Ubisoft's DRM works

[Sneaklemming]

As unfortunate as it may be seem to those who disagree with Ubisofts new always-online DRM, its working.

Assassins Creed II has not been cracked by pirates.

I was trying to find a new article about this, but maybe people are reluctant to spread the worth of Ubisofts success.

What do you guys think? Is this good or bad?

I mean sure pirating is wrong, but so is this DRM, isn't it?

 

[Kollega]

The horror? Oh yes, yes it is.

[HEADING=1]The HORROR![/HEADING]

I cannot claim moral superiority here, but i still don't like that idea. How about those buying all games legitimately? That's just stomping on customer's face like in 1984.

 

[Jajarra]

I'm pretty sure this has already been done. Hold on lemme see if I can find it.

And here it is. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.182061-Poll-Ubisoft-DRM-and-why-it-works?page=1]

I believe the term goes, "The searchbar is your friend."

To add to the discussion, however, I actually haven't played the game, but my internet is pretty spotty. I can't trust my connection to stay solid enough to be able to continuously play if I need to be connected to their servers constantly, which would make me unable to play the game I payed for. I mean, I know I'm only paying for the right to play, but that's still messed up.

 

[Weaver]

It's working at detracting pirates, but that doesn't mean:
1) Any of the pirates are buying the game.
2) People who bought the game aren't having issues with the DRM.
3) People who would have bought it without this DRM are going to buy it.

 

[Sneaklemming]

I'm pretty sure this has already been done. Hold on lemme see if I can find it.

And here it is. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.182061-Poll-Ubisoft-DRM-and-why-it-works?page=1]

I believe the term goes, "The searchbar is your friend."

No - read my OP thanks, this isn't a "ubisoft DRM works in principle" I mean that it actually works, as in IT HAS STOPPED AC2 BEING PIRATED!!!


edit. Well ok... so the guy does mention that too, but it's still a different thread. I'm not mega-arguing that this is the future.

 

[Sneaklemming]

It's working at detracting pirates, but that doesn't mean:
1) Any of the pirates are buying the game.
2) People who bought the game aren't having issues with the DRM.
3) People who would have bought it without this DRM are going to buy it.

You sure the pirates aren't going to buy it? Because I'm no so sure.

 

[Weaver]

It's working at detracting pirates, but that doesn't mean:
1) Any of the pirates are buying the game.
2) People who bought the game aren't having issues with the DRM.
3) People who would have bought it without this DRM are going to buy it.

You sure the pirates aren't going to buy it? Because I'm no so sure.

Well SURELY someone who would have pirated it is going to buy it. But conversely, I was going to buy the game but now I'm not going to because my internet flakes out all the time. It's a two way street here.

Also, you need to understand the world of the hardcore pirates. I know a lot of people from Eastern Europe and Russia. The culture there is "If you can get it for free, why pay for it?" This is how they think, this is how their market is shaped. Hell I know a guy who wanted to support Crytek and bought Crysis because he liked them so much and all his friends made fun of him for it. If the pirates there can't pirate a game the odds of them bothering to pay for it is pretty much 0, they'll just find some other game to pirate.

 

[Sneaklemming]

It's working at detracting pirates, but that doesn't mean:
1) Any of the pirates are buying the game.
2) People who bought the game aren't having issues with the DRM.
3) People who would have bought it without this DRM are going to buy it.

You sure the pirates aren't going to buy it? Because I'm no so sure.

Well SURELY someone who would have pirated it is going to buy it. But conversely, I was going to buy the game but now I'm not going to because my internet flakes out all the time. It's a two way street here.

Also, you need to understand the world of the hardcore pirates. I know a lot of people from Eastern Europe and Russia. The culture there is "If you can get it for free, why pay for it?" This is how they think, this is how their market is shaped. Hell I know a guy who wanted to support Crytek and bought Crysis because he liked them so much and all his friends made fun of him for it. If the pirates there can't pirate a game the odds of them bothering to pay for it is pretty much 0, they'll just find some other game to pirate.

I see where you're coming from.
Although its a huge generalisation on Russia and Eastern Europe, not all pirates are from that part of the world. You may be correct though.

