Despite reports last night that Ubisoft's PC DRM has been cracked, the arrogant European publisher has maintained that its unwarranted and unfair punishment of paying customers is still currently foolproof. It's not all bad though! Ubisoft has updated the DRM so that if your Internet connection drops and the game boots you, it will always start at the point of kickery once the game goes back online. How thoughtful of them.
DRM v1.1 has been created, even though the original DRM hadn't been released yet. This is likely thanks to the massive amount of backlash Ubisoft received, although simply fixing a fraction of the problem won't stem the tide of well-deserved hatred. Still, Ubisoft doesn't mind, because it still believes its DRM is an unbreakable fortress.
“You have probably seen rumors on the web that Assassin’s Creed II and Silent Hunter 5 have been cracked," states Ubi. "Please know that this rumor is false and while a pirated version may seem to be complete at start up, any gamer who downloads and plays a cracked version will find that their version is not complete."
Here's the thing though, Ubi. You know it will be cracked eventually. It's just a matter of time. All this supposed DRM does is f*ck with paying consumers who have entrusted their money to a publisher and are having to meet further demands in order to play what they just bought. So sure, that DRM crack may not have happened yet, but nobody can argue that when it does come, and it will, Ubisoft won't have asked for it with this nonsense.
Ubi claims cracked PC DRM reports are "false" [VG247]
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Contest:
8:00 AM on 03.04.2010
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Not that I care, PRELOAD ALREADY, BAD COMPANY 2.
On the other hand, if the publisher push a crappy drm on a game that I love to the bones, like I'm loving bad company 2, in a way that forbids me playing, man, then ITS WARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!
i still maintain this could potentially stop pirates from playing this game, but as we all know, legit customers are going to suffer greatly because of this.
usually customers lose, and pirates win, now the best case scenario is lose/lose, and a further loss for UBI.
got lazy, too early to fire up mspaint....er.....i meann potoshop wizrdd
did you people not learn your lesson after the first game?
IF it stops piracy for a while. If it doesn't, what a waste of time and consumer hassle.
"If it stops piracy for an extended period of time I really don't think asking me to be online all the time, which I am anyway, is too much. "
How egocentric can you possibly be?
What goes egotism have to do with it? If you're speaking about not everyone having internet 24/7 I would be the rates of PC gamers online constantly is above 90%, and 10% of ANY group will be left out of something.
More to the point I am fully for DRM free gaming, but in the realm of account based ownership, limited installs, finnicky disc checks and rootkit software, honestly saying "hey, play it online all the time" is low on my list of grievences. In fact, if they patch it out someday as promised, it rates lower than SecuROM or Steamworks on my personal annoyed-by-DRM-scale.
Sorry if that bothers you, but my opinion of the matter is mine.
That being said, taunting crackers who apparently are much, much better at their jobs than the people who make the DRM doesn't really seem like a great idea. I can't imagine the poor coders who make the DRM have much of a passion for such a job compared to those who do this as a hobby.
Ubisoft have their clown heads so far up their asses they wont even admit its failed lol.
and if someone has managed to crack the game to where you can play the tutorial, then i think it's a sign that it's only a matter of time till the rest of the game is cracked... and if they keep using this DRM, it may get easier each time since the hackers know what to look for now to make the crack
Should've expected shit like this when they didn't release PoP DLC for the Pc version.
Last I checked games can't make money from concerts, licensing to commercials and movies and other such things. Even merchandise is ten times more limited for gaming than for music. Sorry, but the two relate like apples and rocks.
And no one, NO ONE, should be happy this is pirated. If you want to wish doom on Ubisoft then wish for low sales, not high piracy rates. High piracy rates on Silent Hunter 5, Assassin's Creed 2, Splinter Cell Conviction and The Settlers 7 means two things:
1) Even more strict DRM ideas in the future.
2) Less PC singleplayer games period.
Neither of those things is good at ALL for PC gamers. Not even a little bit. The worst thing for us is for this DRM to result in high piracy rates for those games.
Because they crack the DLC, simple as that.
My main gripe with DRM is that when it doesn't work companies still use it. A week after Mass Effect came out SecuROM was cracked and every game since then has been cracked at launch, so what the hell is the point of using it later on? Customer flogging? Why is that good?
I don't have a problem with DRM that works, I have a problem with DRM that does not. If this is cracked then Ubi should stop using it immediately. It has yet to be proven it has though.
What will it take for publishers to realize that their goal should be trying to attract pirates to paying for their software, rather than forcing good customers to become pirates?
I'm torn about what the best course of action is for all this. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, piracy does hurt the industry in more ways than just causing a french publisher to enact idiotic DRM measures.
On the other hand, if you pay for the game, the message you're sending is that you have no problem with the DRM. On the other hand, not buying the game and/or pirating it tells them that they either need stricter DRM, or to give up on PC developing. I doubt stricter DRMs would be a substantial obstacle, given that this latest bout was cracked in a single day, but no developing... that's a lot harder to crack.
Then again, their PC titles as of late have been pretty shitty. Maybe a boost in PC game sales would convince them to put more effort into developing, or maybe they would just continue to churn out crap knowing that people will buy it anyway.
Assassin's creed 2 is not out yet and therefore not cracked.
Pretty blatant lies there ubisoft.
It's a catch 22, gamers seem to get screwed by these a lot. Buying it supports DRM, pirating it vindicates them, and not buying it could drive them out of business in time (unless they learn the lesson quick), or alternatively, it can cause them to discontinue a well liked franchise believing it unpopular.
MW2 is an example of this, enough copies have been sold that they believe the way their game was released was good and proper. They have no business justification for adding dedicated servers, or balancing the game, or fixing matchmaking. Sad really, more and more game companies seem to be getting out of touch with their market.
Who cares about that crap game? They should pay you to play it, they should connect to your pc and beg for you to play it, oh wait they actually do.
This ISN'T the 2010 solution to games piracy.
Console games are easier to crack than PC games. There isn't much talk about how many console games are being illegally shared and pirated, but I happen to know for a fact that every game you can buy in the store can be downloaded, burned and played on a "modded" console. And the arguement that the games are too big to do so is irrelevant, because there are actually very few console games that are using the massive space on a blu-ray disk, for example. Xbox 360 still uses DVD9, and people are using usb drives to play shared games on the Wii. Not only that, but the cracking groups seemed to be very good at ripping out the stuff that adds unnecessary space to a game (much of which is security software... you won't believe how much security software adds to a game!).
So it is really easier to crack consoles than PC games - with consoles you crack the console security once and then the entire library is available. With a PC you have to crack each game individually. You might say that the console's complexity makes it harder to do - but put all of the time it takes to crack all of the individual games, on the PC and it makes more sense. So would it make sense for developers to leave the PC market "en masse"? No, that would be a major mistake, and they would see the uselessness of it once the crackers have no choice but to concentrate 100% on cracking consoles.
The game companies are as much to blame for the trend. They will never get 100% paying customer base, but adding to the cost of a game with these buggy security measures doesn't help the cause. They have to come to grips with the fact that no matter how much money they throw at it, or no matter what strategy they come out with, the game will eventually be cracked - and throw teir hopes of making a profit from pirates and shares out the window. That's just the cost of doing business.