Ubisoft Says Always-On DRM, "A Success"

[Bad Jim]

Ok, so Batman: AA, hugely popular single player game. Where's all the moral outrage that it requires a live account to be able to save the game?

GFWL lets you create an offline profile on which you can save progress in single player games.

 

[ezeroast]

Always-ON DRM.... the one and only reason i didnt buy the settlers 7

 

[Twilight_guy]

I want to know why people keep blasting DRM and why stories keep getting put it.

Well, Shamus has already explained it far better than I can. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/experienced-points/5930-The-Impossible-DRM]

But, generally, if you buy a product, it is seen as rude, crass, unhelpful and irritating for you to continually prove that you've not stolen it.

Especially if this means that you are unable to use the product you've bought unless the manufacturer says so. And they make little effort to say anything.

In a nutshell: If a product is easier, cheaper and more effective to pirate - than to acquire legally - DRM is working in reverse.

Effective DRM, like Steam, provides bonuses for the constant "receipt-carrying", but it's still a trade-off. Ubisoft's insane DRM doesn't even work for legitimate customers. It's better if you pirate it - in every way.

(Note: Root does not condone piracy. Just leave them alone and play something decent like Witcher 2)

I read that article and I understand that DRM is never going to be perfect. No security system is. Yet the policy of treating customers like criminals and having invasive security is not unique to digital media. If I go to the store and buy a shirt, and the shirt has one of those ink packages that explodes if you try to steal it that the cashier has to remove or it has an electronic signal that sets an alarm if at the door that the cashier has to disarm isn't the store treating me like a crook? Aren't they immediately supposing that people are going to steal and forcing everyone to have to go through the process of removing security measures to buy something? On top of that, shoplifters steal stuff from stores all the time. The protection of store security no matter how advanced is not prefect.

And as soon as you pay for it, you're free. That destroys your counter-argument.

It would if we were discussing something that can't be duplicated. The metaphor admittedly breaks down there due to data be more unique. If bits were a physical item there wouldn't be DRM because once you bought your game it would be like most items and exist as a single item and therefor the publisher would not need to worry. Unlike other items though your copy of a game can be duplicated easily. That puts a crinkle in things. If I could buy shirt and once I walk out I could make an infinite number of copies and start passing them out in front of the store, don't you think that the store would try to find some way to stop me? Don't you think they would try to find some way to stop copying? This is a major issue of the digital age and a source of innumerable arguments on rights and protections. Yet nobody talks about issues like a company's ability to control its product or the unique issue of digital goods. There is no discussion because its washed out by a wave of people immediate decrying bad DRM that once more fails. Maybe there is no answer to data control, maybe we haven't found one, maybe we just need to think outside the box and come up with something unlike the conventional protections, I don't know. What I do know is that the wave of hate at each and every store (even you can't deny how many people just post what is essentially "its sucks" and leave) isn't going anywhere. If the Escapist is worth its salt then there should be more stores on deeper issues like this and more discussion. I don't come here to hear people rip on a bad DRM, I come here to find a bit of sanity in the wasteland of gaming sites.

 

[Twilight_guy]

Exactly, I'd like to know why people are so fast to condemn what is perceived as "drm" so quickly.

Here you go, courtsey of Wil Wheaton and Colin Ferguson.


If the legitimate customer has more to fear than the thief, why should people pay?

I don't know what you're trying to say here. "If we get better systems or DRM then the problems with DRM will stop". Yeah, I knew that. Would you like to expand upon that? What do we do? What system will fix this exactly? I don't know. Unless you know then I think a discussion is still necessary. Saying "once they fix it, it will be better" is well and good but as every politician knows it's easy to say that you can fix it but hard to figure out how. This is just sticking our heads in the sand and saying "when you fix it, I'll play ball." Nobody knows how to fix it and that's why there needs to be talk beyond simply saying "this one failed, try again or I'm not playing."