Still, then if your argument is true, do you think that companies if they see that pirates ignore a game and that pirates copies does not equal lost sales (even marginally), that the companies will retract the DRM even if it works?

This is similar to the Sins of a Solar empire, argument where they had no DRM, but the game still sold.

 

[bismarck55]

Too bad their servers don't work.

 

[Weaver]

It's working at detracting pirates, but that doesn't mean:
1) Any of the pirates are buying the game.
2) People who bought the game aren't having issues with the DRM.
3) People who would have bought it without this DRM are going to buy it.

You sure the pirates aren't going to buy it? Because I'm no so sure.

Well SURELY someone who would have pirated it is going to buy it. But conversely, I was going to buy the game but now I'm not going to because my internet flakes out all the time. It's a two way street here.

Also, you need to understand the world of the hardcore pirates. I know a lot of people from Eastern Europe and Russia. The culture there is "If you can get it for free, why pay for it?" This is how they think, this is how their market is shaped. Hell I know a guy who wanted to support Crytek and bought Crysis because he liked them so much and all his friends made fun of him for it. If the pirates there can't pirate a game the odds of them bothering to pay for it is pretty much 0, they'll just find some other game to pirate.

I see where you're coming from.
Although its a huge generalisation on Russia and Eastern Europe, not all pirates are from that part of the world. You may be correct though.

Still, then if your argument is true, do you think that companies if they see that pirates ignore a game and that pirates copies does not equal lost sales (even marginally), that the companies will retract the DRM even if it works?

This is similar to the Sins of a Solar empire, argument where they had no DRM, but the game still sold.

I think this is how I feel, but it's just such a huge, gigantic issue. I really wish companies could make a game without DRM and still not have it pirated, but we both know that's not how it works.

We'd really need some good data on how many buy a game when unable to pirate, and how many pirate a game when able to buy. This is pretty hard to measure though. There are people who pirate with no intention or even prior interest in the game. They're just doing it because they can. Then there's the fans who've already probably pre-ordered it but see it early on a pirate network and get it early, feeling justified that they've theoretically already paied for it. Then, finally, there's people who pirate the game and like it so much they buy it to support the devs. Hell, if the game doesn't have a demo people are going to pirate it just to see if it runs on thier PCs properly. Since, as PC gamers we don't get to return or resell our games.

So I feel it's foolish for a company to assume all pirated copies = lost sales, because I really don't think that's true. Hell, 20% the pirated copies could have been people who've preordered the game (a completely made up number, just saying).

Anyways, I haven't really answered your question. I feel that Stardock has the right philosophy, but it's been biting them in the ass as well. Their games sell well (I've actually bought all of them just to support them) but they're also pretty heavily pirated which is a real ***** because they're one of the good guys as it were. There's more than one reason to this as well: DRM is expensive and a real, real pain in the ass to develop with.

Looking at Ubisoft's DRM for instance, they have to run the servers, pay for bandwidth, electricity, employees to maintain and deal with problems with them... the whole shabang here. That can't be cheap. From a development standpoint, having the game phone home to receive certain packets from Ubisoft's servers is a real pain as well. Someone had to, by hand, put these special checks in certain parts of the game. This is on top of the regular checks for connection.

What's more, having the game checking for a connection which is probably done on another thread (I'm a programmer by profession BTW), while maybe not extremely computationally expensive, is STILL work your PC has to do that it doesn't need to. The game would theoretically run better without the DRM in it. So in my eyes, the devs don't like it, the consumers don't like it and the pirates don't have to deal with it. If the pirates can't pirate it, I'm not all that sure they're going to buy it, but this gets back to the original question of "how do we know that they won't buy it?" I guess we can't

 

[Agayek]

What's more, having the game checking for a connection which is probably done on another thread (I'm a programmer by profession BTW), while maybe not extremely computationally expensive, is STILL work your PC has to do that it doesn't need to. The game would theoretically run better without the DRM in it. So in my eyes, the devs don't like it, the consumers don't like it and the pirates don't have to deal with it. If the pirates can't pirate it, I'm not all that sure they're going to buy it, but this gets back to the original question of "how do we know that they won't buy it?" I guess we can't

Except that the pirates can still pirate it. All it would take is a group of people running playing through a legit copy of the game, and they can extract the packets needed to play the game. Which they can then use to build a client-side server that serves the packets to the game. The DRM might prevent piracy for a couple months at best, and it's still a colossal pain in the ass.

