

DRM from hell. - GrandMasterBirt
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/02/ubisoft-details-drm.ars

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jrockway
_If you're flying, you'll have to pay for onflight Internet or not play. If
your Internet goes out in your house, you can't play, and if you were playing
while it happened, you could lose progress._

Wrong. I'll just play the pirated version, which won't have these
restrictions.

~~~
houseabsolute
Personally I don't see anything morally wrong with buying the game then
playing the pirated version.

~~~
philk
Personally, if I'm going to go to the hassle of pirating the game then I don't
need a legit copy.

Sure, I'd like to support the creators but not if they're only offering to
sell me an inferior version of the product.

~~~
oomkiller
I tend to agree with you, but the truth is, the creators probably hate it as
much as you do. The main perpetrators of draconian DRM systems are the greedy
publishers.

~~~
philk
You're probably right there. But if I'm going to buy a legit copy I'm
basically rewarding the publishers for their perfidy.

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nzmsv
I played Assassins Creed 2 on the PS3, and it does not have this copy
protection scheme. I bought Bioshock 2 for the PC. It has what I think is a
similar protection scheme. It required me to sign up for a Windows Live
account, and stay signed in to save.

I am never buying a game like this again. Treating paying customers like
thieves is just wrong. All this is going to do is finish off PC game sales
(which are already suffering). Unless this spreads to the consoles as well. In
that case, indie games will be there.

edit: Looks like Bioshock 2 (and other "Games for Windows Live") have offline
support, it is just well-hidden. Still, this is a huge annoyance, and just
means the pirates will have a better experience, since the game is capable of
saving locally.

~~~
mortenjorck
I was once a PC gamer. I continued to be one even after switching to a Mac for
everything else. Increasingly, though, I found I didn't have time or patience
for the hoops I had to jump through to get things to work. So I bought my
first console and never looked back.

~~~
bugs
To be honest I'll never be a console gamer like I used to be a PC gamer. As it
was I was an FPS gamer all the way and a controller can never match keyboard
and mouse combo for any of those games. Another thing that consoles can't beat
is playing age of empires 2 or starcraft on LAN with a bunch of friends

Though I did buy a PS3 for mgs4, street fighter 4, and hopefully God of War 3
and FF13 and mainly used for Blu Ray

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jcromartie
This was posted on Reddit, and I thought it was actually pretty clever:

"The man represents pirates. The car represents paying customers. The bus
represents Ubisoft DRM. <http://i.imgur.com/zPyuI.gif>

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aarongough
_"Our online services platform will require a maximum of 50kbps of available
bandwidth, so even with the slowest connection, gameplay won’t be affected."_

What on earth are they transferring to/from the server that requires up to
50Kbps of bandwidth? The only legitimate thing I can think of would be if the
were logging user's movements through the game, and even that is kind of
sketchy...

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io
Honestly I'm surprised to see so little sympathy for the publishers on a site
like this. Aren't most of us making a living (or trying) by selling bits? What
would you do if you were creating software for a market where piracy was easy
and rampant? I dislike DRM as much as anybody. I'm not trying to say DRM is
good. I'm a casual PC gamer, and I avoid titles with DRM schemes I can't live
with. I'm annoyed when that means I'll miss out on a good title. But I can
certainly understand the plight of the publishers in an age when piracy has
gotten ridiculously easy. I don't want to see PC gaming disappear completely.
But when even fellow software creators can't put themselves in the shoes of PC
game developers, I fear it's inevitable. Building a profitable PC game
business was difficult even when most people paid for them.

~~~
mambodog
"Aren't most of us making a living (or trying) by selling bits?"

The same could be said about the creators of fake (malware) 'tune up
utilities', fake AV and spyware tools. Do you defend them too? What Ubisoft
are doing is unethical, and I will not defend their doing it simply because
its profitable (and even that is questionable).

~~~
io
I guess I don't understand the comparison you're making.

The purveyor of fake tune-up utilities fools unsophisticated consumers into
buying something useless, which is obviously unethical.

The PC game developer tries to make money on a product that's so desirable,
more people steal it than buy it.

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zokier
I for one believe that this is far better than the virus-like StarForce et al.
This allows unlimited installs, doesn't require disc in drive, and shouldn't
cause BSoD. And if implemented well, it should be quite secure. Last part
doesn't apply to AC2, where the implementation is still bit lacking iirc. But
if the saves would be created directly to/on server, then crackers would need
to either create their own save/load system to replace online functionality,
or create their own server and redirect the traffic there. Most importantly,
the executable can't just be "cracked" as it doesn't have the functionality
needed for game play (=conventional save/load mechanism)

~~~
raganwald
_I for one believe that this is far better than the virus-like StarForce et
al. This allows unlimited installs, doesn't require disc in drive, and
shouldn't cause BSoD. And if implemented well, it should be quite secure._

This is like saying that while the neighborhood bully likes to punch you, he
has stopped kicking you when you fall so it's all right. :-)

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Goronmon
The biggest annoyance I have with all this stuff is that taking a stance and
not buying this game doesn't work out anyways. The publisher will just look at
the poor sales, quote some piracy numbers and claim any poor sales are a
result of piracy and that more significant steps will need to be taken.

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robryan
If this completely keeps out all piracy then it's a good move on their part. I
think though if the game does manage to get cracked their should be some kind
of update that removes it, it's unfair for pirates to get a better game play
experience than paying customers.

~~~
mustpax
What is the likelihood that this will not be cracked? Every game is. Unless
what you're really selling is a subscription a la WoW, you can't prevent
piracy by making your game have a super annoying DRM scheme. Ubisoft is
probably pretty desperate to try such a sad move.

~~~
zokier
Client-side this kind of scheme could be implemented much alike a MMORPG, with
the distinction that you are playing alone in your instance of game world. But
still, all in-game progress could be tracked only server-side. If so, what
could the crackers do when the game itself doesn't have the ability to make
save files?

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dmoney
Take a snapshot of the memory used by the game, then reload that. Or, sniff
the traffic to the server and try and reverse engineer the database schema or
serialization format.

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guelo
The server communication will probably be encrypted. But yea, it will be
cracked and the cracked version will offer a better user experience than
paying customers get.

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lawn
With a key and encryption method which you have, you just have to find it.

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TeHCrAzY
This is a good point. Many people misunderstand the idea of encryption.
Essentially, if the data is to be used by the client, the client needs a way
to decrypt it, thus the client can copy and do with the content what they wish
(no matter how hard you try to prevent this).

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CrazedGeek
One can only hope that the Steam version doesn't have this monstrosity. A
large number of Ubisoft's games on Steam have had TAGES on them, though, so
I'm not holding my breath.

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elblanco
This is the kind of epic dumb you don't usually see in companies outside of
the record industry. Apparently they are sharing execs now.

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Sukotto
I will not buy this game... solely based on this review.

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wendroid
50kbps - good luck if you're on GPRS. What about dial-up, some people still
use that don't they ?

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teamonkey
Maybe they'll be using a 56.6kbps modem?

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vetinari
56kbps was download only, upload was 33.6kbps.

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teamonkey
It'll just be a short burst of handshaking data that will happen every so
often. The syncing of save games will require the most upload bandwidth, but
that's optional and separate from the authentication checking.

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rogermugs
redundant?

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volomike
I'm so glad I don't play videogames. Too many things in life to do than to
waste time with that mess.

