Apparently, Ubisoft is going to keep all the authentication servers for all their (new) games open, forever and ever and ever.
If, for some silly reason, they can't, they're going to patch the DRM out. For realsies.

Yeah, I have a hard time believing that myself, but... well. Benefit of the doubt, I suppose.

I can't give them the benefit of a doubt on it. They would have no motivation to patch a 10 year old game that uses this DRM if they shut down the server permanently. Or if they go bankrupt for some reason, or are even bought out by another company.

This kind of reminds me of my response when the Xbox Live Classic servers were taken down and everyone mourned Halo 2's imminent demise. There have been tons of games with online multiplayer that have been taken down, IE, Metal Gear Solid 2/3 online games, and people barely batted an eyelash.
Digital distribution is starting to make this a hard position to take considering any company is more than happy to re-sell you the same game you already bought. I mean, this is correct, public domain is getting to be nonexistent by the greedy and the companies who 'own' everything. It's just tough to state that I'm in the right by downloading Mario Brothers 3 instead of buying the remake for GBA/Virtual Console release.

EDIT: This is why Tycho is such an utter moron, really. He's always been entirely too friendly to the companies who manufacture games with digital rights protection on them, and frequently mocks the people who rebut him. It's like he doesn't understand that DRM is just another step in the direction of letting companies do whatever the fuck they want.

In the case of MGS3's online, it wasn't too popular anyway from what I gather, and had been around for a while before it was shut down. EA not long ago shut down servers for both old games that weren't played much anymore and games barely a year old, which is what got people worried. If EA started doing that, who's to say they won't make a habit of it?

Yeah, they probably won't patch it out. But really, even if you buy it, there's nothing stopping you from cracking it anyway to get rid of the DRM. Hell, that's what I'm gonna do.

Point taken, and EA is the central concern here, but I was only mentioning MGS because there are tons of games that have online multiplayer that, eventually, has to come offline.

History shall be written by the pirates, for better or worse.

Just as a mini-rebuttal, but there IS the example of Netstorm. It's a 12 year old game that the parent company has dropped server support for, but the fans have picked up and not been shut down over. Apparently, by doing some painless acrobatics, you can tap into their fan servers and continue to play as always. Or at least you can unless you have Vista, which for some reason didn't seem to want to cooperate. Phantom played it a bit on his XP machine, where I ended up rage-quitting and just messing around in single-player. Maybe someone a bit more savvy and willing to fight with it could use Vista to tap in, as well.

Point being, if other companies follow this example and let fans pick up where they left off, you can continue to provide quality content at no cost to the company and avoid pissing a ton of people off.

There is something to be said for going through the system to address a problem rather than circumventing the law. Whatever Tycho's opinion (and it seems fairly moderate, which really is fine, but I'll concede that I haven't really followed his thoughts on this much) the latest PA dialog on the issue seems to be more awknowledging the ridiculousness both sides display in this circular argument.

I'm not saying that buisnesses aren't bending us all over a table but that's a larger issue. Much like piracy is used as an excuse by companies to take advantage of consumers, stealing and attempting to defend it just sounds ridiculous and gives credibility to the company. It's circular, and it escalates because no one is addressing the issues through the proper channels.

The problem is that Tycho greatly strawmanned the argument made by pirates. Which would have been fine, given that making the pirates personified by a, literal, straw man in his comic could very easily be taken as a "This is the straw man that companies are arguing against, guffaw guffaw" but his comments on it make it clear that this is not how he means it.

In truth there is no circular logic involved.

Pirates: I have two choices. I can pay for a game, and receive a gimped/broken experience because the producers are treating me, the paying customer, as a criminal, OR I can actually BE a criminal and get the game I wanted. For free.

The choice seems obvious.

Companies: We need to stop pirates, therefore we need code on our games that makes pirating more difficult. This seems obvious.

One could make an argument that there is some on the side of the companies, but that would require us to assume that they realize that their DRM just causes more people to pirate the game in order to avoid the DRM.

As that I highly doubt they realize that (or they'd also realize that restrictive DRM is hurting sales, not helping them, and do away with it), I see no circular logic.

