty of games I have never bought nor will ever buy that I pirated. I've just demonstrated to you that this isn't an assumption. There are people who pirate conditionally, who might be made to be paying customers, but to claim that every pirated copy == lost sale is bunk and we've known it for a while. So it's best to ignore actual piracy rates (piracy by people who will never buy your product, regardless), and work to make those people who pirate to get around the availability/other issues you have happy so they'll buy your future products.
It's important to note that those conditional pirates STILL wouldn't have purchased your game anyway, for the given reason. However, future games that correct those issues might be purchased legitimately by those people. And if you later correct those issues, they may buy the game even if they pirated it (see: people here making that claim if Ubisoft patches their games to remove all the always-online DRM). But the statement is quite true. There are plenty of movies I would never have paid to watch had they not been on Netflix. Same goes for movies/music/games I will never purchase that I've watched/listened to/played at a friends' place. I never purchased Halo. I never owned an Xbox. Yet I played it at a friends' house. I will never purchase Halo. So as a statement of fact -- a person playing your game without purchasing a copy of it does not imply that they would have ever purchased a copy. This is the same statement as "pirates wouldn't have bought your game anyway."
On the other hand, there are plenty of cases for me personally (and for everyone else I know) where playing a game, hearing a song, seeing part of a movie, via means MPAA/RIAA/publishers would have you believe is "piracy" has actually resulted in me purchasing that thing, because I couldn't sample it otherwise. So the net effect, in reality (demonstrated by fact), is that piracy improves sales. Seems totally backwards, doesn't it?
I only have one UBISoft game - Chessmaster Grandmaster Edition. Instead of CD's, it is a 2G download. It is only a few years old, but suprisling enough it has NO DRM AT ALL. No license keys, no activation codes, no other bullshit. Install it just like any GOG game. I purchased it from their official website so I am assuming it is legit. It almost seems impossible - perhaps the guy who forgot to install the DRM got fired afterwards...
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."
Show the numbers or it doesn't count. I'm sorry, but I'm not taking a couple of "studies have shown"s and a detail free general anecdote to mean anything at all.
You know what you have proven? You have proven that people will devote considerable effort into justifying piracy in other ways now that this justification has been removed. You've crafted two walls of well written, grammatically correct text in support of piracy. You've been a justification factory! You are the perfectly timed anecdote that precipitates the teaching moment.
It's... beautiful.
This was never about piracy, after all the pirates blew through every DRM schema like crap through a goose. All this kind of crap does is punish the people THAT GIVE YOU MONEY while rewarding the people that rip you off. Imagine two shops side by side selling games. the one selling legit games punches you in the balls with every purchase, while the shop with the "wink wink" copies not only hands you the game for free but gives you a pizza...which would you choose?
For an example of an actual paying customer getting screwed over by DRM crap just watch this video where a brand new retail copy simply won't run because of completely craptastic DRM. Be sure to pay attention to the shelf behind him, you can literally see game boxes piled nearly to the ceiling. this is the kind of guy you WANT as a customer, the kind that buys on release day, buys a ton of games, most businesses would kill for a customer like that but the publishers crap all over them with DRM.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Ubiwhat? do they even exist? not in my mind
If Blizzard would do this for Diablo 3, I would consider buying it. Until then.... Torchlight 2 !!!
If you didn't noticed the massive unbridled nerd rage around Diablo III you weren't looking in the right place. The QQ on pretty much every available venue was huge. Check out the Metacritic ratings. All the pros gave it great ratings and users absolutely savaged it. 3/10 last I checked.
D3 sold well, but online only undoubtedly hurt sales. It's hard to gauge by exactly how much though. The Diablo reputation also took some hits (for other reasons as well). They may find the next game doesn't sell itself quite so easily.
In the meanwhile, D3 was the best thing that could have happened to the semi-indie Torchlight II (aka The Real Diablo Successor) as a lot of folks (including myself) chose to pass on online only D3 and give T2 a shot in a couple weeks.
Really ? If (and only if) it's true I could eventually resume buying their games. I have avoided at least 3 games from them. (Splinter Cell, Assassin's Creed, Prince of Persia ...). UBI's misbehaviour made me at least 150€ richer and IF I ever buy these "old" games it'll be at a fraction of the price. I wonder how much money they did lost with their insulting DRM.
Too late for that - for me and many others, Ubisoft is more like a warning label not to buy what ever is in there than a company name. Sorry, you had your chance long ago, now just fsck off.
Can't wait to play Offline rather than online... Hey Ubisoft, do you develop Battle Realms? If you do, do you have any updates or development about the game? Cheers
Translation: "We got tired of paying for something that didn't deter piracy in the first place."
Since UbiSoft, and other companies implemented DRM or FNC (forced network connection) because everyone is a thief in their eye's, I have become so much more productive. If they take DRM away I'll turn into a slacker again.
The reason someone pirates something is the reason they don't buy the thing outright, which implies they aren't customers. It's quite a simple (and valid) deduction. History is full of people who demand that a logical explanation of something isn't proof that it exists. Examples: the earth is flat, the geo-centric model of the solar system, gravity, and the monty python problem. I'm sure there are thousands more, a great research topic if you're interested.