 

[Xan Krieger]

You know what I want to see? an actual discussion of what this DRM means. I've seen lots of people who instantly sputter a gut reaction and condemn it immediately but that's incredibly short sighted. There are lots of issues to discuss here, not the lest of which is why people hate it so much (and don't give me that crap about you just hate DRM or your internet connection sucks there is more to it and you know it). I want to know why people keep blasting DRM and why stories keep getting put it. Its not about simply hating the thing, this is on the level of a zealot crusade and I want to know why. As far as I'm concerned though, it's never going to happen because people are just too angry to talk all they can do is yell. Ah well, maybe DRM should treat use like means spirited children, we sure act like it.

DRM is a pretty wide reaching term but usually when users condemn it they're talking about specific products, like SecuROM, Starforce or Ubisoft's DRM scheme. Quite often people's opinions on DRM doesn't extend to things like Steam or Battlenet, purely because they don't recognise them as such.

I don't know about Battle.net, but I know at least with Steam, a person doesn't have to be online to play the games they paid for.

No but you need to be to install them, that prevented me from playing Half Life for over a year after I bought it. That's some pretty harsh DRM and needs to go away.

What prevented you from installing the game?

I had no internet connection so I couldn't even install an old game. It made no sense to me at all.

I don't want to be critical of you or anything since that is certainly a con of digital downloads, but I do have to say an internet connection is kind of a prerequisite for that sort of stuff. They store it on their servers until you're ready to install it and if you decide to uninstall it, it's off your machine completely. But that's why I like owning the disc.

Not really given all the games I have that don't require any sort of online registration (Dawn of War series before Dawn of War 2, Civilization 4 Complete, Quake 4, Supreme Commander, Command and Conquer the first decade, Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion, etc etc). All those games don't require any sort of internet connection, you buy it, install it, and play it.

Maybe I don't understand what you are trying to say. Did you buy all of those games on Steam or were they a physical product you got from a store?

Here is what I'm saying. I bought all those from physical stores, Half life was the only one with Steam DRM. I don't understand why it had it, it's an annoying DRM that prevented me from playing a game I had the disc for for over a year. That's really bad.

 

[Amphoteric]

people who legitamately buy the game get punished while the people who get the cracked version don't?

Is there a game that hasn't been cracked yet?

 

[Twilight_guy]

Snip.

I realize my post was very long but I knew I was going to have to make the same argument several times and I wanted to be able to refer people up to similar arguments.

I know DRM sucks and I want it to be fixed. I want people to stop yelling and I want it to stop sucking. I really do. Publishers aren't going to give it up because pirates pirate there games and pirates aren't going to give up because they dislike DRM or can produce a better product by removing DRM (and because some of them are dicks who would pirate the humble indie bundle).

Maybe this isn't the right thread to make an argument about DRM in general but honestly there is no right thread, anywhere. The Escapist doesn't publish stories on issues that are that broad and If I tried to make a thread about discussion DRM within one page it would degenerate from "how to make good DRM" to a mass of people complaining that all DRM is always bad. I see DRM has a enormously ham fisted and futile attempt to try and control something that doesn't fit with conventional methods. Controlling data is like trying to control the tide. Yet I know that the goal of all technology is to improve and get better and I think there is someway to salvage DRM and make it in a way that people will accept it, to improve it. Yet nobody will listen. Even my initial thread immediately had ten negative responses and 1 neutral or middling positive response. I just want to be able to talk about this in a way where I won't feel like an outcast for having an opinion. I don't like having the opinion that everyone despises but I can't not have it. I know you don't understand but at least grant me the knowledge that you understand I have an opinion and you can agree to disagree even if you think I'm irrational.

 

[Twilight_guy]

You know what I want to see? an actual discussion of what this DRM means. I've seen lots of people who instantly sputter a gut reaction and condemn it immediately but that's incredibly short sighted. There are lots of issues to discuss here, not the lest of which is why people hate it so much (and don't give me that crap about you just hate DRM or your internet connection sucks there is more to it and you know it). I want to know why people keep blasting DRM and why stories keep getting put it. Its not about simply hating the thing, this is on the level of a zealot crusade and I want to know why. As far as I'm concerned though, it's never going to happen because people are just too angry to talk all they can do is yell. Ah well, maybe DRM should treat use like means spirited children, we sure act like it.