Now, the problem ITSELF of: Stiff DRM is created, which causes people to prefer pirating, which causes companies to create worse DRM which causes MORE people to prefer pirating, which causes companies to create WORSE DRM, etc. etc. IS circular.

However the circular effect here is akin to water going down a drain. It's a natural effect of the market forces and how companies have chosen to approach them.

The actual logic being used by either side is quite linear.

Adding to Krylo;
The comic does.

Tycho's newspost does not.
He's making it very clear that despite companies arguing with literal strawmen and the endless cycle of either side, he's very much for DRM because the company's extra-special feelings are getting hurt, and the pirates are the only one who can stop them (Which is horseshit).

I think he is in favor of people who create compelling content getting money. I really don't get how you see pro-DRM in that statement.

In the following 3 news posts he supports statements made by people who say things like,
and
In any case, he certainly has said that it is a very complicated issue with no easy solution. And that is pretty much the case.

Okay, so a year ago he supported the elimination of DRM.

Yesterday he says
I don't know about you but I'm inclined to believe the one he said, you know, recently.

It is funny sometimes.
 

Can you please, please explain how him pointing out the nonsensical behavior of "I'm doing something wrong because a company is being a dick" equates to Tycho saying, "I'm okay with the company being a dick."

I swear, I don't see how you see a pro-DRM argument in the statement that has nothing to do with DRM and everything to do with pirates. I mean, maybe I'm just being obtuse here. But I really don't get it.

And Noncon, if you could provide any examples at all, that would be great. Also, it feels a little like talking to a hydra when you two share opinions as well as avatars. :sweatdrop

The latest issue of game informer has this to say on C&C 4:

So yeah, looks like the big developers are just going to take a humongous shit on the consumer just to give a few weeks' worth of headaches to the HACKERS ON STEROIDS that pirate their games. Dunno bout you guise, but I'm kind of glad they don't/can't/won't do this shit with console games.

Because he is creating his own strawman to discredit the pirating side which means that he is supporting the company side.
He is completely misrepresnting the side of pirates who often aren't pirating out of "ur-morality" or to teach the company a lesson but because the pirated version is superior and is the game that they want to play. He doesn't address this side of the argument or even acknowledge its existence because he is buying company line here.

It's like if I presented the debate on healthcare and laid out both sides of argument and gave a reasonable accurate list of republican concerns about cost, capitalism ideals and suchforth but put the democratic side as They want to kill old people and babies, ou could be pretty sure I was in favour of the republican side.

Yeeeeah on the other hand, though, those consoles won't be around forever and if you want to replay your old copy of Assassin's Creed 2 in 10, 20 years some sort of illegitimate operation will likely have to be involved no matter which version you have.

Huh.

Pokemon Red, Blue, Yellow, Gold, Silver, Crystal

Gold, Silver, Crystal won't run on Game Paks anymore

Have to use emulator

Dammit, even when I win, I lose.

Except he isn't. He's just pointing out how a portion of pirates logic works like that because they actually say, "I'm going to pirate because I hate the oppressive DRM." Which is in point of fact, pretty dumb. Because it only escalates things. The companies seem to have some way of tracking how many copies get pirated and/or used. If there were no pirates, there would be no need for such oppressive DRM.

He himself has said there are reasons to pirate because of DRM,
And the continued accusations of him being in some companies pockets so he is pro DRM when he has made multiple arguments against DRM is not a very good way to go about a discussion. It can't be proven or disproved, and it's basically libel.

Tycho isn't on either side. He is in fact, one of the "ordinary consumer who is collateral damage in this equation."

They don't have any way to track. They make numbers up. This has been addressed earlier in the thread. Like you can have an idea of how much pirating is going on by the number of torrents going and their health but they can't get more data.
And that is not what Tycho is saying/ Tycho is saying people are doing it as a moral crusade, as a way to teach the companies a lesson which is untrue. It is simply about getting the best product.

