Ubisoft shaft PC gamers yet again!

[snowbear]

Ubisoft's rocksmith game has the ultimate DRM - No CD keys issued in the retail copies in many European countries

Ubisoft's track record with PC gamers is pretty terrible already, but they clearly believe its not yet quite bad enough!

Thousands of gamers have been left unable to play Rocksmith that was brought at retail. All because Ubisoft forgot to put the the flyer with the game CD key (which is required to install the game) in the box. In order to play the game you must go through Ubi's support page and send a photo of your receipt.

That would be great, but it appears Ubi have taken the weekend off despite not having fixed the issue. So now I am FORCED to download a crack (this counts for a pirated copy in ubi's eyes) for the game that I legally own if i wish to play it this weekend.


A few months ago Ubisoft came out with outlandish claims that only 5% of people that play ubisoft games on the PC actually pay, giving a 95% piracy rate. This annoyed many PC gamers and many gave reasons why there might be such a high piracy rate for Ubi's games.

1) Harsh DRM - DRM thats so bad that sometimes the game is unplayable (if ubi's servers go down).

2) Rushed ports - ports of games that simply have been rush and are released in a non working condition.

3) A lot of these pirated copies are downloaded to simply remove the DRM for a game that has been legally purchased.

How many more times can a company get away with such shoddy business practices!!

This game is just one more example of why Ubisoft's piracy rate might be high. To be honest I dont blame the actual pirates. They are happy playing the game while paying customers are left in the dark with a game they cannot play!

/rant

For anyone still needing a CD key the only way to do it is follow the instructions here

http://ubisoft-en.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/17223

 

[ohnoitsabear]

This is why I don't buy games on launch. There is no guarantee that it will work as intended, and even if it does, there's no guarantee that it will actually be good. This goes double for Ubisoft games on PC, which have a horrible track record, and I'm honestly surprised that anyone that follows gaming news buys them on launch anymore.

But either way, that really sucks, OP. It's just a strong argument that DRM only harms paying customers, even relatively reasonable DRM like CD keys.

 

[Violator[xL]]

Ubisoft! Arrrrh! *Goes into a fit of rage*

 

[Nieroshai]

Production accident /= intentional shafting. I'm sorry for your situation, but they weren't being malicious.

 

[Mauler]

Heh well i live in place where good internet connection is a commodity well hidden, so i had to crack my assasins('s) creeds(all of them) so i could play it on my laptop at home where i don't have internet(writing from library(my laptops connected there)) and play it!

 

[mysecondlife]

If I remember correctly, Developers behind NBA 2K9 forgot to put in CD key as well. Just letting you know that Ubisoft isn't the first one.

 

[Athinira]

A few months ago Ubisoft came out with outlandish claims that only 5% of people that play ubisoft games on the PC actually pay, giving a 95% piracy rate. This annoyed many PC gamers and many gave reasons why there might be such a high piracy rate for Ubi's games.

1) Harsh DRM - DRM thats so bad that sometimes the game is unplayable (if ubi's servers go down).

2) Rushed ports - ports of games that simply have been rush and are released in a non working condition.

3) A lot of these pirated copies are downloaded to simply remove the DRM for a game that has been legally purchased.

Reason 3 is the kicker. Actual piracy-rates for PC software is typically 40-55%. 95% = Ubisoft CEO failing his statistics class.

 

[BrotherRool]

Production accident /= intentional shafting. I'm sorry for your situation, but they weren't being malicious.

This. I don't think the staff at Ubisoft intended to spend the month staring at pictures of receipts and punching in numbers. You can get angry because, well you aren't able to play the game you wanted to for a few days longer, but I don't know if you can really get angry at someone for this. It was a mistake, something they'll try to avoid in the future and something they tried and succeeded to avoid in the past. You can yell at them but what are they going to do? Remember to put the CD-keys in? I bet they wanted to do that the first time round

 

[dimensional]

You should join the console master race instead (joke before anyone flips their shit) yeah this is pretty bad, a cockup of monumental proportions obviously someone or some people are at fault here but its a bit late now. This isnt going to help the PC version at all though if it becomes common knowledge people will likely go ffs more hoops to jump through just to play the damn game, Ill just get the console version, pirate it, skip it, wait until it goes on sale and has actual keys inside.