It's simple: any reasonable form of DRM, such as a disc check back in the "old days", is non-intrusive.

Any DRM such as always having to have an inet connection is insanely heavy-handed and simply not reasonable, making people feel as if they don't actually own they games they've paid for, but are more "renting" the game.

I've no problem with reasonable DRM schemes, and even with SecuROM, while I hate it, I've never had an issue with it on any system. However, limited activations, always-on connections etc. are simply far too over-the-top and unnecessary.

People lose their inet connections all the time, whether due to power outages, due to moving, or simply because perhaps they weren't able to pay their cable bill for a while.

In regards to a single player game, it's absolutely ludicrous to prevent people from playing a game they paid to own and play at their leisure, by requiring a constant inet connection, particularly when it's a single player game. It's just not reasonable or rational, and in truth, does nothing to prevent piracy in the first place.

It's akin to someone buying an instrument, but being told they can only play it when at the store from which they bought it, under supervision.

There's been no "success" with their always-on DRM, and they have lost more sales to both piracy and people refusing to buy their games, then they're ever going to admit. They're not getting the point: people are less likely to pirate and more likely to buy your games, if you don't act like a Communist State. The more heavy-handed you get with people, the more resistance you're going to be met with, especially when it's something as incredibly and mindlessly unreasonable as this particular form of DRM.

One-time online activation is fine, but this... it's just ludicrous.

See this is what I want, people actually talking about DRM and expressing opinions and ideas. Far too many posts are just one or two lines of a sarcastic jab at DRM with no actual talk. Talking about what went wrong and why is more helpful for building something better in the future.

 

[Vault101]

"a sucess"?

then why did they remove it? from AC2?

I suposed the game was "old" by then

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

You know what I want to see? an actual discussion of what this DRM means. I've seen lots of people who instantly sputter a gut reaction and condemn it immediately but that's incredibly short sighted. There are lots of issues to discuss here, not the lest of which is why people hate it so much (and don't give me that crap about you just hate DRM or your internet connection sucks there is more to it and you know it). I want to know why people keep blasting DRM and why stories keep getting put it. Its not about simply hating the thing, this is on the level of a zealot crusade and I want to know why. As far as I'm concerned though, it's never going to happen because people are just too angry to talk all they can do is yell. Ah well, maybe DRM should treat use like means spirited children, we sure act like it.

DRM is a pretty wide reaching term but usually when users condemn it they're talking about specific products, like SecuROM, Starforce or Ubisoft's DRM scheme. Quite often people's opinions on DRM doesn't extend to things like Steam or Battlenet, purely because they don't recognise them as such.

It's kind of sad that they don't; Steamworks is almost as bad as Ubisoft's DRM. The only real difference is if you lose your connection in the middle of a game, you don't lose anything on Steam, whereas you do with Ubisoft. In either case, if you don't have internet in the first place, you aren't playing your game, even if you've already registered it. I know Steam has an offline mode, but it only works if you're already online and you have to go off for some reason; there's no starting Steam in offline mode. Oh, it gives the option, but it almost never actually works, and it definitely doesn't work if you try to use online mode but it can't connect because there's something wrong with your internet connection. Case in point, I'm on vacation at a mom and pop hotel with horrible internet, and I can't log in to steam, which is keeping me from playing a substantial chunk of the games I have installed. I don't understand how anyone puts up with Steam for any reason other than the sales, which price games in the rental range -- which is a fair price, since it's just a glorified rental.

There is a huge difference between this bag of crap and Steamworks, my friend. With Steam, you are buying an online product, that you have to download (mostly, there are a couple of retail games that require Steam, I'm not going to defend those). It's pretty fair to expect you to be online to play a game you had to get online. With Ubisoft, you probably have a physical copy you bought at a store, it's not nearly so reasonable in that situation. And given that Steam does have an offline mode, I think we are looking at two different breeds of DRM here.