But he's made shitty arguments against DRM which don't correlate to what anybody on the anti-DRM side is saying and has completely ignored the main thrust of anti-DRM arguments like they don't exist.
It's a classic technique of making some small, weak concessions to the other side so you don't look biased.
And he's only collateral damage because he ignores the main reason for pirating- which is to get a superior product.
And he is clearly not an ordinary consumer. He is a high profile person in the videogame industry with multiple ties and contacts across the industry. Some may argue that this will affect his judgement on this matter- I don't agree necessarily but he is hardly an ordinary consumer.

While this is a stretch for the argument, they partially do. You need to be connected to Xbox Live to be able to play the Indie Community games. Which is a bummer when I want to play some 'I made a game with zombies in it' and I'm not online. :(

While this doesn't necessarily do much to alleviate your problem, as those games are distributed via XboxLive, I don't see it as big of a deal as, say, buying a physical copy of a game AND NOT BEING ABLE TO PLAY IT WITHOUT INTERNET ACCESS. *cough*C&C4*cough*Assassin's Creed 2*cough*

This is sort of like back when Godhand mentioned that the last biggest activism summit happened in Copenhagen, and the prostitution revenues went up, SO YOUR TAX DOLLARS ARE GOING TO FOREIGN WHORES.

Going on a tangent in a debate to ad homenim the other side is not 'just pointing something out,' it's Goddamn retarded and a debate logical fallacy. The fact that he's using logical fallacies on the other side shows his opinion pretty well.

The problem here is that Tycho merely thinks that the people who are pirating to get around/protest DRM are just lying to themselves so they can get free shit. He's a fucking idiot.
They seem to. You don't know; you're just assuming. But it's okay, because they're a company, and they must have a very good reason?

I mean, really? You're just going to take it lying down?
...What? Who's suggesting this? Me nor SMB are saying or even implying it. Tycho's not getting bribed, he's just an idiot.

Ok, let's hold on...

As I'm reading Tycho's words, I'm believing that he is saying the DRM is not working, so it encourages piracy. Pirates crack the DRM, and this cracking leads to people playing a game for free as fall out.

Ok, that's one side.

On the other hand, a person wants to play a game. They either:

A) want to try it out before they buy.
B) Are looking to play a game without it sending information to the mother ship every minute
C) Aren't paying a dime for entertainment.


So... I fail to see how his saying the battle between cracking infringement and the software pirates is necessarily one that ends well for consumers. More or less, the people in C are less likely to get a game unless the price dropped significantly. The ones in B are their regular or new customers. A) you can't tell, since correlation is limited.

Say what you will, but I believe his argument is more about the people who are in C or B, without a particular care about A.

Idealistic, but no. After about 2 years of costs, though high, can be recouped even if the game is a heaping helping of Dog Doo. No, it may not sell as well as other games but most studios can recoup the lost revenue from it being a spectacular game. Bionic Commando, though it was flawed probably could have sold better if the control scheme wasn't so P(**^&^& difficult.

Blood Bowl is another one that's an ok game but not spectacular. Hell, even Heavenly Sword is a good game though it's not on the same plane as God of War. I feel that game should have found its own niche than trying to take out Kratos.

What most game publishers forget is that most studios want to make a good game. All they care about is the money coming in.

Developers might fall in love with a project. It's the reason we have a game like Dice's Mirror's Edge. It's the reason Kratos became more popular. When done right, it's great. If not, we end up with Duke Nukem.

While sales figures are used in such a way, there's other ways. Believe it or not, Metacritic is getting popular to reward good games (and reviews) but sometimes, it can have... unintended consequences.

In short, yes, they can close up shop and go home. But there will be other game companies to fill in that void or even fans to work out their own version.

What he's saying is that both sides are retarded, but at least the companies aren't in the wrong.

That is literally what he's saying.

This is just to point this out, but I'm willing to bet a good portion of "A" really isn't going to buy the game once they already have it. Because they've become a part of group C. If games were still shareware, I wouldn't be so quick to call bullshit on it, but to put it frankly, we're living in the Information Era, where a game's status as good or bad can be determined within hours of release just by typing the name into a search engine, and you'll have a full review by the end of two days or less. People claiming to be in group A are either looking for an excuse to justify it or just plain fooling themselves for the most part. Maybe you'll have the exceptions who really feel that way, but you could argue the stupidity or wisdom of buying a game you already have, depending on your view of piracy and supporting good games. (As a note, I'm on the wisdom side, but I'd argue the stupidity of pirating in the first place and leaving oneself open to the temptation.)


