Disclaimer: I suspect this thread is likely going to be hot and flamy perhaps.
Anyway, the subject of the thread is essentially the new DRM that both Ubisoft (called Ubisoft Cloud) pushes to PC port of Assassin's Creed 2, Settlers 7 (PC exclusive) and new game in Splinter Cell series, also EA doing it with Command & Conquer 4 (also PC exclusive). What makes both them the same is that to play a single-player game both force to be online for all the time. A lag, a network hiccup results in stopping immediately game until connection is restored giving you a short time to reconnect. If it fails it seems there'll be no autosave or anything at all - next time you'll be brought to the last checkpoint or last savegame you made.
On the other side of the camp there is Stardock with their DRM-less games, as well as indie titles that try not to alienate their niche audience where putting draconian DRM will backfire very badly for developers.
In the middle ground there is Steam which require checking one time on launch only, not while playing, plus there is "offline" mode.
Personally I think what is coming isn't the worst yet imaginable. Actually in case of AC2 I expect there'll be massive DDoS attack on DRM servers straight after release. As a result legitimate customers will not even be able to play the single player game they bought. Operating MMO-like (even if traffic is lower than say in regular MMOs) servers system for a single player sounds like an impractical idea to me. One game, two, may be three games... Perhaps. But say a dozen games? I begin to wonder about scalability of the whole thing. If it's one system serving all of them then it become achilles feet - take it down and all games become unplayable at all. I'm just trying to think it about it from realistic standpoint as to where it goes and how much damage this is going to make.
I as a gamer and a customer think it is an impertinence to tell me that I have to stay online while playing a singleplayer game.
I want to play these games on my laptop during a train-trip, while sitting in the bus or even at home in my living room. Places where I can not be online. I don't need to be online for a singleplayer game god damn it!
I pay 40 to 50Euro and then I get this? In most cases the game is even utterly crap. Excuse my french here.
This really upsets me. All the crackers will find a way around it as usual, it may only take a little longer.
Who suffers? Yes of course. The legal customer, as always.
I am sure Ubisoft will hand in patches which deactivate the online thingy after half a year, but until then it is a imertinence to all customers.
It will be a barrel burst, as other game companies have tried this.
And on another note, I am not really sure how this whole things work on the legal side, at least over here in Austria. Since if you buy the game, the copy is yours. You can do with it what you want. If it suddenly does not work because their servers are offline most the time, you should be able to give it back, since you payed for a service and hardly ever recieved it. Will be an awesome story to watch.
I will most likely test the new DRM stuff with the upcoming Silent Hunter 5. If Ubisoft isn't able to uphold their servers, I'll simply hand the game back and claim my 50Euro.
Actually, I dug a little more on this nasty thing. Here are two most peculiar points worth attention:
A) They have a nice closure there saying: "UBISOFT MAY CANCEL ACCESS TO ONLINE FEATURES UPON A 30-DAY PRIOR NOTICE".
In other words banning your Ubisoft account and preventing you from playing a single-player game. Cute, huh?
B) As to patching and removing that thing they are not obliged to do it at all. You're at their mercy and they may as well just tell you anything they want, if you followed the link provided there was a linky to PC gamer FAQ regarding it. They have avoided answering it.
As for the price, well AC2 is priced $60. For a four month old port from consoles with that lovely DRM.
Me, being in the financial situation in which I am right now, can look at the situation from both sides. As a legal costumer I am pissed. More and more restrictions that take away from the experience that I payed a lot of money for. As an internet buccaneer, I really don't give a damn. Someone will find a way to bypass the safety. How many days until someone cracks that DRM? My guess is one week, two tops. It almost makes me want to pirate more. Why should I be paying while getting royally screwed over again and again? Especially single player games...
PS: On the whole needing to be connected to the internet thing. It doesn't bother me. I don't have a laptop.
this is really just sort ot getting out of hand...I mean, what if your router dies...or what about people who do not have access to the internet on their PCs?
on a side note: Twice have I gotten special editions of Xbox360 games that come with a ton of bonus features....only to have to download them from XBL....which I do not have web access to my 360 either, so spending that extra cash was just a rip off, and it does not even say you need XBL to get the bonus stuff
' Wrote:Actually, this kind of reminds me of the DRM issue that killed SPORE.
I wonder how that class-action lawsuit went. IIRC that DRM sunk its hooks so far into the OS some people had to re-install their OS to get rid of it.
Fun fact about Spore: I bought the game, used up the installations after a couple of years and saw myself forced to pirate the game to be able to play it. Oh, joy.
Well, no matter what they do, games will be hacked and be able to download. The big companies are idiots and total fools.
They make a game, every 1 in a 100 becomes a nice one, and they ruin it with their collaring policies.
Even for official games, I find cracks that prevent it from going online UNLESS I want it to do so.
Next time, I plan on taking a photo of a literally offending part of my body and adding it within the game directory to see if they can see that too while the are constantly willing to be connected to me. Lets see which parts we can connect to each other.
EA lost bazillions of money again and its CEO will be fired this year most probably. Its that stupid EA who starts this stupid things. Ubisoft is always eager to follow EA in such epic fail decisions.
Stardock -> Even if they were not using copy protection and saying that its OK to download their games, even if I coulnd't find it anywhere, I tried and found a copy over a retailer in Hong Kong. For an Ubisoft game, I would never ever do that and I am a customer who buys the game from retailers.
Oh, and so far all 3 of my Online experiences with EA ended up me calling their customer line and educating the responding guy in public speech performance flavored with slang language and aggressive usage.
Their original copies fail to login to their fail online systems.
They are following the same exact, EXACT stupidity music labels did in 90's. Well, they will all go bankrupt in the end because they are fooling around with useless ideas.
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