Craigs Posted February 19, 2010 http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=235290&site=pcg Thanks Ubisoft. Thanks. I bet you all wish you could have come up with such a clever and fool proof way of countering pirating. 0 Share this post Link to post
Maes Posted February 19, 2010 If their target group is the same people to whom "radio" means listening to "podcasts" via an iPod's wifi and considering USB-based chargers a good, ubiquitous thing, then I don't see a problem. For the rest of the ass-back... err... pleb... err... paup... err I mean users, we'll eventually learn to embrace this new [sic] technology [sic] meant to protect and enhance [sic] the final user experience. 0 Share this post Link to post
kristus Posted February 19, 2010 If they hate the PC users so much, why do they even bother making games for the platform? 0 Share this post Link to post
Maes Posted February 19, 2010 kristus said:If they hate the PC users so much, why do they even bother making games for the platform? Probably only because it's easier than ever to port stuff between platforms thanks to advances in gaming SDKs (in other times it would be a major undertaking/complete rewrite in each platform's assembly language), so they just port the stuff over by changing a cross-compiling SDK's flags, and play that card too for little added cost. 0 Share this post Link to post
Khorus Posted February 19, 2010 Maes said:so they just port the stuff over by changing a cross-compiling SDK's flags ..and add a healthy serving of DRM. 0 Share this post Link to post
Maes Posted February 19, 2010 Khorus said:..and add a healthy serving of DRM. Just to keep themselves -and the consumers- reminded of why certain video game creators eventually move/have moved to gaming consoles, at least those who can. 0 Share this post Link to post
kristus Posted February 19, 2010 Alienating your customers isn't gonna make them switch to consoles to play your stupid games. They'll hate you for it and do everything in their power to rip it from you. So there's no good reason to make a PC version just to DRM the shit out of it and make your customers hate you as much as you hate them. 0 Share this post Link to post
geekmarine Posted February 19, 2010 If past DRM has taught me anything, pirates will have it cracked within a week and the only people who will be affected in the slightest will be paying customers. 0 Share this post Link to post
GreyGhost Posted February 19, 2010 Whenever I wonder if copy protection systems can become any more retarded - something like this comes along. :D 0 Share this post Link to post
Maes Posted February 19, 2010 kristus said:So there's no good reason to make a PC version just to DRM the shit out of it and make your customers hate you as much as you hate them. Usually the decision to include copy protection/DRM is added as an afterthought, usually at the request of the publisher, if we're talking about a "publess" developer. There are even cases where this was removed in later patches (e.g. Warlords Games) by the developers themselves. In the case of a big name like Ubi Soft, the decision is often taken at hierarchy levels well above mere code monkeys and beta testers -top managers, CEOs, publishing department, "marketing consultants" etc. or it's simply a black on white company policy that all published PC titles they release MUST have copy protection. 0 Share this post Link to post
kristus Posted February 19, 2010 As is the decision to which platforms to support. 0 Share this post Link to post
Maes Posted February 19, 2010 Which is turn is made a no-brainer by the fact that porting is now -relatively- easy compared to the past. Compare e.g. porting Doom or Quake 3 or even Halo to porting Outrun back in 1986-1987: in Doom (and much largely, Quake 3 and Halo) you can use the codebase as is, there are no unsurmountable hardware differences to overcome, and for the most part you won't even have to get dirty with assembly. With OutRun on the other hand, they had to accomodate an arcade game running on a custom multi-CPU 32/16 bit hardware (twin 68000, FTW!) with ROM space to spare, to anything ranging from an Amiga with floppies to a ZX Spectrum loading from tape. So yeah, the big heads give the "go ahead" since it's so easy by now, and add DRM because hey, after all it's the PC scene where everybody warezes shit, right? For a little extra effort they can rip off a few poor bastards cash some extra buck, so why not do it? They don't care about my or your hippie DRM-free ideologies. 0 Share this post Link to post
Patrick Posted February 19, 2010 This thread has inspired me to go smash an XBox 360. Seriously, I was actually considering buying this game. I refuse to buy anything from Ubisoft. 0 Share this post Link to post
kristus Posted February 19, 2010 Maes said:They don't care about my or your hippie DRM-free ideologies. No. But they obviously also doesn't care about returning customers. Or the fact that DRM is making it more likely that their games will be warezed than without it. 0 Share this post Link to post
Maes Posted February 19, 2010 kristus said:Or the fact that DRM is making it more likely that their games will be warezed than without it. *shrug* I thought that DRM-free stuff gets warezed more easily, from a technical standpoint. From an ethical one, I dunno. In any case, I presume they have hired enough bean-counters to do the maths of whether it pays or not, and it seems most big-name companies are not letting DRM/copy protection any soon. Then again, Sony thought that their rootkit was a good thing... 0 Share this post Link to post
GreyGhost Posted February 19, 2010 There's no challenge in warezing DRM-free software, you might as well be torrenting stuff from SourceForge. ;-) The major publishers are either too dumb to realize that their copy protection measures are part of the problem or - having factored the cost of piracy into their product pricing - they're competing with each other to see who can develop and deploy the most god-awful, guaranteed-to-piss-of-customers DRM system. Either way it doesn't affect me, the few new games I've bought in the last several years have been from indie developers. 0 Share this post Link to post
Gez Posted February 19, 2010 I would say this made me decide not to buy that game, but I already had absolutely no intention of ever playing it anyway. 0 Share this post Link to post
Mr. Freeze Posted February 19, 2010 Fuck you twice, Ubisoft. Once for ruining Tom Clancy's games, and now this stupid shit happens. 0 Share this post Link to post
kristus Posted February 19, 2010 DRM is one of the first things I look at before buying a new game. 0 Share this post Link to post
Mr. Freeze Posted February 19, 2010 kristus said:DRM is one of the first things I look at before buying a new game. I pirated Spore out of spite. And I almost NEVER pirate games. 0 Share this post Link to post
Patrick Posted February 19, 2010 Locks only keep out law-abiding citizens. 0 Share this post Link to post
PhilibusMo Posted February 19, 2010 That decides it, I am buying it for PS3 not PC. 0 Share this post Link to post
Snarboo Posted February 19, 2010 zap610 said:Is this even a multiplayer game? I know for a fact that Assassin's Creed 2 is singeplayer only. I believe Settlers 7 might be too, so yeah, it's pretty stupid. 0 Share this post Link to post
eargosedown Posted February 19, 2010 It's still gonna get pirated. They know that, right? lol 0 Share this post Link to post
dew Posted February 19, 2010 my matlab (under university license) worked like this. finding a crack was easy so it will be even easier for a popular game. 0 Share this post Link to post