That said, even from a guy with pipe dreams of going into the industry, Tycho strikes me as having his head so far up his ass he's choking on it. The issue is more complex than he gives it credit for and he's clearly ignoring portions of the argument he's not equipped to rebut. On top of that, he's putting himself literally on the corporate side by giving whichever face of his strip the corporate argument to argue with the straw man, which he EASILY could have avoided with an equally generic corporate suit. In fact, he's pretty explicitly blaming DRM on the pirates with the flow of his comic.




EDIT: I'm just going to reiterate that I'm personally anti-piracy due to my own moral stance, but with many people essentially being forced into piracy just to play the game, I'm going to call out current DRM measures as unnecessarily stupid. I think there are better ways of protecting software that are literally just as effective as the bullshit they're coming out with these days (read, just enough to deter people lacking any real dedication and know-how) that don't present as a challenge to people to zealously break. From a practical standpoint, a CD check or a CD key is going to stop idle piracy without giving people a real reason to crack the software.

EDIT EDIT: I still like the dongle and feelies option.

I think you just like the words dongle and feelies, blues.

Blues I find most reviews to be complete and utter rubbish. None of them tell you how the game really feels to play they just give their own impressions. Sure I don't always buy games I pirate because holy crap do alot of them suck ass. but If i put more than 30 hours into a game I'll pay for it because it's worth the cost. I pirated spore and I'm damn glad I did that game was terrible and alot of the reviews for it at the time were gushing praise.

With software I will always try before buying I've been burned too many times with games before to ever take another stance. Besides shareware games did fine in the old Atari days it can still work now ^^

Blues, No. If they're in group A, then yes, group A means they're similar to Sifright where they're going to try it out as a type of extended demo. There's a few games that I feel are not worth their respective high or low scores (FFX - Tidus is still whiny, but he does get tolerable. Wasn't worth a 10 but didn't mar the experience too much) but let's remember: A review is only a person's opinion. That's it. Maybe they liked the game, maybe they didn't. Did they complete it? Did they only play 30 minutes? Did they try to break the game? Was the game already broken? All of this can't be determined when you only have 30 days with games, more games being made monthly, and too many high profile games clamoring for our dollars.

Personally, if a game's good, be it in Japanese or English, I want it. I don't buy a lot of games but the ones I do are something tailored to my eccentric tastes. Disgaea, Valkyrie Profile, FFTA, Live A Live, or even the Advance Wars series. Guess which one I had to work to get?

Mainly, I'm arguing that your view here is discounting quite a few things that could be going on with A group, simply to say we're criminals that only want something because it's free. That is forgetting the nostalgic crowd, the retro crowd and quite a few people who only want to be able to play a game regardless of laws that impede this progress. Anyway, that's too much of a divergence, I'm stopping here.

I can roll with this, but the limiting that most companies do is just stupid of them. But hey, it's not the coders that do it. It's the guys that have no connection to the Customer Service desk that make these retarded decisions that end up hurting the gaming industry as a whole.

So what you mean to say is you can't be arsed to read more than one review? Come on. This is the Internet. If you can't find a person who hates something on the web, you're either not trying hard enough or the game disk is made of solid gold, causes diamonds to shoot out of your console every time you put it in, and contains a game that sucks you through the screen into a dimension of infinite rapture. And even THEN some ass would bitch about what a mess the diamonds made.

What I'm saying is less that people are looking for an excuse and more that they buy the game to try and end up playing and beating it, then sit back and twiddle their thumbs feeling silly and end up not buying a copy. It's not intentional, but the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Some might buy it anyway, but others might not. It's equivalent to going to a comic shop and fingerprinting up the pages of Wolverine #589478 before putting it back on the shelf full of smudges because you already read it now. Sure, it's not intentional that you somehow managed to smear all the text into profanity and descriptions of kinky sexual acts, but it's still going to not get sold because of it.

