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+--- Thread: DRM again... (/showthread.php?tid=5537)
DRM again... - Dark Jaguar - 19th February 2010
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=235290&site=pcg
Advantages to this form? Unlimited installs, and server backup of saved games. Disadvantages? Constant everlasting online access through the duration of a single player game, the slightest hiccup resulting in beign kicked out of the game to the menu, damn your progress.
Now, while I'm all for server backups of saved data as a matter of advancement, it should be in addition to a local save, not replacing it, with it synchronizing when it can get online, and not otherwise.
It won't be long before pirates circumvent this anyway, and THAT'S the one everyone is going to download, so seriously this as a pirating measure won't accomplish anything. Never mind that Ubisoft will, inexorably, be abandoning this fairly quickly. There's just too little usability for the average user. Forget playing this game on the go on your laptop. Forget normal network instability that occasionally disconnects someone.
Valve's upcoming "digital tagging" of games with unique IDs letting them instantly find the guilty uploader is probably the best possible method, and I'm still awaiting their release of it.
DRM again... - A Black Falcon - 19th February 2010
Advantages to this atrocity towards PC gamers? What advantages? There are no advantages...
Quote:Advantages to this form? Unlimited installs, and server backup of saved games.
The first of those isn't an advantage, anything without DRM has it. The second's not really an advantage either, because your save files are at their server's mercy, and you can't back them up yourself even if you want to. That isn't true with normal save files.
Fortunately the pirates will crack this open, and as many people on the internet have said, there's no question here that pirates will have a better experience than people who actually bought the game. If Ubisoft is trying to kill off their PC game business, well, it may succeed, we'll see... or maybe people will be stupid and buy lots of copies of this stuff anyway, but honestly, I hope not. This kind of action should not be encouraged.
DRM again... - Dark Jaguar - 20th February 2010
Read my entire post before complaining that I missed something. I kinda covered that. As to the first thing, I meant an advantage over competing DRM solutions.
As to the second, server backups of saves, as well as inherit portability when you go over to another gamer's house, is nothing but a plus. The disadvantage, as we both said, is simply that they removed local game saves when they could have had both.
And yes, this will be circumvented on day 1. This is all basically busy work so that their "real" bosses, stock holders, are convinced they are working.
DRM again... - A Black Falcon - 20th February 2010
I wasn't complaining, I was just saying that people shouldn't be saying anything positive about this, even temporarily. That's all. But yeah, you do also counter those arguments, that is true.
DRM again... - Dark Jaguar - 20th February 2010
Well I'm just giving a full honest assessment of it, and that requires at least admitting some positives even if the execution is terrible.
I'm certainly not going to defend piracy, but it is a sad thing to realize that yes, pirates will have the better experience. In fact, it's to such an extreme that I myself, should I get a game protected by this method, would probably legally buy a copy and then find a pirate mod for the game to remove the copyright protection. It wouldn't be the first time. The very fact that I occasionally resort to such a paradox speaks volumes.
DRM again... - A Black Falcon - 21st February 2010
Yeah, that even you would do that definitely does say something, that's true. It's really sad that they're going to these lengths, when I would be very surprised if it made much of any positive impact on sales, between the hatred the move has gotten and the inevitable fan/pirate patches that remove the DRM...
DRM again... - A Black Falcon - 5th March 2010
Well, surprise surprise -- the DRM was cracked in under a day after the first game using it was released. That took a long time. Must really have been worth all the effort and fan-hate that it generated, huh, Ubisoft? :)
http://www.infoaddict.com/ubisofts-new-drm-cracked-in-under-25-hours
DRM again... - Dark Jaguar - 11th March 2010
Wow, that was faster than even I anticipated.
Is it me or is that "official message" from those hackers just hilariously stupid looking? I mean they talk like, well, children, and the whole format looks like a cheap BBS page from the DOS days of the internet.
DRM again... - A Black Falcon - 11th March 2010
Well, evidently the hacking isn't 100% so you can't play EVERYTHING in the games yet with the hacked versions, but still, it's pretty good to have something even semi-functional out the very day after release... and they have worked on it more since.
As for the messages, having hacker group release notes be in text files with ASCII art at the top of the page (generally spelling out their logo, if you can make it out) is old hacker-group tradition that goes back decades. They aren't about to change that tradition now. :)
DRM again... - A Black Falcon - 22nd April 2010
And now the DRM is 100% hacked. Awesome!
http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/54405/Did-Ubisofts-DRM-Get-Cracked