News - Ubisoft confirms DRM strategy for PC games

[HEXUS]

All Ubisoft PC games will now require the user to be online at all times.

Read more.

[dangel]

"What will happen if I lose my Internet connection when I play the game?
If you lose your Internet connection the game will pause while it tries to reconnect. If the Internet Connection is unable to resume you can continue the game from where you left off or from the last saved game.

Will I need to be online the whole time when I play the game? Including for single player?
Yes. You will need to have an active Internet connection to play the game, for all game modes. "


Am I being thick but.. aren't those two statements in conflict?

This is starting to sound very very stupid.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

dear god

[gtech]

Laughable... easy get-a-round, i'll get the games from Blackbeard RRRRR.


off topic why does'nt my portable id show trophies???

[Ferral]

On paper this is a good idea, in practice though not good at all. Once again PC gaming takes a blow, yeah every company has a right to protect their IP but this is going a little to far.

This is where console gaming should come into its own, unless they do the same

[scaryjim]

Am I being thick but.. aren't those two statements in conflict?

Yes, those two statement appear to be in direct conflict to me. I don't know if it's a reproduction error by Hexus or a misproduction error by Ubisoft, but I think there's a bit missing and it should read something like "If the Internet Connection is unable to resume you can continue the game from where you left off or from the last saved game next time you connect to the internet and play the game."

And this is utterly ridiculous. Internet connection goes down? No games for you. Fault on your telephone line? No games for you. Going on Holiday with your laptop? No games for you.

What about lag? Will a high ping mean that your game keeps pausing while it checks you're still online? And how much bandwidth is this *continuous* check going to eat: I'm sure the individiual packets are small, but if it's a continuous check you have a straight 8 hour gaming session one Sunday...?

[dangel]

I love how this is being sold too - "look, we got rid of all that invasive kernel level protection that screwed up PCs and replaced it with big brother software that requires you to be connected to the 'collective' to play at ALL"

I mean, yay for cloud based saves - it's a 'nice to have' - but there's no other value for the consumer there at all and you'd think they'd of learned from Steam that 'offline mode' is bloody essential. Worse, there's no technical reason whatsoever as to why they haven't implemented this aside from blind-ass paranoia and stupidity. When will companies learn that the way you defeat piracy if by simply adding value for your legitimate users - carrot is better than stick or do you just beat your children and hope they'll not become Dexter later in life?

[Sirrush]

So much for my Settlers 7 pre-order. :/

[GheeTsar]

Sorry if this is covered in the article (games section is blocked here), but what happens in 5-10 years time when you fancy a nostalgic play though of an old game? Will the authentication servers still be active?

This is turning into a bit of a vicious cycle - piracy drives ever more draconian DRM, which in turn provides a bigger incentive to break the DRM.

[jonathan_phang]

Sorry if this is covered in the article (games section is blocked here), but what happens in 5-10 years time when you fancy a nostalgic play though of an old game? Will the authentication servers still be active?

At least they were considerate in this sense. In the Q&A they state the following:

What if Ubisoft decides not run these online services in the future? Will my game stop working?
If any service is stopped, we will create a patch for the game so that the core game play will not be affected.

Still think that is a really rubbish idea. I'm actually a fan of most Ubisoft games, but will really think teice about continuing to give over my money when they decide to do things like this. It just really annoys me. Thing is, they wont stop it, and more than likely, similar measures will pop up too from other publishers.

OTOH, there could be a freaking huge backlash to this (hopefully) and so much of a boycott - and you know someone will start another pointless petition - that it scares the bejesus out of other similar schemes popping up...

[chrislmc]

Outrageous and stupid. Outrageously stupid.

[shaithis]

Ubisoft about to lose a lot of custom....

Oh well, their loss really as this is going to anger a lot of people.

[cheesemp]

This really annoys me - If I get a console game - I can trade it in, ok I accept I can't do that with PC games BUT for that I want cheap prices and no stupid rules like this. I regularly game on my laptop - What happens when I'm away from Wifi?