On top of that, I'm all for nostalgia, but that STILL doesn't justify what you admit is breaking the law because of it. I'm nostalgic that I used to have a #1 issue of Bucky O' Hare, but I'm not going to break into a comic shop to get another one because my mom was an idiot and threw mine out without telling me. That thing would be worth like $14k now, last I checked. They'd throw me in jail so fast my head would spin.

I'm all for changing the law when it comes to old games, be it to make companies release or support them, because there are a lot of gems out of legal reach at the moment, but that doesn't make it anyone's right to just go and take them.

You know my mom and I still have bad blood over me uninstalling a game from the old 3.1 boat anchor years ago? You know why? The "game" was Discoveries of the Deep, a terrible DOS program that did its damnedest to give you the full experience of being a marine biologist by forcing you to do true-to-life navigation to set a course and fuck around for literal DAYS ON END while you hopefully got there, assuming you never turned off the computer. I uninstalled it to make room for Lands of Lore, an actual game. She got pissed because the DotD floppy was only good for three installs, and she'd used up all of them to get the thing on there due to being computer retarded. After that, the floppy was overwritten to halt the game just as you pulled out of the harbor.

Three.

I think FIFTEEN is a bit more forgiving than that. Five times more, not even counting the fact you can just call in to get more.

I'll admit DRM needs some fixing, but that particular example isn't too bad.

That said, you're right. DRM is a business measure, and I don't think most coders are nearly as avid about it as the businessmen.

Let's remember, it WAS 3. So you put it on your laptop, your desktop and maybe your mom's computer. But once you get that new 4500? Yeah, you're done. The outcry was so huge on it that 2K backed off from a punch in the balls to a punch in the gut. It's still limiting but at least it's more tolerable.

Actually, I'm saying you shouldn't put much stock in other's opinions. A game might be better or worse by your standards than the standards of the industry. Psychonauts and BG&E anyone?

That's part of the risk of doing business. Not everything gets sold. Your collector's edition may get a scratch. You might be just like Mr Glass in Unbreakable who cares for the rarity of comics as an art form. But if you can keep your customers coming to you and liking your version of DRM (Steam) then maybe, just maybe, you can make it as a gamer/developer/publisher. The problem is when people are treated as if they're stupid or that the games they play are lifetime endeavors, not merely entertainment.

-Edit- In other news, Ubisoft is still being retarded About their DRM

Well, even BS1 had five, which is pretty bad, but not so bad you could use it up in one retarded go. Five installs will go a long way assuming you're actually only putting it on one computer like you're supposed to. It's still enough to run into a wall, to be sure. Fifteen is likely more than most people will need in quite some time, unless they plan on playing it sometime in the future when the standard input is a brain jack.

That's why you read a bunch of different reviews. Game quality is not and will never be objective. Unless my eleven-tier system sees widespread use (you can ask Nonsie about it), but even that's based on a subjective experience. To put it this way, a good review doesn't tell you a game is good or bad; it tells you WHY a game is good or bad. Find a shining review and see if it catches your interest. Then look for a review that throws the game to the dogs and see if you still feel that way. Once you have your good and bad points, you can average them into your own initial opinion of whether to go further.

I'll agree with most of this, but I'll have to disagree that piracy is comparable to a disk broken in transit. Namely because the game is still finding its way into use. You're putting nearly the entire burden on developers in this, which I disagree with just as much as Tycho's assertion that it's totally the public's fault. There's a culture of piracy here that needs to be fixed, and while the devs are ultimately the ones with the keys to the physical solution to trying to change that culture, there are frankly a lot of entitled assholes on the Internet, too, and it may not be easy no matter WHAT the devs try. The public holds the keys to the mental/emotional side of the solution, and it's going to take a while for the collective body to force them into their side of the door.

Also, I dunno about you, but I consider games entertainment. If I'm buying a "lifetime endeavor," I damn well be able to see significant monetary returns on it.

