Ubisoft Launches Anti-Piracy Countermeasures

[rditto48801]

Looks like Gabe Newell of Vavle makes statements about software piracy that indicate companies like Ubisoft are going in the entirely wrong direction with their DRM.



He makes mention that piracy can be caused by bad service.
He goes as far as to say that copy protection possibly increases rather than decreases the piracy of games.
He also says how focusing on the customers and doing useful things for the customer can make piracy a 'non-issue' for game companies (or at least referring to Valve).

The part on piracy goes from around 3m 30s to 7m 11s.
The part after that brings up interesting points about funding and of possible new angles for game companies to get funding.
The beginning seems to talk about how they make good games, of how companies shouldn't just copy games that work, but to take what worked of good games and use those elements to make new games.

EA apparently learned their lesson after their authentication servers for Spore died early on from heavy load, (mind you, for activations only) making many people unable to even activate the game within the first week of its release, so I hope Ubisoft learns of the error of their ways also...

Another angle I thought of with Ubisoft's new DRM
Think about this.
Many MMOs seem to require a subscription fee per month or some other income source to support their servers and whatnot.
Games like Silent Hunter 5 and Assassins Creed 2 are going to need a lot of server power if there is a constant connection, yet there is only a one time price for each game.
Between many poor ratings (DRM and also for Silent Hunter 5 being possibly incomplete), and people wanting refunds, it seems like Ubisoft could loose a lot of money as word of mouth and bad ratings kills of sales of Silent Hunter 5, and as DRM issues further hamper sales of Silent Hunter 5 and Assassins Creed 2, all the while the people who did buy it are likely to be playing them a lot, meaning a lot of server power getting eaten up, meaning lots of maintenance, needing to possiblt expand their servers, etc.
This seems to me like the money not lost to piracy is going to be gobbled up, and then some within a year, by the measures they are using to limit piracy, mainly their servers.

Also, it seems pirates have bypassed/worked around the part of the DRM in Silent Hunter 5 that prevent some parts of the game from 'updating' properly (something to do with missions not working right if not connected to the Ubisoft servers).
That means that not only are those with pirated copies of Silent Hunter 5 not hampered by the DRM, but that they can possibly play the game without trouble, even as Ubisoft's servers gag or crash due to server load or supposed DDoS attacks, which basically means no server contact and no game playing for legitimate owners.
So, not even out a week and pirates may have dealt another blow to the new Ubisoft DRM in Silent Hunter 5.

[BlindNero]

This forum has a youtube button for embedding a video, rditto. I hope you don't mind i edited your post for you.

Good interview, and he's spot on!

[rditto48801]

This forum has a youtube button for embedding a video, rditto. I hope you don't mind i edited your post for you.

Good interview, and he's spot on!

I guess I never really noticed the youtube embedding option myself. I don't mind the edit.

After I ran across it on the Subsim forums, it seemed like a good video to post a link to here.

So, it looks like 2 big companies are getting stupid with DRM (EA and Ubisoft and their 'always online' stuff), and now 2 big companies that know better (2K Games and Valve).

In the video, I liked how Gabe Newell said he approached things with the same views as a fan would look at things.
I also like that of their top 10 problems, piracy is rarely one of them.
That right there counters how Ubisoft seems to think they need to use harder DRM to protect their income.

One thing I ran across, the only DRM that really worked was one version of StarForce on a Splinter Cell game, which lasted some 400+ days before it was cracked.
Probably had pirates to busy getting their computers to run long enough to crack it...
Although my PC has a StarForce countermeasure, an actual reset button, handy for when I forget to put in the disk or some such thing and the damned thing decides to lock up my PC...

[BlindNero]

Tthe PC version of Assassin's Creed 2 is now available via Steam, Valve announced.

Here
steampowered

Well... at least that's something.

[rditto48801]

Tthe PC version of Assassin's Creed 2 is now available via Steam, Valve announced.

Here
steampowered

Well... at least that's something.

It makes me wonder if it will work in an offline mode due to Steam, or if it is still going to be needed to be tethered to the Ubisoft servers anyways, despite Steam.

Edit.
Um.. yep, they still require that, and then some.
From the Assassins Creed 2 description on Steam.

A PERMANENT HIGH SPEED INTERNET CONNECTION AND CREATION OF A UBISOFT ACCOUNT ARE REQUIRED TO PLAY THIS VIDEO GAME AT ALL TIMES AND TO UNLOCK EXCLUSIVE CONTENT. SUCH CONTENT MAY ONLY BE UNLOCKED ONE SINGLE TIME WITH A UNIQUE KEY.

[BlindNero]

Wtf?! I understood it as YES you can play in offline mode like all Steam games. I had not looked further.
So it's not then? ....