fair point, still I would have asked for his permission first.

whats this "chances in the gaming industry" anyway.
i dont see no progress, just regression into a dark age of control over the masses.

Good points dcb :up:

Finally it's been understood...of course he knew. I stated time and again he had no reasonable expectation of privacy! and he KNEW IT!!!!! now would you please lay off all this crap and quit sending me hate mail!!! as though I broke damn cardinal GD rule!!!

Anyone who thinks that the Dev was sending that message to Mr. Hamm and that he was not going to tell anybody else must be living somewhere over the rainbow. It was sent for a reason.

Maybe we should all just calm down a bit. Attacking each other benefits no man.

The Management

Who is sending you hate mail?:hmmm:
I was pointing out that its bad practice to publish PM's. but in this case yes, I will stand down.
I may disagreewith you - but I certainlty dont hate you for it.

Consoles continue to get an unfair bad rap...

The games can be sophisticated if developers make them so, mouse and keyboards can be attached, harddrives can hold moddable files, resolutions are HD quality now. What are you waiting for? :hmmm:

Go ahead and move the game to consoles. I'd rather see that than this PC DRM nonsense. In fact, I'd be happy to have a standardized distribution platform and not have to worry about devoting half of my time to optimizing graphic settings and earning a half-degree in IT graphics geekery.

Oh, and if anyone thinks UbiSoft will suffer from lacking sales on SH5 you're kidding yourselves. PC games are not where UbiSoft makes its money; SH5 won't even appear as a blip on their income statement.

This... made me laugh ! :salute:

You guys act as if console games dont get pirated either.

He said 90% of Ubisoft pc games are pirated?
Something doesn't sound right about that figure... :hmmm:

It's been dealt with....don't sweet it.

I see many wrong points in that message.

Sure, I feel for him, but appeal to pity alone is not going to change my mind.

First off, he assumes that this DRM will help against piracy, which has not been proved. In fact, if we look at past examples, digital distribution is one of the few things that have helped.

Second off, he implies that paying customers are to blame. If I understood it correctly, his argument is that, since pirates steal games, paying customers have to keep paying regardless product quality or user experience and in spite of being treated like potential thieves. Otherwise, the industry will collapse and it will be THEIR fault.

In my opinion, if anything, it's the publishers' fault for not finding and applying the correct incentive. Games with actual gameplay, that look and feel finished and solid, that offer great chances of expansion through mods and that address a community directly instead of trying to please everyone and failing in every front have always been must-buys for me. I bought them for me, I bought them for friends, I bought them again when the GOTY edition was released just so I wouldn't have to hunt for patches... Or even, games that require a constant connection but actually use it to give you extra content, say a solid multiplayer experience, quality DLC, stats, achievements, etc.

Examples for this are previous SH titles, the Jagged Alliance and X-Com series, the Total War series (even though E:TW started committing some of the mentioned sins), the Civilization series, and many others.

Convenience is a very strong selling point. I purchased at least five copies of SH3 for me and my friends. Three of them ended up being cracked because the DRM did not work in 64-bit systems. This was a case of piracy being MORE CONVENIENT THAN A LEGIT PURCHASE, and this is obviously a bad decision.

Having to stay online constantly while you play does not prevent piracy. Activation could, I give you that. Even activation every time you launch. But 24 / 7 can have many issues. One is that, if you check the Ubi forums, their servers are down frequently for hours on end. That means you can't play. Another is if you play from a laptop on holidays or at school or in any place where a net connection is not readily available. I'm not even taking into account random internet downtime from your ISP, a network card that dies or a cable that breaks, all issues that should not keep you away from a single-player game.

Steam got convenience right. The price I pay is having to activate online and needing a connection going at least once every fifteen days. What do I get in return? I forget about CDs completely. I forget about CD keys completely. If I reinstall my OS or upgrade my computer, I don't have to manually reinstall all my games: I just tell Steam to download and install them all. I get achievements, a friends list, MP games that are easy to set up, in-game chat with people who are not playing, the possibility of buying games without actually going to the store, pre-downloading things before release, infinite availability in any territory and any day of the week.

In other words, steam is MORE CONVENIENT THAN PIRATING. Pirating a game is harder work than buying it on steam and getting done with it. But Ubi's scheme, it honestly looks easier to buy the game and crack it so you get the same experience without relying on the whim of their servers.

And of course, if buying and cracking is easier than just buying... Why not skip the buying part altogether?

But I suppose that means I'm a terrible person. I have bought every single SH title ever released, but it is MY fault that each has been buggier than the last, more simplified, subject to DRM issues with the stupid StarForce drivers, requiring enormous patches just for destroyers to do their job, more limited in content...

It is my fault, so I deserve to be treated like a potential thief. Pirates still pirate, just the same as they did before, but it is me, a paying customer, that has to adapt. And if with all that the game fails, guys, it's our fault for not preordering blindly.

This DRM only ensures that people who would have bought it in the first place play legally. That is redundant.

I have cancelled my preorder, I will wait, and one or two days after release I will check two or three torrent sites at random. If I find the game there, I will laugh and yell "I told you".

none of that interests me.
None of that "adds" to the "lonely captain in the boat"-experience of a subsim.

:lol: :agree:

Apparently Ubi is really counting on this OSP thing to work. So, if it gets cracked and doesn't change a thing, OUCH. I wish for this thing to work. At least we'll have for the first time a clear picture about this whole piracy-sales thing. As for offline games why don't they just put in a USB dongle in the box? It's uncrackable. I wouldn't mind paying a bit more for the game to be able to play it on my laptop.