We're agreeing on the same points so I won't expand on this.
???

That seems to have come out wrong. What I'm focusing on is the belief that once you buy a game, you shouldn't be allowed to like other games as EA is privy to do. I can understand if they want us to have DLC on a game, or even liking a game and enjoying it. But eventually a game gets old. It's still entertainment, you will have the game for a long time. But what I believe a lot of publishers aren't doing is giving added incentive to consumers to enjoy a game beyond its shelf life.

What the SecuROM and DRM signifies is exactly what I'm thinking about. No true benefit comes to people that enjoy games from these "secure" devices. Rather, it's a way for these fat cats to artificially (and temporarily) boost their profit. If someone actually played a game with SecuROM in mind, if they went through all of the hassle and just before the game ended, their computer crashed... These are the type of scenarios that would cause a person to truly look at these obstacles as artificial.

As I pointed out, Shamus Young has followed DRM for a while. I liked the article where he pointed out that you can use it, just use the stuff in creative ways.

Ex. Batman has it where you can't complete the game because it's a hacked version. Hell, don't even try to stop them at the front gate. Let the pirates get a Pyrrhic victory, by beating the DRM at the front gate but if it IS a hack, then it stops the freeloaders from completing it. Those are the type of things that persuade people to change their minds. I wouldn't want to spend 3-5 years of my life, slaving away on a game, then going back into the game to add something as little and arbitrary as DRM which can basically mean more bug testing. Then the testing leads to more, then when the game comes out, it's buggy or glitchy because oh, hey! There's that little snafu that your DRM caused. That would surely piss me off as a developer on ANY level.

I'm going to explain this from a software development perspective, so bear with me.

Simply put, most software is based on pre-existing software packages. A game uses an engine used by other games in the genre, or even of different genres, for a good few years. Maybe the engine gets a few tweaks and upgrades, but at the base, you are re-using the same foundation to build your games over and over. The same goes for DRM. They're not writing it from the ground up every time. They write a system once, test it to make sure it does what it's designed to and doesn't have any glaring bugs, and then re-use the crap out of it. Unless there are bugs they missed, they can keep putting the exact same code in their programs until the sun burns out, no problem. Once it's written, they're golden, attach it to the program, done.


I'm not arguing there aren't issues with current DRM and software support and such. I made a thread to ask ways people might suggest solving them. It's something that needs to be fixed by finding a balance between security and usability.

The best way is to focus on the game. The coding is always going to be hacked so as some of my articles expand on, allow for that. The good customers will pay you for your services and more than likely they'll commit to your next game, no problem. Hell, if Crimson Echoes, Cave Story or the Touhou series are any indication, it's the fact that people like to play unique games regardless of their origins. I don't think any of the big boys really need "security" in their games. Giving people incentives to play their game versus the myriad already out there, that's the issue at stake.

Especially on the PC market. I kinda like what EA is doing to incentivize people to play their games new. More DLC, downloadable codes, and you get to make a choice between that or a used copy that may already be registered. Acceptable choice and they're not tying you to an arbitrary server that you may not always have access to.

And here's the problem. Hackers can break it the same way so it really doesn't solve anything. Save for the Batman example, and a few other small ones where people are using their heads to mess with the pirates, it's really better to do something different in each game, rather than a pre packaged deal that surely spells defeat and gives a pirate/hacker a superior product.

I don't think you're understanding how this works. The idea is that they WRITE a new package and use it for whatever games they're coming out with at the time. Do you have any idea how time-consuming it would be to write new DRM for every game? Not only does it add a ton of cost and time to the project to come up with a new system, but the process WOULD result in a ton of bugs as you previously mentioned. By writing a new package every once in a while, you get the stability of well-tested code along with, in theory, a means of protecting the software that's not outdated.

Cracking DRM isn't just cracking a package. It's a team of people poring through the code trying to find what makes it tick, without the benefit of the comments the devs put in for each other, likely a good deal of code that looks like it, but actually never does anything, and thousands upon thousands of lines of code to sort through just looking for that. Once the DRM is cracked, all they have is knowing what to look for the next time. It's not like they can script-kiddie it after the initial crack. Or if they do, it involves writing their own program to aid in their work, because computers being stupid (and yes, they are), a program isn't going to be able to fully automate the process.