The bottomline is that it is quite literally impossible to create DRM that outright prevents piracy, so publisher should really be focusing on ways to entice people to not pirate, instead of encouraging people to not buy.

 

[TheTygerfire]

Is anyone buying it at all should be the question after hearing this.

 

[Sneaklemming]

What's more, having the game checking for a connection which is probably done on another thread (I'm a programmer by profession BTW), while maybe not extremely computationally expensive, is STILL work your PC has to do that it doesn't need to. The game would theoretically run better without the DRM in it. So in my eyes, the devs don't like it, the consumers don't like it and the pirates don't have to deal with it. If the pirates can't pirate it, I'm not all that sure they're going to buy it, but this gets back to the original question of "how do we know that they won't buy it?" I guess we can't

Except that the pirates can still pirate it. All it would take is a group of people running playing through a legit copy of the game, and they can extract the packets needed to play the game. Which they can then use to build a client-side server that serves the packets to the game. The DRM might prevent piracy for a couple months at best, and it's still a colossal pain in the ass.

The bottomline is that it is quite literally impossible to create DRM that outright prevents piracy, so publisher should really be focusing on ways to entice people to not pirate, instead of encouraging people to not buy.

I would argue that a couple of months is enough for a game to get 90% of its sales. They must be doing a cost analysis on this, I mean, they must know they'll get a return on A) alienating gamers, and B) the overhead and development cost of DRM

 

[Weaver]

What's more, having the game checking for a connection which is probably done on another thread (I'm a programmer by profession BTW), while maybe not extremely computationally expensive, is STILL work your PC has to do that it doesn't need to. The game would theoretically run better without the DRM in it. So in my eyes, the devs don't like it, the consumers don't like it and the pirates don't have to deal with it. If the pirates can't pirate it, I'm not all that sure they're going to buy it, but this gets back to the original question of "how do we know that they won't buy it?" I guess we can't

Except that the pirates can still pirate it. All it would take is a group of people running playing through a legit copy of the game, and they can extract the packets needed to play the game. Which they can then use to build a client-side server that serves the packets to the game. The DRM might prevent piracy for a couple months at best, and it's still a colossal pain in the ass.

The bottomline is that it is quite literally impossible to create DRM that outright prevents piracy, so publisher should really be focusing on ways to entice people to not pirate, instead of encouraging people to not buy.

That is probably the idea solution. Give people a reason to buy your game by offering them a superior product. And yes, one could construct a private server and I'd imagine one is in the works right now. All you would really need is a man in the middle app to monitor (and record) what packets are being sent to and from the ubi servers.

Though, if ubi is smart they would use SSH encryption, or even simply use a hash and return a value based on that (or both). This way you couldn't just blindly copy the packets. I guess the real issue with the hash is it's more computationally expensive than SSH alone.

 

[Agayek]

You could offer a perfect game, a game that is literally so perfect that no one would have anything to complain about. And people would still pirate it. Gamers are egotistical, entitled brats who feel they deserve everything free. Just look at any topic about DLC, no matter how good the game is or what reasons a developer gives people will still swarm to pirate it and give flimsy excuses. I support DRM even if it does hurt the consumer. It's stupid as hell but fuck, maybe if people took their heads out of their asses then we wouldn't have needed DRM in the first place.

I support DRM, provided it isn't invasive, intrusive and extremely aggravating to use in order to play the game.

I'm not trying to say that DRM shouldn't exist, because it does need to, but it should be more like Steam instead of Ubi. Steam is DRM done right, in my opinion. It offers a lot of useful features and whatnot that simply aren't available or are less convenient without, while still serving to protect the copyright of the games it supports.

Ubi's DRM just treats every customer like a criminal and makes it nigh impossible for those with weak connections to play a game. It's ridiculous.

 

[Sneaklemming]

srry it WAS cracked smarty! ill post a link but escapist admin mite get made and punish me! so if its gone later NOT MY FAULT

.

cracks are right there!

F'raid to tell you all the cracks are reportedly malware or viruses.