:salute:

I am sorry you did not get the responses you wanted but I hope the tone has at least been OK?

Expanding on from Reese's post with my own experiences with having broadband, or not in good old Oz.

I live 20 minutes outside Canberra in Bungendore, but when it came to getting an internet connection that meant little. The township has ADSL broadband but the 2 estates 3 & 5 minutes up the road your choices were between a local wireless broadband provider (the term broadband very loosely) and Telstra’s sell your 1st born 3G wireless broadband because of the pair gain i.e. Telstra overloads the copper with services in lieu of actually installing adequate infrastructure.

Not having a 1st born I went with the local wireless broadband provider and I had to wait 7 weeks to get my internet connection.

7 weeks later all keen to surf the net and catch up on the world as I know it, but the very next day there is a slight issue. The internet is not available till 08.30 and this happens the next day and the next where the connection was only available starting from 07.30 to 09.00. Upon following this up with my ISP I find that the wireless towers do not have enough battery capacity to cope with the winter overcast days. This took 9 months to be rectified.

I was to find out that this was the least of my problems with this ISP.

There were regular outages of 1-4 hours every 2-4 days and 4-12 hours every 2-3 weeks. The longest outage we had was 3 days. The network was so overloaded the 1500k connection would often be sub 400k.

As bad as this ISP was if it was not for this community oriented ISP I would have had to use a 56k dial service. Remember this is in Australia and a mere 20 minutes outside out national capital.

Then there is just having a internet connection. My wife was a Customs Detector Dog handler and as such we moved a bit in 2.5 years. During this time, not counting the extreme 7 weeks above, I was waiting for a broadband connection for a total of 21 weeks or 5.1 months!

So for every year I would not be able to play for 2 month, or 60 days simply because I was waiting for my broadband to be connected.


These restrictions would not be accepted if it was attached to a book so why is it OK to restrict my use of a game I purchased?

If Ubisoft sold books they would want the library banned as every borrowed book is a lost sale.

No worries TBar, I have same issue here in UK... it works fine till hiccups minutes later, in my case isn't ISP fault but the line it self.

But having such DRM abortion that is been online all the time I would lose my time and mood on the first line hiccup.

Therefore I vote with my wallet and to me this online DRM/games can die that I simply don't care - its just a game and there are alot of others available.

Cheers

If having DRM meant Silent Hunter V was even half of what I hoped it would be I wouldn't have batted an eyelid about it.

Unfortunately it was still rushed, buggy and incomplete and I get left with less than half a game and buyer's remorse.

Where is my incentive to pay Ubisoft money?

I'd be much more sympathetic if the figures on the money lost due to pirating were based on actual facts rather than biased estimations. It's like the gaming version of G***** W******.

Just because I'm feeling frustrated yet again with the whole online thing:
:damn::damn::damn::damn::damn::damn:

(Edited due to ease of misinterpretation)

Global warming is very real my friend. But I'm guessing this will take us off topic... I do agree with you about the rest though.

edit: ok I just realised you could mean it both ways, sorry

Global warming is unfortunately very real, ask the poor pals whose houses in Northern Canada or Alaska starting sinking into mud that was for ages frozen before. Or look at how the navies rally to make use of the almost ice free seas in the arctic region. Those are very good indicators since they are easy to characterize, and studied for many decades.

But back on topic: Here some more interesting reading from a very credible source: U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) working out data for the Congress: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d10423.pdf

I assume this report is probably going to be cited soon or already on many of the major US news papers. In Germany it made it right away into them. In summary: "Damage due to filesharing strongly exaggerated, data sources and methodology used for estimation (by MPAA etc) not faulty and not meaningful". Enjoy the reading!

Think this is going wwwaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyy off topic and could descend into quite a row!! There are some very polarised views about this and I for one am staying well out of it!!!

:timeout:

True!
Sorry about that, I wasn't trying to start a row about THAT particular issue.

I was just trying to make a point about how the losses due to pirating are impossible to track, and I just don't trust the game companies to be objective about it. (I've edited the post to maybe draw less attention to that other thing)

No need to stay out of it. It makes sense to try to see it from their point of view. I certainly would like to know why they are doing this DRM stuff. Maybe if it made sense to me I could buy into it. But I can't make sense of it.

Even with everyone chiming in on this there is still one thing I hadn't seen talked about yet. That is this. What if (don't laugh) years from now SHV is the best dang subsim out there? Only UBI doesn't support it any longer and neither do they release a no DRM patch.

You can understand this. Many of us still play SHIII and will for years to come. But what if SHIII was release with DRM? None of us could play it today if UBI didn't support it.

Unless a patch is release to remove the DRM SHV future is sudden death.

I think the whole piracy issue is overplayed. But I understand the need for some type of copy protection scheme, what I dont understand is why Ubi went for something so burdensome as this?

Is always connected to the internet really the best they could do? If I buy a music CD or movie DVD I dont have to maintain a constant net connection to enjoy that, so I really think something else is at play here. To me it feels like some kind of experiment and since Silent Hunter attracts a small but passionate following we make the perfect guinea pigs. Will this be the business model for the entire media industry going forward?

Also, why would UBi even want to store all saved games on their servers? That dosnt seem effiecient to me. I can easily store my games on my own computer, what purpose is served by remote game saving?

Let me pay my $50 bucks and walk away as friends, I dont need a long term relationship with Ubi over SH5.

That's why some say it's not really about stopping piracy, but about stopping re-sales. They don't want anybody buying a used copy, everybody must buy it new. :shifty:

Out of everything I've heard about it, this makes the most sense.

wetwarev7,

To repeat a post the always online business model is also about forcing the gamer to buy new version of the software every 12 to 18 months and noted restrict 2nd hand sales, which is your legal right.

