Ubisoft's DRM Currently Winning Against Pirates

good for you ubisoft, you think you've won while the people wh actually buy the game are suffering from your stupidity and the ones who wont buy your game will just play it any way, be it yesterday or in 2 weeks time... do you think they care? Chances are people who play the cracked version where never gona buy it in the first place, and the people who buy it, probably never contemplated the idea of downloading it... you best chance with "pirates" is that in a few months/years someone downloads it, plays it, likes it and the next day he goes to the store and: "hey look whats this on the discount bin for 5$, sweet!!!" this is a war you wont win... the best thing you can do is leave them be... just sell games cheaper... so more people can buy it...

I didn't buy BioShock because of its DRM limited installs...

I also wouldn't buy a game that cannot be played offline in singleplayer mode...

keep your smirk when you see the Sales Chart Ubi..

Okay, viable criticism can be given of DRM. But it turns out it works. Even if it requires unpleasant measures, I still support publishers in weeding out pirates.

Well thats Ubisoft off my shoping list.There should be a big warning sticker about this sort of DRM, any DRM come to that. People should know exactly what they are getting for the money they are spending.

Mactronix

It won't last, they already proved it was possible to bypass the DRM, now they just need to find all the areas that need bypassing. Its not even been a week yet its far to early to by advertising their winning, don't they know boasting about it will only make the crackers try harder?

I'd give it a week before they come up with a fully functional hack.

Making this hackers mad is only going to get there game cracked that much faster. This guys will always find a way around DRM.

Sorry, mine works... no glitches so far. Been playing most of the missions and a bit of the campaign

Assasins Creed II had a working crack a month ago. I saw a friend beat the game.

damn, i was real keen on buying SH5 and ACII - right up to the point the DRM got mentioned - so now i WONT be buying the games and i WONT be pirating it - id love to play the games but its no longer worth the hassle - ill go spend the money i would have otherwise spent on the games on registration for my car - lesser of 2 evils

they should sell the game over steam without the DRM, and marry the license to the steam account that purchased the game, and provide some kind of encrypted authentication everytime the player logs into the game.
No disc checks, no fuss, just similar to how Xbox live does checking.

@codefuapprentice. How evil are you? I don't want to rent the game (at full price). I want to be able to buy it and sell it should I need to. Steam is an awful form of DRM and if you do not see it as DRM. That makes it more insipid. It is a right to be able to buy and sell. I’ll count you as one of the fallen of the cause.

These companies want to give the government more laws and they then use the new powers in ways they never said they would for uses the companies never intended.

To all those I say,
"My civil liberty is worth more than all copyright law and the content it fails to protect combined."

Another developer to my Boycott list, problem its getting bigger, thank god for Indie games scene!!

Hm.

Let's say I produce a widget that I want to sell - that's how I make my living, support my family, etc. Is it fair if others copy the widget or should I try to protect it?

Expand that to a small company, with a few people working hard to produce widgets. Should they lose income just because a bunch of people want these widgets but don't want to pay for them?

Ok. How about a corporation? Faceless and powerful (I'm thinking Activision at the moment with the Infinity Ward situation).

At what point does it become acceptable to use something you haven't paid for?

Or perhaps if you want to play with widgets, should you have to pay for them and accept the restrictions that widget makers decide to put on them?

Maybe these widgets get produced in a way that makes them only usable by one customer. Is that fair?

I don't know the answers. But liberties aren't just infringed by corporations.

I've not too sure if this is all of them; but yes the list if getting bigger.
http://forum.daemon-tools.cc/gamedb.php?letter=A

If anyone know of any other DRM list please link it here and or PM me.

If the complaint against Steam that it makes things too hard to resell etc is particularly valid then surely that should just drive a bit of a price distinction between the online purchase and a resellable one (assuming you aren't allowed to sell a Steam account including game).
Currently for new games Steam doesn't ever seem particularly competitive (in GBP anyway)

It's different arguing over the price of something than saying it ought to be free to take.

Well, for a “Ubisoft game crack DRM” story you could call off topic.