Not necessarily. Steamworks comes with a lot of hard copies these days, too -- including Civilization V and Fear 2. Even in cases where the game was purchased online, constant re-authorization doesn't make sense, especially not for singleplayer games. I'll accept that I can't play TF2 when I don't have internet; the singleplayer may as well be nonexistant on that one. What bugs me is that games like Half Life, Bioshock, and VVVVVV refuse to work because I can't connect to the internet to play my singleplayer game. In any case, having to re-authorize my games after I've already done it is unacceptable; Steam and Ubisoft require it, but Impulse, Gamer's Gate, Good Old Games and pretty much every other online distributor is either completely DRM free, or uses a form of DRM that is significantly less intrusive than Steam. As I said before, the only reason Steam doesn't take more crap for its draconian DRM is because the games are so cheap. I don't like that my game purchases have gone from sales to lifetime rentals, but when the rental fee is about $2.49 on average, it's a lot easier to swallow.

 

[magnuslion]

Dear Ubisoft: I can save you some time. I am not buying any of your fucking products, ever. Die in a fire, you pathetic, money grubbing whores.

 

[Mythrignoc]

You know what I want to see? an actual discussion of what this DRM means. I've seen lots of people who instantly sputter a gut reaction and condemn it immediately but that's incredibly short sighted. There are lots of issues to discuss here, not the lest of which is why people hate it so much (and don't give me that crap about you just hate DRM or your internet connection sucks there is more to it and you know it). I want to know why people keep blasting DRM and why stories keep getting put it. Its not about simply hating the thing, this is on the level of a zealot crusade and I want to know why. As far as I'm concerned though, it's never going to happen because people are just too angry to talk all they can do is yell. Ah well, maybe DRM should treat use like means spirited children, we sure act like it.

Did you ever watch the first season of house when the overly threatening black guy comes in and gives the hospital 100 million dollars and simply asks to be on the board of directors, to basically hold votes and be apart of hospital matters?

If not, it was at first a good idea. He had the intention of using this money to find new cures to previously incurable diseases. However, directly in the middle of the episode with his first appearance, it was quite clearly stated that he thought of a hospital more as a business than as a place of healing.

Now, I'll tell you why I'm bringing that up and draw a parallel. Any and every business is automatically a customer service business. Whether it's providing an actual service, or making a quality product, the consumers (we the gamers who buy games) are the one major thing that makes a business a business in the first place. WE give it life, WE keep it going, and WE are the ones that matter for who the product is made for.

Then along comes DRM. At first, it's just some one-time activation codes mainly to just stave off piracy. Doesn't do much, so it has to evolve. It then becomes something far more insidious, and that's the "You must be connected at all times to play this game" DRM.

Your argument is that it can't just be about crappy internet connectivity, there has to be some ulterior motive. Well my friend, that's the exact line of thinking Ubisoft and so many other company's using this form of DRM have. It's the notion that it's unlikely for anyone to have a non-constant internet service at this day and age and anyone who says they do are either lying to try and pirate the game or are legitimately internet-less, and those people are a small loss for the companies profits.

You see how it's now turning into the big threatening black guy with a hundred million dollars?

First, the notion that someone who says "I don't have constant internet activity" is assumed to be a pirate is dead wrong. Pirates have circumvented DRM before, including the constant-internet ones, and they can do it again. There is no call or evidence for this.

Second, the idea that I have to stay connected and send them constant information just to play a game I legitimately bought is a profound invasion of my privacy as a consumer. It violates my ownership rights in my opinion. Afterall, do I have to have a construction worker standing next to me to verify that I indeed bought a shovel just for the purpose of using that shovel? If I buy a phone service, do I need to contantly dial my service provider to let them know I'm legitimately using this phone service?

