Ubisoft finally ditches always on DRM

[Arceles]

I downloaded in the uplay campaign HAWX2, and Driver 3... for 1 dollar, that was a good start but I still don't know.

[remixedcat]

My question is: Do you think piracy cost them a measurable amount of sales?

My follow-up would be, do you think their anti-piracy methods cost them more sales than they gained through converting would be pirates.

And my last question is, is the goal of copy protection about increasing sales or keeping non-payers from playing?

I think they should show us some data. Also the main reason people stay away from DRM is they are worried about security and system stability. some DRM like Origin, etc, introduces back-doors into your system and they run at ring0, thus having super-permission sets that take over your system. Hackers can easily gain access and have full control over your system. DRM mechanisms like that should never be used.

Some DRM has even blocked legit use of optical drives, backup/security software, and even hypervisor software. I had one case where a game that had starforce DRM prevented vmware workstation from running! Same with another DRM system. It completely disabled vmware and it was a mess getting it back up and running. I had to reformat.

[giantpotato]

My question is: Do you think piracy cost them a measurable amount of sales?

My follow-up would be, do you think their anti-piracy methods cost them more sales than they gained through converting would be pirates.

And my last question is, is the goal of copy protection about increasing sales or keeping non-payers from playing?

That depends on your definition of measurable. To me, even 1 lost sale is 'measurable'. If it was not possible to pirate I can guarantee some pirates would buy games if there was no alternative. Assuming there was some form of uncrackable DRM, pirates would not just pack up their bags and quit gaming.

The problem is all current DRM gets cracked, so it's pretty much pointless. Ubisoft tried their best and in the end their DRM didn't prevent piracy, so now they're scaling it back. In its current state, I don't think having/not having DRM makes any major difference in sales. Games with No DRM get pirated, as do games with DRM.

IMO the goal of copy-protection is both to stop people who haven't paid from playing, and to increase sales, but current DRM doesn't work to accomplish those goals. I would be interested in seeing uncrackable DRM, just to see how it would affect sales. I have no problem with DRM, as long as I can play the game without any trouble, and so far I haven't run into any DRM that has prevented me from playing a game I bought, maybe I've just been lucky.

To say piracy doesn't affect sales at all is just being na?ve. To use your example of Galactic Civilizations II, it was released 6 years ago and right now there are at least 100 people seeding torrents of it. It is a six year old game, I'm guessing its' popularity is waning, yet after all this time there are still copies being pirated. There must have been thousands, if not millions of copies pirated in the last six years. Now, how many of those copies can translate to lost sales, I can't say.

[Xilo]

My question is: Do you think piracy cost them a measurable amount of sales?

My follow-up would be, do you think their anti-piracy methods cost them more sales than they gained through converting would be pirates.

And my last question is, is the goal of copy protection about increasing sales or keeping non-payers from playing?

I would say no. Most people who pirate generally had no intention of buying (except for in the case of the following question). Oftentimes too, people who pirated just wanted a demo due to the lack thereof and end up buying it if they actually liked it.

Yes. I've seen many many people say they will never buy a Ubisoft PC game due to their horrible DRM. It's much easier to pirate and not deal with it.

Copy protection has nothing to do with increasing sales. It's all about keeping people that didn't pay from using it.

[Frogboy Administrators]

I think they should show us some data. Also the main reason people stay away from DRM is they are worried about security and system stability. some DRM like Origin, etc, introduces back-doors into your system and they run at ring0, thus having super-permission sets that take over your system. Hackers can easily gain access and have full control over your system. DRM mechanisms like that should never be used.

Some DRM has even blocked legit use of optical drives, backup/security software, and even hypervisor software. I had one case where a game that had starforce DRM prevented vmware workstation from running! Same with another DRM system. It completely disabled vmware and it was a mess getting it back up and running. I had to reformat.

I hope you don't mind but I'm going to keep a quote of this. It is one of the best, most succinct responses I've seen on the DRM topic yet.