 

[Trippy Turtle]

To be fair, they never claimed to be amazingly user friendly. They are certainly more reliable then vending machines as far as my record goes. Anyway its not like the company had a meeeting and said 'Lets 'forget' to put the CD key in half the games >:]'

 

[Mangod]

A few months ago Ubisoft came out with outlandish claims that only 5% of people that play ubisoft games on the PC actually pay, giving a 95% piracy rate. This annoyed many PC gamers and many gave reasons why there might be such a high piracy rate for Ubi's games.

1) Harsh DRM - DRM thats so bad that sometimes the game is unplayable (if ubi's servers go down).

2) Rushed ports - ports of games that simply have been rush and are released in a non working condition.

3) A lot of these pirated copies are downloaded to simply remove the DRM for a game that has been legally purchased.

Reason 3 is the kicker. Actual piracy-rates for PC software is typically 40-55%. 95% = Ubisoft CEO failing his statistics class.

If the piracy rate really is 95%, plus the production costs of games these days... yeah, how is Ubisoft even staying afloat if that claim about piracy is true?

 

[Bat Vader]

After UbiSoft did away with Always On DRM I was really considering getting Assassins Creed III on the PC to support them and their decision of getting rid of always on DRM. After reading this though I don't think I am going to get ACIII. If this is how a company treats their customers I don't want to support this company at all.

 

[Crises^]

My copy should be arriving today, hope it has a cd key
I heard Ubisoft are trying to turn it around with their games in the future and get rid of most of there DRM.

This is a massive mistake, but a production mistake that could of happened to anyone.
So I think we should give them a little slack on this one.

 

[TrevHead]

We don't hear much about the piracy from the industry nowadays, I wonder if it's because so many of them are into social gaming and f2p which have about the same % of non paying customers.

 

[Mordekaien]

I hold no love for Ubisoft.
They make pretty good games, yet they seem to forget that the game will be shit if it's ported badly.
As I have a mac, I found that I could run most of their games through wine, cheaper and with less hassle than, what they claim to be official ports. The only recent game that run normally on my mac was Splinter Cell: Conviction, and that uses Unreal engine, not their own one. The other games they ported on mac were buggy, unplayable, and had downright gamebreaking crashes, yet they expect me to pay 40 dollars for that mess. No thanks.

But, to be honest, I'm sure they don't enjoy the prospect of checking dozens upon dozens receipts and resending CD keys.

 

[Athinira]

Snip

If the piracy rate really is 95%, plus the production costs of games these days... yeah, how is Ubisoft even staying afloat if that claim about piracy is true?

It isn't 95%. Period. There is absolutely NO reason why Ubisoft-games should be more pirated (read: more popular) than other games.

To give you a point of comparison, the most pirated PC game of 2011 was Crysis 2, which had an estimate of just below 4 million downloaded copies at the end of december. Crysis 2 itself, however, had already sold 3 million units (all platforms though) by June 30 the same year, by which it had only been out for the PC for 1½ months. And that's the MOST pirated game. Ubisoft-games doesn't even figure on the top 5 for 2011 for any of the 3 major gaming systems. My estimate would be that Crysis 2, being the most pirated game, only achieved a 45-55% piracy rate at most coming out of 2011. If EA hadn't pulled it from Steam, i would have guesstimated it as low as 40%.

 

[Arcane Azmadi]

Maybe if you just stopped buying their fucking games then...

I mean come on, there HAVE to be other games made/released by companies that aren't completely comprised of braindead incompetent pricks that you want to play out there. Stop giving Ubisoft your money, let them go bankrupt and let them become a cautionary tale to other developers of the consequences of treating your customers like a bunch of retarded moneyboxes who'll cheerfully tolerate any amount of abuse or idiocy.

 

[Blunderboy]

Production accident /= intentional shafting. I'm sorry for your situation, but they weren't being malicious.

How dare you approach this situation with common sense and empathy.
You son of a *****(!)

 

[getoffmycloud]

Here is a crazy thought stop buying ubisoft games on PC cause everyone knows they are going to be shit so learn from past mistakes and stop acting so goddamn surprised every time the games don't work.