EA is as always the leader in all things DRM and their take the piss out of the paying customer web page called "Online Service Updates" outlines what you can expect of Ubisoft.

Ubisoft has proven again and again they have no customer focus and I am sure will cut SH5 free after a year with no patch to enable people to play it offline.

Look at how many games are only a year or two old. Of the older ones most are less than 4 years with only a handful older than that.


I have never read a more patronising piece of garbage in my life as this below.

As background information, the games scheduled for shutdown in March and April 2010 represent less than 0.3% of all peak online players across all EA titles. Despite some people's perception, there is a lot of behind-the-scenes work involved with keeping these older games up and running. We would rather our hard-working engineering and IT staff focus on keeping a positive experience for the other 99.7% of customers playing our more popular games. These decisions to retire games is never easy. The EA development teams and operational staff pour their hearts into these games almost as much as the customers playing them and it is hard to see one retired. We hope you have gotten many hours of enjoyment out of the games and we appreciate your ongoing patronage.


May 11th, 2010 Online Service Shutdown
FIFA 08 for PC
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 for PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360
UEFA Euro 2008 for PC

April 15, 2010 Online Service Shutdown
Burnout 3: Takedown for PlayStation 2
Army of Two for PlayStation 3 (Asia only)

Additionally, the shutdown of Xbox LIVE for Original Xbox consoles and games (scheduled for April 15, 2010) will retire online services for the following titles:

Battlefield 2: Modern Combat for Xbox
Burnout 3: Takedown for Xbox
Madden NFL 09 for Xbox

Previously Shut Down Online Service
Arena Football for PlayStation 2 and Xbox
Arena Football™: Road to Glory for PlayStation 2
Armies of Exigo for PC
Burnout Revenge for PlayStation 2 and Xbox
Burnout™ Dominator for PlayStation Portable
Def Jam for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
FIFA 2005 for PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox
FIFA 06 for PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Xbox and Xbox 360
FIFA 07 for PC, PlayStation Portable, PlayStation 2 and Xbox
FIFA World Cup 2006 for PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Xbox and Xbox 360
Facebreaker for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3
Fantasy Football 09 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3
Fight Night Round 2 for PlayStation 2 and Xbox
Fight Night Round 3 for PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable and Xbox
Godfather for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
Goldeneye: Rogue Agent for Nintendo Game Cube, PlayStation 2 and Xbox
Lord of the Rings: Conquest for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
MVP Baseball™ 2005 for PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox
MVP™ 07 NCAA® Baseball for PlayStation 2 and Xbox
Madden NFL 05 for PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox
Madden NFL 06 for PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Xbox and Xbox 360
Madden NFL 07 for PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, Xbox and Xbox 360
Madden NFL 08 for PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, Wii, Xbox and Xbox 360
Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects for PlayStation 2 and Xbox
Medal of Honor Pacific Assault™ for PC
Medal of Honor Rising Sun for PlayStation 2
Mercenaries 2: World in Flames for PC
NASCAR® 05: Chase for the Cup™ for PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox
NASCAR® 06: Total Team Control for PlayStation 2 and Xbox
NASCAR® 07 for PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox and Xbox 360
NASCAR® 08 for PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
NASCAR® 09 for PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 (Europe Only)
NBA Live 05 for PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox
NBA Live 06 for PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Xbox and Xbox 360
NBA Live 07 for PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Xbox and Xbox 360
NBA Live 08 for PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable and Wii
NBA Live 09 for Wii (Europe only)
NBA Street (2007) for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
NBA Street V3 for PlayStation 2 and Xbox
NCAA® Football 05 for PlayStation 2 and Xbox
NCAA® Football 06 for PlayStation 2 and Xbox
NCAA® Football 07 for PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable and Xbox
NCAA® Football 08 for PlayStation 2 and Xbox
NCAA® Football 09 for PlayStation 2
NCAA® March Madness 06 for PlayStation 2 and Xbox
NCAA® March Madness™ 2005 for PlayStation 2 and Xbox
NCAA® March Madness® 07 for PlayStation 2, Xbox and Xbox 360
NFL Head Coach for PC, PlayStation 2, Xbox
NFL Street 2: Unleashed for PlayStation 2 and Xbox
NFL Street 3 for PlayStation 2
NFL Tour for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
NHL® 05 for PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox
NHL® 06 for PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox
NHL® 07 for PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Xbox and Xbox 360
NHL® 08 for PC
NHL® 08 for PlayStation 2
Need for Speed: Carbon for PlayStation Portable
Need for Speed: ProStreet for PlayStation Portable
Need for Speed: Underground for PlayStation 2
Need for Speed: Underground 2 for PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox
Need for Speed: Most Wanted for PlayStation Portable and Xbox
Simpsons for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
Tiger Woods PGA TOUR® 05 for PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox
Tiger Woods PGA TOUR® 06 for PC, PlayStation 2, Xbox and Xbox 360
Tiger Woods PGA TOUR® 07 for PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable and Xbox
Tiger Woods PGA TOUR® 08 for PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable
TimeSplitters 3: Future Perfect for Xbox and PlayStation 2
Total Club Manager 06 for PlayStation 2
UEFA Champions League™ 2004-2005 for PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox
UEFA Champions League™ 2006-2007 for PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable
UEFA Champions League™ 07 for PC and Xbox 360

Considering Ubi's behavior so far, paying for the right to hook up to their server to be able to play SH5 is a bad investement. Not only it is widely reported an unfinished, buggy product, but there is no guarantee of how long Ubi will continue maintaining acccess to their servers.

If you think you are buying by paying for this game, you are badly misinformed.