[remixedcat]

I hope you don't mind but I'm going to keep a quote of this. It is one of the best, most succinct responses I've seen on the DRM topic yet.

Oh wow thanks ;)

[Ryoken]

Always On DRM was one of the things that would be an instant no-purchase for me. Ever.

I don't care how good the game, if I can't play it when the net is out, while travelling, etc, then I have no need for it.

I dislike DRM in general, but if it must be there, I want it out of my face.. One of the reasons I love Steam, it's there, but you never really see it.

[Reacon]

I wrote an essay to the CEO on why DRM is bloody frustrating only for those who buy it. I guess our voices were finally heard.

To Ubisoft:

[spaceelf]

I wonder if any people buy the console version of a game and feel entitled to the PC version, since it's the same game and they certainly aren't going to buy it twice.

[farmeunit]

I wonder if Ubi trully understands just how much they've alienated so many of their customers. And just how many will never have anything to do with them ever again. :glare:

I've already vowed to never buy another game from them.

[spaceelf]

I think they should show us some data. Also the main reason people stay away from DRM is they are worried about security and system stability. some DRM like Origin, etc, introduces back-doors into your system and they run at ring0, thus having super-permission sets that take over your system. Hackers can easily gain access and have full control over your system. DRM mechanisms like that should never be used.

Origin is not DRM. There is no DRM included. No drivers or services are installed by it.

[Reacon]

Origin is not DRM. There is no DRM included. No drivers or services are installed by it.

You're right, Origin is definitely not used as copy protection. You can launch all of its games completely segregate from the client. 100%.

[giantpotato]

I think they should show us some data. Also the main reason people stay away from DRM is they are worried about security and system stability. some DRM like Origin, etc, introduces back-doors into your system and they run at ring0, thus having super-permission sets that take over your system. Hackers can easily gain access and have full control over your system. DRM mechanisms like that should never be used.

Do you do the writing for CSI? because this sounds like the kind of technobabble nonsense they would use.

"Ok, let's install the Origin back-door, make sure to run it at ring0 to get the super-permission to take over the system. While you're doing that I'll create a GUI in Visual Basic to track the IP."

[spaceelf]

You're right, Origin is definitely not used as copy protection. You can launch all of its games completely segregate from the client. 100%.

I assume sarcasm in there.

Having common functionality that said games require does not make it copy protection.

Should we call Windows copy protection since many games require Windows to launch? Or would that just be silly? ;)

[spaceelf]

Do you do the writing for CSI? because this sounds like the kind of technobabble nonsense they would use.

"Ok, let's install the Origin back-door, make sure to run it at ring0 to get the super-permission to take over the system. While you're doing that I'll create a GUI in Visual Basic to track the IP."

It used to be a far more common belief. Starforce gained a lot of distrust over the whole thing. Myself I don't know how accurate the claims were, I didn't like Starforce for a lot of other reasons. (Game stability and x64 issues and such.)

[remixedcat]

Another thing bad about EA DRM and thier policies.... let's say you get banned on their forums.... you get banned from all your 'offline' single player games... they may have thrown it out, however it was still bad... and if it still goes on than that's still wrong.

[HawkMan]

My question is: Do you think piracy cost them a measurable amount of sales?

My follow-up would be, do you think their anti-piracy methods cost them more sales than they gained through converting would be pirates.

And my last question is, is the goal of copy protection about increasing sales or keeping non-payers from playing?

In the Witcher case, yes. While a lot of people would'nt hav bought the game, I think we can safely assume 2 out of those 4.5 million would have bought it, at the very least 1, which would have doubled or tripled their sales.

As for the follow up. Since the Witcher didn't come with any DRM I'd say none at all. One of their distributors put drm on their release, and the dev released patch that removed it.