First up, I do not download. I am not a criminal and do not want to pay for a product and be treated like one.

To quote this guy off of Slashdot.
Why do artists get to control their creation after they sell it? Manufacturers don't. Crafts makers don't. If I sell you a car I can't tell you how fast to drive it, where to drive it, or what brand of oil you can use for oil changes. Just because something is "artistic" or "creative" (a property that is ill defined and could apply to anything) should not give you special rights. You made something, you sold it, they can now do whatever they want with it.

http://politics.slashdot.org/story [...] ?art_pos=1

All copyright things for games , dvds, CDs aside. In the UK the laws that are being passed for corporate protection that will be used to undermine basic freedom.
http://www.pirateparty.org.uk/blog [...] ven-worse/
Also things like deep packet inspection on your data is unwarranted surveillance.

Its not about the games you play it's the laws they will misuse to control you.

If you want the damn game, then just buy the damn game. I purchased Bioshock and really, really don't give a crap about the DRM. We know it's there, we know what it does and it's hardly hidden.

By the same level we should all ditch Google products and kick iTunes out of our pc's but we don't. JUST BUY the game.

P.s. Currently playing Supreme Commander 2 and I have no idea if it has DRM as I'm too busy PLAYING it.

That's your opinion excalibur1814, and you are of course entitled to it.
Some of us can see the principle here though, and it matters to us.
You may as well tell a vegitarian to just eat the meat as they know they like it.
There shouldnt be terms and conditions set as to how and when you can use a product you have purchased, regardless of what that product is.
Mactronix

@waxdart
Evil?....i was just looking at how they could avoid needing such heavy restrictions, like on the 360 for example: you can play your games offline as long as you're logged in to your profile, no connection required, the license is only used by 1 profile, and should they implement some way of reselling DD, you'd be relieved of that license completely, should you decide to sell it.
Renting?...doesn't that imply you only have it for so long? before you can't play it anymore....i didn't say anything about renting, and steam last time i checked...only sells games

@mactronix
If the publisher is up front about it and says the software is (for example) effectively only useful for one user and has no intrinisic value otherwise then I'll factor that in when I decide if I want to buy it.
Pretty much everything is sold with restrictions, and they vary enormously. Enforcing those restrictions is where I think things are getting more murky.

@excalibur1814
Thank you. That's exactly how I felt about Bioshock too.

@codefuapprentice. (Maybe not evil)
You don't buy games from steam. You never really own them. You lease the licence to be able to access their systems in order to play. Off line support put back, in due to lackluster apathetic customer demand.

As with all on-line access DRM. What happens when they turn of the DRM servers? I know they say they'll make a patch to unlock it; but if the company has been bought out from under them. They may not have the rights or may be locked in by a contract and not able to do so. Also in 15 years time what then?

I've been playing old games on Dosbox. If these had any DRM, I would no longer be able to do that. When I find my Sam & Max CD I'll be playing that too. Hope dosbox works as I don't think win7 will like it. I can work around these issue.
I cannot work around a game that wants online DRM authentication from a company that no longer exists on an OS emulator for an os that 10years+ old.


@excalibur1814
If you give 2.54 cm, they’ll take 0.62 m
Not as catchy in metric!

If you want the game(i did); but to not want 3rd party SecuROM* which locks your machine up because you have two dvd drives. You cannot uninstall it. It monitors your system. Circumvents and causes compatibility issues with firewalls. Can be cracked and used as a point on entry to you machine. What then?

*or any other 1st,3rd party DRM

Sorry, I can't role over and take it. It maybe just "a game" to you. Its a rights issue for me. Games are just a tiny part of it.

As soon as people start comparing the subsequent use of physical products (such as a toilet repaired by a plumber) to the use of IP (esp. copying it - possibly even selling copies of it onwards) things tend to get a bit dodgy. If you're going to compare two things that have major differences then you should at least address the main ones.

Including DRM that stops people playing things properly is a bad thing - it's as much trade descriptions etc as anything else. If it's there, it should be made clear. If people don't like it, they ought to be able to return things etc.