Ubisoft claims they'll drop the more obnoxious forms of DRM

[Vagrant0]

i think they saw what happened to Diablo 3 and it always having to be online even though its a single player game and saw the hate it got for it (except from some 1337 fanboys).

With D3, it isn't so much that you have to be online for verification, but rather so that the auction house would be a prominent feature, and so that drop chance can be affected in live games... which is arguably a worse reason than Ubisoft's "always online" model. Which is actually kinda funny. People completely boycotted Ubisoft for adopting an always online model, but when it comes to Blizzard, it's supposedly fine and dandy. The argument that D3 can be played with friends really isn't a good one since playing with friends has exactly no discernible benefit since item find bonuses are shared and divided between all players, and opponents have more health, so you are less likely to get anything decent while still having the increased challenge.

 

As far as the expense of time and such as opposed to DRM... It would actually be better spent on extras and free DLC for people who have registered their games. Sure, the pirates will still get the game, and likely still get the bonuses and DLC, but they have to jump through more hoops to find a "safe and working" version, meanwhile legitimate customers get it right away without the complications leading to both a better experience, and a better feeling towards that company, and thus a better following. This dynamic can already be seen with some of the smaller companies.

[ziitch]

Seems like a case of respect to me. Gaining a customer is like gaining a friend these days - You can do it in many ways, but how many of them care about what you are doing?

 

You can make "friends" by giving them cookies, but will they keep being friends if you stop? Not likely. Friends share common bonds, but not something as common as liking cookies, and listen to each other.

 

...Which means at this point, if Ubisoft really wants to save its image and give in to demand, it's going to have to listen to nearly all the comments and suggestions people make about what the company should do. And, if they do, and enact some of those suggestions, they're going to earn what real friends have for each other - Respect. And let me tell you something, honest respect is something you can't just buy, but it feels great to have. :thumbsup:

 

So, it's a respect issue - Gamers have it, but it's hard to get it with corporate mingling like draconian DRM. Valve's got that respect, hence the little fuss you see about Steam, yet EA gets anger and rage with Origin thanks to the kind of moves they make such as day-1 DLC and online passes, and even making their own problems visible to the public (yet not to them) by making claims such as the estimated copies Dead Space 3 have to sell in order for it to be successful.

[Vagrant0]

Valve's got that respect, hence the little fuss you see about Steam

I wouldn't really go that far.

 

In the grand scheme of things I would place Steam more along the lines of the lesser of three evils while being so large and ubiquitous that people really don't have much choice than to deal with Steam in some fashion. There are still many people who reject everything about Steam, see it as yet another DRM model that you always have to connect to, download content from without consent, just to play games you have bought.

 

I think this change in Ubisofts methods comes from them testing the waters by releasing a DRM free (or one time Activation) PC game recently, and noticing that the sales values were much much higher than their other PC titles which were more strongly advertised.

[Rooker75]

The indoctrination is strong in that first reply. Drink Kool-aid in moderation folks or you see what happens.

 

DRM does not, never has and never will prevent piracy. The only people affected by install limits and always-connected requirements are customers who paid $60 for an inferior experience. It's the equivalent of frisking 6-year-old children and 60-year-old grandmothers at the airport and claiming it keeps us safe from hijackers.

 

And regardless of whether or not it actually works, I still wouldn't pay for a game with those sorts of limits. That's a deal breaker.

 

As for Origin, that's also off limits for me. In addition to being no less obnoxious than some of the stuff Ubisoft has done, people have been locked out of being able to play their games because they got banned from EA message boards and it scans your PC and transmits personal data to third parties. Just google around a bit and prepare to be disgusted. I canceled my Battlefield 3 pre-order after reading about it and skipped Mass Effect 3 entirely. I don't want that crap on my hard drive.

Edited September 6, 2012 by Rooker75

[lonewolfkai]

Wow, Vagrant0 is like reading my mind or something. He has hit the nail on the head so many times and on so many nails that it's not even funny. It's cause his meme post.... erm, I mean... his post count is so high.

 

Yeah, Steam is more the lesser of evils than accepted. I still don't do Steam myself. I am one of those that do not like things being put into my computer without me knowing what it is first. Call it what you will, but to me, when something is put into your files and registry without you knowing, that's malware.

 

For DRM, I'd even go as far as to say because of it piracy has actually multipled dramatically just to avoid the issues already being discussed here.