Now, you can argue the superior product thing with certain types of DRM, including the one in question. On the other hand, some aren't so bad. The Batman example is something that's really a pretty revolutionary idea. Maybe people will pick up on it, maybe not, depending on the cost and how easy it is.

Mostly what I'm saying is life isn't so simple. Any DRM is going to be cracked eventually, but it's not going to be done by casual hackers. The key is, again, in finding a balance between usability and security.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/ne...ked-on-day-one

Blimey. That was quick.

Rebuttal: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/ub...m-hack-rumours

"Not complete" huh. If that was true they'd probably have some details as to how exactly the game they released, which would be the same game that has been cracked, is "not complete". I imagine they're scrambling to throw out a nominal content patch to give buyers something extra. And I imagine that too will be cracked within a day. Someone seem to be heavily invested in giving Ubisoft a nice big finger.

It's nice to see their DRM scheme turn out completely ineffective. Warms my heart.

Well, it would be Not Compete cause you know, they wouldn't be kicked out of the game if their network goes down. And that would ruin the experience UbiSoft is going for.

Though they could actually be refereeing to downloadable content.

I am happy that it took all of one day and seemed relatively easy for the hackers but I doubt they'll abandon their stupid DRM though. And I was hoping to play Settlers too.

We'll see tomorrow. If Ubisoft goes back on its word and says "Yeah, we got haxxored" then I'll never believe DRM can circumvent anything again (I'm borderline on the edge of saying it's worthless)

But if they admit to failure then the customers won't believe in DRM anymore. The only reason to do that is if they're giving up on DRM completely. Weither they actually got boned or not has nothing to do with telling the truth about it.

"not complete" huh? And how would they know this exactly?

How is that not a good thing?

It's good for the customers, so of course it's bad for the company. Whose side are you on?!

The side that only pirates for drm removal.

Tycho would call that "Ur-morality."

Sign me up for some ur-morality too.

Well, it's a start. It's likely not going to do much to quell the flames, but any reversal on it will at least help a little. Now the question is just how cowed the population is and how much it'll take to keep them angry from the people who still see it as a terrible system.

Judging by the responses, it seems that not a damn thing has changed in terms of how people view it.

Well you still have to be connected to the internet - but if you lose connection the checkpoints are a bit more light.

It isn't really a step backwards on the DRM, just Ubi realizing how obnoxious that is.

I forget who it was that said it, but I remember reading this prediction. Ubisoft will just make it slightly less horrible to give people the impression that they are being reasonable.

Sounds like a Shamus Young quote to me...

Especially about the kick in the balls vs a kick in the gut.

must have been it, and yea he called it. More importantly its true. It isn't as bad as what they had, but its still the worst system yet created

how much revenue is actually "lost" due to hacking anyways?

I don't really see people that buy games going for the pirated version simply because its free. Nor do I see people who don't buy games only not buying them because they're not free.

Most consumers pay money for the things they wish to own. People who pirate shit are just cheap or broke. In either case, they weren't going to buy your game anyways.

There's actually a few levels to piracy.

First, you have the head honchos or release groups. Their entire thing is to break the newest DRM. I doubt they care about the game itself, merely accolades for being the first to crack the newest form.

Then you have the sites that host the file. They are paid an incentive for getting the newest stuff. Then you have the couriers. They're the ones that get it to spread like wildfire. Then the sites get the leftovers. Then you have the leechers (us).

So, in all of that a file could be copied, downloaded, and reissued thousands of times. It'd be asinine to believe that every last one of those files is a lost sale. More than likely, there's a lot of people that wouldn't have paid for this in the first place. If you treat every last one as a lost sale, then we could be talking trillions of dollars. Books, media, whathaveyou...

Now, some of it could be a few other options as mentioned before. "Try before you buy" "Not gonna even try" "Wouldn't have gotten it anyway"... There's so many different ways it could go, I doubt you could tally a download as a lost sale.

