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.
I'll believe it when I see it, not when they say 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.
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.
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?
Agreed. Last title I picked up from them I think I paid like $50 for it, messed around with it for like a week. Then removed it and their stupid drm launcher/rootkit.
Publishers can quote piracy all they want but I think crap content is a bigger detriment to their financial base and word about that gets around just as quick as draconian drm.
Honestly, if there was a mechanism in place to get a refund on some of the garbage software I've bought over the years I think there's only a hand full of stuff I would actually keep.
01:36AM up 426 days, 2:46, 1 user, load average: 0.14, 0.11, 0.05
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.
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.