 

In Diablo3's case, I'd also like to add that a lot of people hated on the game because it just wasn't as good as it was being made out to be and was a game that should have been made 10 years ago. It wasn't a game that took 10 years to develop with today's gaming environment/expectations in mind. It was made with the era of D2 in mind and that just doesn't work anymore.

[Halororor]

I don't especialy mind. I'd much rather have DRM than pirates thinking they can steal whatever they like. You don't complain about shopkeepers locking up do you? you wouldn't simply walk into a jewelers, snatch something, and walk out screaming "ITS MY RIGHTS ON THE INTERNET!" Pirates are scum. Worthless criminal scum. If I have to suffur through DRM to make it a little harder for them to commit their crimes, so be it.

 

I'm having a hard time deciding whether this post is serious or not.

 

So I'm just going to go with serious. You do realise that, if anything, uPlay likely increased the rate of piracy for Ubisoft games, right? uPlay is an absolute nightmare that only effects legit customers. Those pirates you talk about have an easy time of it by stripping out the DRM while us legit people have to suffer on with it.

[Vagrant0]

As for Origin, that's also off limits for me. In addition to being no less obnoxious than some of the stuff Ubisoft has done, people have been locked out of being able to play their games because they got banned from EA message boards and it scans your PC and transmits personal data to third parties. Just google around a bit and prepare to be disgusted. I canceled my Battlefield 3 pre-order after reading about it and skipped Mass Effect 3 entirely. I don't want that crap on my hard drive.

In fairness, Origin has scaled back its obtrusiveness some due to the bad press, and the instances of people being banned aren't as common, and more people have probably been banned for Mass Effect 3 modifications than for forum posts... Despite the fact that there are some pretty blatant hack users in Battlefield that don't get anything.

 

But in fairness, it's also EA... Which has done almost everything wrong you could do with gaming in the last 10 years. Be it new game editions which are essentially just updated rosters, games which have secret DRM in addition to the advertised DRM, day 1 DLC, no game fixes for months, Origins, a download manager that is always loaded and required with every game, rushed games, games of horrible quality, games that don't even run, ect, ect... Even if Origins was handing out free money, I personally would never use it. The last EA game I bought was Spore, and it has sat on my shelf ever since... I don't really count DA:O as an EA game since it was mostly maintained by bioware... But I didn't bother with the second one or any of the DLC. EA has taken all the money they're going to get from me unless something comes along and I find myself needing a copy of a game for some special reason.

 

 

 

But yeah, while DRM models generally only penalize the paying customer, and may have some minor element of encouraging people to seek out ways to just get around the DRM so they can play their game, legally or not, I'm not really willing to buy the argument that DRM is a valid reason for outright piracy. It seems like a contradiction to say that xxx game is being boycotted because of company yyy's DRM scheme, but you still play it illegally. If you're really boycotting a game, don't pirate it, don't play it, and tell everyone who is interested in the game that the company doesn't deserve their money nor their attention. It's just kinda how boycotting works... It defeats the purpose when you play it anyway and talk about how good of a game it is so that your friends buy it... Or just leads to a larger piracy issue when you suggest that they just pirate it to stick it to the man. The best solution is to just ignore the game entirely so that the company does not have a much ground with the "our sales suck because piracy" argument.

 

That and most people who pirate games just simply don't feel like paying for them, DRM or no.

[lonewolfkai]

I dunno Vag. I disagree somewhat with you on that second part. Nearly all the pirates I've talked to online say the only reason they pirate the game is to avoid the DRM junk put in with them. In fact, most of them have actually bought a legit copy first. As you stated, DRM avoidance is not the only reason for piracy, typically money is the issue, but it would be hard to flat out deny that as one of the reasons for doing it.

 

I also don't think ignoring a game or company will help this problem. If people were to flat out ignore the game, the company might think that the market just does not like the game or games the company produces, completely unaware that people are ignoring it because of their DRM. People will have to write the companies and tell them why they are boycotting.

[Wolves425]

The only ones to suffer from DRM is the legit players who buy the game. The pirates circumvent the DRM and enjoy the game to it fullest without having to hit their head into the wall in annoyance over the DRM screwing you over in the middle of the game because the internet connection failed for 3 seconds.

[davycrockett]

no DRM does work ever since i got a uplay account those marauding buckaneers have given me and my canoe a wide berth iv managed to haul cotton to the isle of wight unaccosted on more than one occasion .