Ubisoft has put the DRM back on From Dust

[KeyMaster45]

It's not a very high profile game, but for those of you that remember From Dust might also remember how it was subjected to Ubisoft's terrible DRM scheme at launch. After something that could only be described as a fluke epiphany Ubisoft removed the DRM from the game completely; thus allowing you to play the game offline and not pray their servers didn't kick you out of the game mid-level.

Well surprise, surprise Ubisoft seems to have doubled back and that DRM is back. How do I know? I went to start up the game a few minutes ago and after it patched itself a few times I was greeted with a login window to their Uplay system. As far as I can tell there is no way to play the game without logging into Uplay. I don't have a Uplay account and I don't want one; when I bought From Dust it was only because they dropped the DRM. Now I see that I was duped and quite frankly scammed because now unless I sign up for their Uplay secondary DRM system I cannot play my game.

I just felt everyone should know.

 

[Jandau]

Yeah, this is why many PC gamers have an instinctive aversion to Ubisoft games. They are dicks to the PC consumers, then when this reflects on sales they just blame it on piracy and double up on the DRM, driving more people away and so on and so forth.

I rarely buy anything from Ubisoftr and when I do I crack it. I don't care about lost functionality, I just want to play my game without being constantly fucked by the always-online crap. A good example - Anno 2070. I cracked the game when I got it. This meant that a few features weren't available, but I found it to be an acceptable loss for being able to play in peace.

 

[munx13]

Sucks for those who bought it. Good thing I don't buy Ubisoft games anymore since Assassins Creed 2.


What bothers me the most is how they STILL insist on using that DRM, even though their PC sales dropped about 90% after this whole thing started.

 

[Rednog]

Eh, at this point Uplay has honestly been around long enough for me to say meh. Ubisoft isn't the first nor will it be the last company to throw in an extra log in. Rockstar has their thing, other games use GFWL or some other DRM. Here's the thing I'd maybe buy your argument if Ubisoft games were exclusively for steam, but they still sell non steam versions out there, thus it's just easier to have one version pushed out through various distributors instead of having to craft a special version for each distributor. They're not going to pump out a DRM free copy out there, people have tried things like this (see Witcher 2) and no matter how much good will you put out there, more people will take advantage of DRM free.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Implying I still buy Ubishit games. I know there's a Steam version, does it still use the DRM out of interest?

Yes.

Every version of a game using Ubisoft's Uplay system has it, regardless of where you get the game from.

 

[Rednog]

They're not going to pump out a DRM free copy out there, people have tried things like this (see Witcher 2) and no matter how much good will you put out there, more people will take advantage of DRM free.

I don't really know how people "took advantage" of that.

Yeah, it might have taken a week less for the game to show up on torrent sites. Wow.

With a DRM free copy there is literally nothing stopping someone from taking the files and throwing it right away up on the net, hell you could make a copy and pass it to literally everyone you know. There is no delay with people having to crack it or find work-arounds. The tie it took for copies to get online was pretty much the time it took to upload the game. The estimated piracy rate was about 5 copies for every single sale, while for a life time the rate is moderate to bad, this is kind of a ludicrously high number when it was measured over the first 6-8 weeks.

 

[Vivi22]

They're not going to pump out a DRM free copy out there, people have tried things like this (see Witcher 2) and no matter how much good will you put out there, more people will take advantage of DRM free.

I don't really know how people "took advantage" of that.

Yeah, it might have taken a week less for the game to show up on torrent sites. Wow.

With a DRM free copy there is literally nothing stopping someone from taking the files and throwing it right away up on the net, hell you could make a copy and pass it to literally everyone you know. There is no delay with people having to crack it or find work-arounds. The tie it took for copies to get online was pretty much the time it took to upload the game. The estimated piracy rate was about 5 copies for every single sale, while for a life time the rate is moderate to bad, this is kind of a ludicrously high number when it was measured over the first 6-8 weeks.

You do realize that the version of the Witcher 2 being circulated on Torrent sites was a cracked version of the DRM copy right? Despite there being a version with absolutely no DRM, no one bothered to put it up on torrent sites, and instead cracked it just for the sake of it. The game also still sold quite well and I doubt that the DRM that didn't stop people from pirating it had as much of an effect as putting out a copy that didn't hassle paying customers did.

 

[Folji]

If you ask me, Uplay is no more or less of a terrible DRM scheme than Steam or Origin. Doesn't even have to install itself as a standalone program on the computer and doesn't keep you from playing your games offline, it's already been ages since they did away with that whole thing. From my experience using Uplay as of today it handles like a launcher for the game without doing anything to interfere with the game once it has launched. What's so terrible about that?

 

[Tamrin]

If you ask me, Uplay is no more or less of a terrible DRM scheme than Steam or Origin. Doesn't even have to install itself as a standalone program on the computer and doesn't keep you from playing your games offline, it's already been ages since they did away with that whole thing. From my experience using Uplay as of today it handles like a launcher for the game without doing anything to interfere with the game once it has launched. What's so terrible about that?

You forget, this is the escapist, you are supposed to hate Ubisoft PC games along with EA while using outdated information.