As for the goal of DRM, it's not really about either, yet both. The primary purpose of the game is to make it through the first 1-2 weeks without piracy. Experience from the past and from DRMs that have survived the first few weeks have shown that if you can prevent piracy in the first couple of weeks you will have significantly higher sales.

People can claim they pirate just to "demo" all they want, and while some do(they should just use the demo or just boycott instead) at least half the pirates pirate because they just don't want to pay, even cheap games. As you hit the younger generation this percentage goes a lot higher.

[HawkMan]

It used to be a far more common belief. Starforce gained a lot of distrust over the whole thing. Myself I don't know how accurate the claims were, I didn't like Starforce for a lot of other reasons. (Game stability and x64 issues and such.)

Starforce gained a lot of hate for one reason. It actually worked. It was really hard to crack games, cracks usually didn't get released untill long after the game was released, and/or required you to unplug you DVD drives.

All the claims that starforce broke drives came exclusively from pirates who where annoyed it worked. When starforce asked for proof and asked people to send in their broken drives for compensation, for some reason no one did...

That said, no I didn't like starforce, both for their deep integration not the OS thugh it didn't have any effect outside of preventing pirated games, and because I was young at the time ;)

Another thing bad about EA DRM and thier policies.... let's say you get banned on their forums.... you get banned from all your 'offline' single player games... they may have thrown it out, however it was still bad... and if it still goes on than that's still wrong.

Don't be an ass ;)

Though I agree it shouldn't affect offline games, though as far as I remember this isn't 100% true. It affected BF3, which didn't really have an offline mode, which is why it affected it since it was always online even when you played alone.

[remixedcat]

reddit and other sites were totally lit up with that mess.... just about any gaming forum was as well... I couldn't visit a tech site without seeing it for months....

[HawkMan]

yes, of course, gamers are a self entitled bunch of brats, so if one guy claims he was banned for being a a-hole. then 20 more while claim they where to and 5000 while go to a forum and post how unfair it is.

it's quite funny to watch when it happens. it's like a cascade explosion of 14 year old whines across the Internet :)

[remixedcat]

he quoted something another user said about sex that was very light and he got banned.... that was just one example.... many others banned for not even being closely remotely an ass....

[HawkMan]

he quoted something another user said about sex that was very light and he got banned.... that was just one example.... many others banned for not even being closely remotely an ass....

and the rules on EA says what about taking about sex ?

And how do you know he got banned. because he said it ?

Reminds me of the kid on the SWTOR forums who made a big ass whine thread about how he got banned for being an ass in game. and didn't think it was fair. Then one of the GMs came in the thread and kindly informed him and everyone else that he in fact had not been banned for that offense, in fact he wasn't banned at all. though now that he made them aware, he would get a ban for inciting a fglame war, lying about being banned and thus putting SWTOR in a bad light and for several other offenses they found after they looked closer at his account (he had been abusing GM's or some such).

[remixedcat]

it was about a obviously big boobed NPC .... and the joke was very mild... I got a screen shot on the old HDD of the whole thread before it got deleted.

Your game characters can swear like sailors, and everyone plays the game... yet you say the same on the forums and you get banned and loose access to your single player games.

If EA doesn't want us to talk about the sexual related stuff in the games THEY SHOULDN'T PUT IT IN THE GAMES!!!! so we won't have that kinda thing to talk about!!!!

[HawkMan]

the game has a rating, the forums are for everyone. and EA is a big company with customers and users from age 5 and up.

again, it's easy, follow the rules of the forum and be polite. and you want to throw dirty jokes then official forums of a big corporate entity is probably not the best palace to be.

[Frogboy Administrators]

Actually, star force did break games. We had first hand experience with that. The original Plotical Machine was published by UbiSoft and used Strarforce. I had friends and family who bought it but couldn't play it because their computer had various flagged software installed like CD rippers.

Meanwhile the game itself was cracked the day it was released and on Usenet binary groups and torrents. So only paying customers had to put up with it.

I'm not anti DRM as much as I'm anti-dumb DRM.