Ubisoft DRM Targets Hardware Upgrades?

[jdftheman]

Quick question that maybe someone here can or can't answer, but what if you buy the game on steam? If you have a game connected to your steam account, can't you download (and install) it virtually endlessly, or does this apply to the steam version of the game as well?

[Blodo]

This is hardly new. I remember some older games who used a "limited install" option (I think Spore was one of the more prominent, also Earth 2160), and they generally bound themselves to a "digital hash" of whatever internal IDs your hardware has to "prevent piracy". As far as I remember there was a lot of people who simply used cracks for these games after buying them.

Install limits are silly. Stuff like that only ends up encouraging people to crack the exe, or pirate the game even seeing as if you're pirating you actually get less hassle than if you buy the game. But then again Ubisoft has the "MPAA syndrome", aka it's stuck in the past and has no idea how to make use of the internet to boost their sales instead of wasting money on DRM systems that don't protect jack squat anyway.

[FraserTE]

i was actually about to say if its based off your hardware id People who raid some hard drives there HWID will change daily.

Secondly

this will lead to people just pirating there games instead of buying it. The people who crack the games get around things like that and you can install it as many times as you want.

thirdly

What was the last decent game ubisoft released?

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-Zuke

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In an insane world.

[ophidian]

Assa Creed 2 was the last good one.

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[Agmen of Eladesor]

I'm not going to say that I agree with the comments here about how stupid this is - just in case Ubisoft tracks and google searches down comments like this.

:)

I'm one of those people that when my original Freelancer disk bit the dust (or in my case, it fell on the floor and I stepped on it and broke it) I did end up buying a replacement disk. But that's because it was my own damn fault.

Three frigging hardware changes and the game won't run anymore? That's a joke - surely there would be a registry entry that could easily track that the main install wasn't changed.

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Oh god... The end of days... Agmen agreed with me.

[crimecities]

Quick question that maybe someone here can or can't answer, but what if you buy the game on steam? If you have a game connected to your steam account, can't you download (and install) it virtually endlessly, or does this apply to the steam version of the game as well?

If you look at the page of any given game on Steam, it will tell you if it uses 3'rd party DRM or not.

The gaming industry is in the exact same position that the music industry was in a decade ago. Companies need to get it through their heads that piracy is a service problem. Don't want your game to be pirated? Provide a better service then the pirates.

Just ask Valve. They consider piracy-prone Russia to be their second biggest Continental European market (UK is their biggest). They did it by offering services that they pirates don't.

[Anomander]

http://i1.kwejk.pl/site_media/obrazki/1268...-vs-pirates.gif

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<<< MuS|portfolio|RSF >>>

[ivr56]

Quick question that maybe someone here can or can't answer, but what if you buy the game on steam? If you have a game connected to your steam account, can't you download (and install) it virtually endlessly, or does this apply to the steam version of the game as well?

You can download it as many times as you want on Steam and install as many times as you want like any other game.

But You will not actually get to actually play it since you go though Ubisoft DRM launcher first which tracks the installs per uplay account.

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[Canadianguy]

They have to understand that to counter piracy, DRM is totally useless.

At best the game will not be available in a pirated version until 1 week after release.

The best way to counter piracy is by making the legit way simpler and more convenient than the non-legit way.

That's why steam is making loads of money even though piracy is supposed to be a massive problem on the PC (The reason why PC games are becoming harder to find in retail stores)

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[ivr56]

Some good news for Anno 2070 users.

Dev got the DRM fixed and the whole GPU switching thing was removed. And If you do go over 3 Ubisoft will restart the count to grant you 3 more once you email them.

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