It's not the games it's the publisher. For instance, I don't like Ubisoft, but I do like Ubisoft Montreal. I don't like EA, but I like Digital Illusions, Crytek, and so on. You have to distinguish between not liking certain games and not liking certain games because of what publishers did when the game itself isn't shit. Look at Splinter Cell: Conviction. That game was received pretty well by critics however, many at the same time of praising the game urged people not to bother wasting their money on it because of its horrid DRM.

Also, I hope ShinyCharizard's warning wasn't due to suggesting people download a crack. There is a clear difference between downloading a crack and downloading the game itself. I don't disapprove of people wanting to download cracks ever. As a personal experience a few games I've bought in the past were flat out broken due to DRM implementation and cracks were the only solution. There is really no harm in just the cracks since it's a win-win for both parties. They get their money from the purchase and we get to play the game that should have been easily playable from the beginning.

 

[felbot]

If you ask me, Uplay is no more or less of a terrible DRM scheme than Steam or Origin. Doesn't even have to install itself as a standalone program on the computer and doesn't keep you from playing your games offline, it's already been ages since they did away with that whole thing. From my experience using Uplay as of today it handles like a launcher for the game without doing anything to interfere with the game once it has launched. What's so terrible about that?

You forget, this is the escapist, you are supposed to hate Ubisoft PC games along with EA while using outdated information.

you do know they blatantly lied to their customers about from dust right? they said very clearly that they weren't going to put any drm in the thing but they did it anyway, how is that not a good reason for hating them? and then they went ahead and changed the requirement on their forums after people had installed and noticed the drm.

 

[bananafishtoday]

With a DRM free copy there is literally nothing stopping someone from taking the files and throwing it right away up on the net, hell you could make a copy and pass it to literally everyone you know. There is no delay with people having to crack it or find work-arounds. The tie it took for copies to get online was pretty much the time it took to upload the game. The estimated piracy rate was about 5 copies for every single sale, while for a life time the rate is moderate to bad, this is kind of a ludicrously high number when it was measured over the first 6-8 weeks.

There are enough crackers on the net and they're good enough at what they do that any high-profile game will hit torrent sites within days, DRM or no. It doesn't impede people downloading games for free at all. Nevermind that while some crackers view their work as a service to the gaming community (I'm not taking a side on this, just saying that's the way they see it), other do it for the challenge, and tougher DRM = DRM that is more fun to crack. That's part of the reason that when Spore came out with some of the most onerous DRM ever, it ended up being the most pirated game ever at that time.

Thing is, the marginal cost of a game is $0. That's a fact of life now. (No, bandwidth costs don't count, they can be offloaded to P2P sharing for free.) Illegal or not, publishers have to accept that from an economics perspective, they are competing in the same market as torrent sites, and if they want to sell more games, they need to offer a better product. Steam's DRM works because it makes buying games easier than pirating them, it lets you build a pretty little collection, it has social features, etc. Paradox sells their games DRM-free, but you need to register games to participate fully in their excellent forum community. Humble Indie Bundles sell DRM-free and make their money by selling that "I did a nice thing" feeling.

All most DRM does is disincentivize buying games legally. It's silly for publishers to think they can compete with free by offering an inferior product. I don't own From Dust, but if what happened to the OP happened to a game I owned, I probably wouldn't buy anything from the company again.

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

Didn't they say not a few months ago that they where done and would never using this type of DRM again?

Well I'm glad I didn't believe them back then, shame as I was going to get Far Cry 3 at some point but anyway back to not touching any Ubisoft stuff with a ten foot pole.

 

[Woodsey]

Uplay needs a login and an online check once, then you're good to go. It's not exactly the most heinous of additions, even if it does seem somewhat pointless to reapply it to a game whose time has easily come and gone on.

 

[Savagezion]

They're not going to pump out a DRM free copy out there, people have tried things like this (see Witcher 2) and no matter how much good will you put out there, more people will take advantage of DRM free.

I don't really know how people "took advantage" of that.

Yeah, it might have taken a week less for the game to show up on torrent sites. Wow.

With a DRM free copy there is literally nothing stopping someone from taking the files and throwing it right away up on the net, hell you could make a copy and pass it to literally everyone you know. There is no delay with people having to crack it or find work-arounds. The tie it took for copies to get online was pretty much the time it took to upload the game. The estimated piracy rate was about 5 copies for every single sale, while for a life time the rate is moderate to bad, this is kind of a ludicrously high number when it was measured over the first 6-8 weeks.

That was an extremely rough estimate made by a developer.

If I remember correctly CDProjekt even came out and said "Yeah, that was probably bullshit" a few weeks later.

LOL, I was about to put something like that. Actually, you could tell it was BS from the start though. The only information those numbers were based on was that he had "regularly" checked the torrent sites and said 20-30 thousand IPs were downloading the title for the first 6 weeks. That's it, then it was let's assume their internet speed downloads 14GB in 6 hrs.

I got a kick out of when they said they had a super secret source that can positively identify pirates with 100% accuracy but couldn't disclose how or even who this source was. LOL. I guess it works on people gullible enough to believe there is an internet police.