Going to ignore Ubisoft from now on both PC and xbox.

[lodore]

I hate the idea of cloud services tbh. current internet connections (at home at least) arent reliable enough for them.
I genrally only play console games because i dont like crap installed on my PC.
there must be a way of protecting there software without all this crap. the only people who lose out of this is paying customers.
if you buy a legit dvd you get the video about piracy and how its illegal but on the pirated version you dont get that. stupid isnt it?

I did like the disney dvd i got thou. it didnt have the piracy video that you cant skip instead inside the case it said thank you for buying a legit dvd.

[AGTDenton]

Why cant Game Publishers/Developers design a similar activation style system to that of most Microsoft products? After all there is a team of developers at their disposal.
The vast majority of MS's software does not require the user to be perminantly online to use it (Windows/Office etc..), it doesnt contain any DRM and nor do their CD's have any anti-copy protection. (I know this is not the case with the 'Microsoft Games Studio' releases, which is daft!!!)

If you cant activate your software online they provide a phone number you can call.
If you want to download updates manually it does a quick check to see that you have a genuine copy. Easy and relatively stress free!

A PC may never go online at all in some network environments, but I dont see Microsoft pausing the use of Windows or Office until you can get online, thats just absurd

MS have got a fairly good system in place. However, all that being said we still dont know what will happen when XP is fully unsupported. There are people who still use DOS, there are people who still use Win 9x/NTx so I suspect there will be a people hoping to use XP for many more years to come. People paying the full Retail price of Windows XP back in the day will want their investment to last.

I like playing my old games, carmageddon/deus ex etc... heck even Doom 2 on occasion. And its nice my £30 10+ years ago is still getting some use (and amazingly still installs and works). But some games I have I know we will not be able to play soon because the publisher will either go bust or they will believe there are no players still playing it. I was amazed recently to come accross the amount of people still playing Doom 2, and that people still make maps as though the game came out last week!!!

Also these game publishers love reporting record sales/profit on some games (GTA IV, MW:2) so I find it really hard to see why they never spend the money on a decent system.

I think the publishers/developers need to come up with some non profit body that they fund so that a proper system can be implemented once and for all. PC gaming is dying rapidly because of this, if they want to continue to sell to us then they need to stop messing around with this rediculous DRM nonsence.
They should also have a system in place to release a patch 10 years since its original release so that people can continue to use their product unsupported if they want to. Also they could re-sell it in the £5 game section, I often buy old games I didnt have time to buy at the time of original release. I recently bought the original Tropico series and thought it was brilliant despite being 8/9 years old.

Publishers/Developers need to stop treating their paying gamers like scum and start consulting us on the real issue.

Im nearly at the point where I actually want PC gaming to die to just get it over with. It will hurt hardware manufacturers as well because suddenly there is no need for all this power or flagship models, and we'd all be ok with pentium Pro's and Riva TNT's again (ok maybe not but hopefully gamers will see my point).

Rant over.

[kalniel]

Why cant Game Publishers/Developers design a similar activation style system to that of most Microsoft products? After all there is a team of developers at their disposal.
The vast majority of MS's software does not require the user to be perminantly online to use it (Windows/Office etc..), it doesnt contain any DRM and nor do their CD's have any anti-copy protection. (I know this is not the case with the 'Microsoft Games Studio' releases, which is daft!!!)

Are we talking about the same MS products here? They're full of DRM that queries your computer and tracks hardware changes etc.

I agree the support around it is much better, but few publishers can afford to spend the amount that MS does on it's support system - after all, most of MS's revenue comes from business, not private individuals interested in playing games.

A PC may never go online at all in some network environments, but I dont see Microsoft pausing the use of Windows or Office until you can get online, thats just absurd

Heard of Windows activation?

Also these game publishers love reporting record sales/profit on some games (GTA IV, MW:2) so I find it really hard to see why they never spend the money on a decent system.

Most publishers make a loss, not profit.