That sounds like a very poor way of doing business.

Nevermind that the 90% figure is doubtful, just think about this:

-You have 100.000k established customers.
-You have 900.000k non-customers, people who might not ever buy you anything but still a potential market.

option 1: piss on the back of your established customers in the hope that they will keep buying anyway AND that it will appeal to non-customers.

option 2: refine your product, add tangible bonuses, basically cuddle your existing customers to keep them AND appeal to non-customers.

I've worked in some shops, and shoplifting is pretty much accepted as a fact of life. Some light measures are taken, but shoplifting remains and will remain.
Even if the amount of money lost is sometimes staggering, and the difference with pirated digital content is that those losses are real for the shop.
We did take some actions to try to limit it, like the magnetic thingys and mirrors, but I have never seen a shop manager in his right mind adopt some anti-shoplifting measures that would have been detrimental to legit customers.

Now of course, the day people accept to be treated like potential thieves instead of potential buyers things might change.

Well its obvious from the last line

That he feels with such a high % NOT buying then thats the end of the SH series - although I doubt they finish one then move straight on to the next anyway so they must do something inbetween - well you would hope so anyway

IF such a high figure has the devs worried then Ubi should be worried too
Rightly so
Tis only Ubis PC releases this year getting this OSP not console releases and I would guess they are a far bigger market than a PC sim
So why the PC games ?
Console games get cracked too and have been since day one

I think its far to say ALL of us can live with a one time net activation at install but not continual connection

Its a shame the dev feels that way and we have to feel the way we do about OSP but as Boris said the game will be cracked within days and us poor schmuks who buy the game will be the losers

I guess with only a month to go they will have to decide one way or other real soon

Personally I wouldnt mind waiting if release was delayed to remove the OSP
As most who have voted in the polls on here will be waiting till OSP removed anyway before they buy and that coulld be some time unless ubi gets its head out of the sand
And by that time the game will be in the bargain bin for a lot less than at release

Hear, hear!

Hmmm, just think about what it would mean if that dev was actually right. If there were 9 illegal copies for every legal one and each of those 9 copies were replaced by a legal one and if this was du to the amazing AWESOME-DRM they are currently putting into place and that makes everybody happy and want more, more, MORE of this stuff they should make TONS of money. In fact, as they calculate current games in a way that they are profitable with the "90% loss to piracy" this would surely mean that I can then buy SH5 for 5 bucks at release. Oh what a wonderful world! :smug:

#1. Is an outstanding post. Will comment on the thread later today :salute:

problem is, piracy is making pc games unviable. even though i voted against drm in the petition thread if the numbers are a quarter of what the dev is talking about you can't blame them from trying to make a profit from their games. ultimately if they can't find a way of pushing the number of sold units up then developers will start pulling out of pc games completely and then we won't have any sub games other than indie ones. i've already seen at my local 'game' store that the pc section is getting smaller and smaller each year - now i have trouble finding the pc games in there. so sadly i'd rather have drm than no pc games at all or a very limited selection. its bloody sad really.

Although anyone who is against online DRM is seen as being a luddite trying to hold back inevitable digital evolution, the reality is that for me anyway, this is a case of being treated fairly.

With both Silent hunter III and Silent HunterIV, I entered into a basic contract with Ubisoft. I paid them $49, and they gave me a game that I could load on my computer and play at my leisure.

With Silent hunter V, they have changed the terms of that contract. Now, I give them my $49, and they will give me a game that I cannot play at my leisure on my computer; I can only play it if I am connected to the internet and if the Ubi servers are up.

The terms of this contract are unacceptable to me so I choose not to purchase the game. If the future is playing games while being connected to the Publisher's servers, so be it. The Publisher should then put the entire game on their servers and not charge me $49 to buy it, but instead charge me either a 'pay as you use' fee each time I log onto the server, or a small monthly fee for unlimited access.

That way, I don't have a redundant drink coaster in a box filled with useless junk. :)

Oh and, the veiled threat of large publishers leaving the PC market is bull****.

-as long as there's a decent profit to be made, they'll stay, even if piracy is 99%.
-if they leave anyway, small publishers will blossom again (imagine if Enigma: Rising Tide had been released in a world with no SH3 or SH4).
-if small publishers make a decent profit, large publishers will come back to the PC market to get the money.
-rinse and repeat.

Mate, please tell me you didnt receive this via PM. If so, dont you think you should have kept it to yourself?
IMO Posting PMs on the forum is pretty disrespectful, that message was intended for you - not for everyone.
Its called a 'private message' for a reason.

Yup, Ju88 is right.
This whole thing does not reflect well on Subsim.

90% piracy is a grossly exagerated figure.

We know piracy is a major problem. However, Ubi is using the piracy problem to ramrod their OSP down our throats. Using a one time online authentication is acceptable.

What we are beginning to see now, is that our protest is having effect.

Like several people said on this thread, the best way of keeping customers is with honey, not draconian OSP junk. Loyalty is earned. By trying to force their buggy ODP, Ubi has lost loyalty BIG time.

Mystery Dev has done Ubi a great service by showing their concerns.
Where are the marketing & PR people who should be dialoging with us?Writing another diktat?

Just to remind them. Full time online is unacceptable!

If what our developer X says is true (i.e. 900000 copies pirated against 100000 sold), and the proposed antidotes (i.e. various DRM implementations) will continue to stay as intrusive as they are, then what we'll see in the not-too-distant future is the death of commercial PC game development. And you can thank pirates for this, _not_ UBI or game companies in general!

I mean, take our beloved writer Brag (and his publishers) for example. What would the said fine gentleman do, if I went out and sold unlicensed copies of his books for $1 apiece? UBI's position is in no way different, so they'll of course try and stop a bunch of a**holes copying their games as well - a standpoint I can personally understand completely.

But what will happen in general if no-one invents better DRM methods? Well then we PC gamers are just f**ked plain and simple, because our (per se rightful) refusal of buying games with intrusive and / or plain bad copy protection and / or copyright enforcement mechanisms will just force the companies to abandon PC games altogether, and concentrate on console development instead. So the future's not looking very bright at all I'm afraid, regardless of whether you guys decide to buy SH5 or not :-?

But hey, at least DftD is still being developed... :03:

yep.... go open source...

I disagree
 

MMmmm Yes and no, had I disclosed who it was I could see your point, but I don't think (unless he lives with his head in the sand) he would really think it wouldn't be posted...Maybe I'm just nuts for thinking this but like he said "You don't know me" and I don't know him...So anything he is saying to me he can be saying to anyone...because he has no idea who he is talking to. I'm just some guy who got a hold of his address and it isn't like he said anything in confidence to me...again how do you say something in confidence when you have never even talked to this person before online or otherwise...I do not and will not even come close to feeling guilty for posting this...there is no way that he could consider a reasonable expectation of privacy in this situation....period. There is no question that he knew it would be put out.

Never mind trying to second-guess his expectations, what about your consideration for his privacy? that is what Im not seeing here.

Anyway Mate -The bottom line is this, the devs will almost certainly stop responding to PMs if we go around posting them publicly. :dead:
hell even I will stop responding to PM's if there is no respect for system.