If your game didn't suck you could count it as free advertising to draw people into buying your future works.

Yeah, they like to talk about reduction of potential profit as if every single person who doesn't buy their product is taking money directly from their hands. Well, RIAA does but it applies to piracy in general. If you can sue people for that, I don't see why I can't sue Stephen King for selling so many books, tapping out the market and reducing the potential number of books I might sell. If I published a book sometime.

Yeah that's why the whole thing is bullcrap - companies in charge make up imaginary numbers to blame the lack of sales on piracy rather than on making a shitty product. The bigger the company gets, the more money they can dump into it, and the more they start to believe their own need to wring every single purchase dry, getting to the point where they now believe piracy counts for millions of dollars in losses, regardless of how many people would have bought it anyway.

So yeah. Those who pirate usually do it without the idea of ever buying to begin with.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news...ervers-Go-Down

Kind of reminds me...

Wow. That was, what, an entire day?

I can totally imagine the Ubisoft offices:

"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!"
"ZUT!"
"Reparez les ordinateurs!"
"Nous ne savons pas la probleme!"
"Les clients vont nous tuer!"
"Je suis fini!"

hahahahaha.... This is amazing I'm literally laughing at how funny this situation is, I wonder how the apologists will try to defend ubi.

Those who mind the DRM are a minority, so many people bought the game that they still overloaded the servers.

I'm sure a lot more people mind it now. :J

Those are the people that don't know what DRM means, generally. All the people I work with save one or two don't have a clue what it means, nor do they know what dedicated servers are. It's unfortunate, really. The masses that don't understand these things are the ones that make life worse for the people who do understand them.

Those are the people that several articles are predicting will be returning the game as "defective." And in a way, it is. With these kinds of issues right out the gate, Ubisoft will be lucky if this doesn't end up in their HQ being burned down by an angry mob. This is seriously going to hurt them.

Return or not--I'm sure they know what DRM is NOW.

Ubisoft--ruinin' it for everyone.

Ah, it is nice to see karma at work.

now now, they aren't bad people, just really stupid.

I mean even if they didn't lose any sales because of the DRM it costs money to maintain those servers

Free culture may have to wait a while
 

I just thought of a cool and maybe useful anti-piracy measure. Imagine the install comes with a simple, randomly generated captcha that you have to repeat. And to read it you need 3D goggles. Really you just need a mess of overlapping red and green text, maybe some parts you read with your left eye and then your right to make it extra secure.

Yeah, people can make their own 3D goggles easily or get them elsewhere. But let's face it, most people won't. You might run it through an image editor to solve it, even with a three minute time limit, but again that's an effort only a minority would manage. Producing a crack would involve the kind of cutting-edge image recognition software that spambot companies pay top dollars for, I don't see that happening. And 3D goggles are cheap and also fun. Everyone wins!

Actually producing a crack would just involve taking the installed game, putting it in a zip, and sending it onto the internet.

If you can play the game, the game is on your system in its full playable glory. If that is true then it can be copied in its full playable glory. If that is true, there is no way to stop pirating.

I guess. Though some games complicate that by installing themselves in various parts of the computer. Some registry editing perhaps? Or maybe people could live with repeating the process once per month or so.

(I want my 3D goggles damnit.)

I guess that's why developers were kind of hopped up on that service or whatever that was supposedly going to let people play games remotely on a server. That way they don't have a physical copy to fiddle around with.

Except me, lacking any kind of depth perception at all. (Lazy eye that could not be corrected surgically.)

Cries silently in corner.

SWB

the idea is good, but cracks completely by-pass the security measure. Though it might work if you combine it with something like Steam, where the verification system and the game are seperate so you cant just slap an .exe file into the game program

All steam released games are cracked.

I didn't say use steam I said use a system outside the game combined with some physical security system. So they cant just by-pass the need for the physical one. I think a multilayered but relatively simple verification system would be better. You dont need to make piracy impossible, just make it more of a hassle then getting it legit. Having to deal with two cracked files and a serial generater as opposed to just popping in a disc and entering a code