Why should games be any different? I understand the need to prevent piracy, video games are a fair chunk of our economy especially considering MMO's like World of Warcraft with something like 13 million subscribers at this point I think.

But constant-internet DRM is an invasion of privacy and nothing less. It's an illegal search and seizure every single time you want to play the game.

So yeah, even if I have an internet connection perfectly suited to deal with DRM to play Darkspore, and I have the money to buy it, am I actually gonna deal with that? Hell no, I refuse out of pure principle to play any game that violates what I believe are my basic ownership rights. And you and everyone here should too.


Oh, and one small other thing. With this whole DRM issue, it really doesn't help that games like the assassin's creed series blows serious chunks. Frigging awful excuse for a game. No one should have to play and immediately be frustrated with just the controls before getting past the tutorial.

 

[harvz]

uh, tell me this again when they release real evidence and not just a press release.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Nobody knows how to fix it and that's why there needs to be talk beyond simply saying "this one failed, try again or I'm not playing."

I'm seeing a lot of talk, but nothing solid. All of your postings have been summed down to "DRM isn't bad - Companies need their profits", when quite obviously it is because it hurts the legitimate customer, drives legitimate buyers to pirates AND has only a small impact on pirates.

Wil Wheaton has said that the Entertainment Industry should be providing all region capable.
Team Meat/Neil Gaiman say that piracy isn't an issue because it spreads the word and legitimate customers actually purchase more of their product.

The only people defending DRM are the ones who have created it. And it's the same as the wheelclamp, spam or full page adverts. No-one is monitoring the purchases lost to it (Spore being Amazon-bombed, for example) because it's been accepted that it's now a part of life because "MILLIONS ARE LOST EACH YEAR".

That's where the problem lies. DRM is trying to get back money (like Wil says) that doesn't exist. That's why it fails.

You're playing Devil's Advocate, Twilight_Guy, and taking snipes at a certifiable bad idea is a reasonable discussion. It shows that there's a potential customer that's being turned into a potential thief just by the idea of this game having supernasty DRM.

Mr. Pirate will just take out his DRM key, crack it in a few hours/days and then sell his DRM free copy to the people who didn't want to buy it.

Steam transcends that, and the pirates, by offering a better system of trade/messaging/purchasing. That's why Gabe can afford his pit of money. He "cares" about the legitimate customer.

If we're having a discussion, let's hear your PoV.

 

[Wintermoot]

stuff like this makes pirates pirate even more.

 

[Jennacide]

Haha, "a success." You're cute Ubisoft, stay golden.

Out of curiousity, how long did it take pirates to crack the most draconian DRM in history? Oh, a week? I /guess/ that's successful. How many sales did you lose for that DRM?

Btw, for extra hilarity, I found this out and it made me giggle. When the guys at Skidrow cracked the Ubisoft Launcher, they made a shocking discovery. There was no actual DRM in the games, just the requirement to use the launcher, where it was all housed. How is this relevant? Once they cracked it for Assassin's Creed 2, they had just cracked the 4 other games currently using it, which included Settler's 7 and Splinter Cell: Conviction. So you stalled pirates for a week, and handed them the keys to the city for all your other games in the process until you made changes to it. GG Ubisoft.

 

[(LK)]

What fantastic myopia.

Less people pirated the game. Also: less people wanted the game. Scorched-earth approach total success!

How do people descend into such vivid incompetence that they begin to look like a vicious parody of themselves?

 

[Metalrocks]

wow, this makes so much sense.
seriously. this stuff sucks. as many said, "if you have no internet, you cant play the game".
i still remember in the shop that one guy dint buy settler 7 just because of this. he said his connection is not stable and flying out all the time wile playing doesnt sound like fun.
i agree with him. my connection was alright where i used to live. just had few little connection problems but still able to play. it surely pissed me off when it happened and i flew out of the game.
i really like assassins creed 2 and brotherhood. great games bus this protection is simply crap. i do understand their reason but treating every customer, who buy the games legally, like criminals, is almost insulting.