Just received this
 

Apparently Dude is an offensive word in Romania, but that is neither here nor there. For the sake of privacy I will not release which Dev it is, I have have also omitted some parts that may help to identify them. I am just actually shocked he took the time to write me back.


Personally after reading this my feelings have not changed, maybe they should go ahead and go with consoles...after all if they continue to do this with all of their games they will alienate the p.c. market anyway....and they will go out of business

I know I'm not taking this as he meant it...but my feeling is; The game publishers will in fact adapt if you don't buy games that use DRM.

That is sad...Romania has better internet than I do.

I have doubts about the figures UBI is claiming, but I cannot prove them to be right or wrong.

What I do know for sure is that each copy protection will be cracked sooner or later. Even console games are being cracked.

Also a fact, adding such DRM into software will move even more people towards using cracked versions of a game.

Maybe UBI and other publishers should reward people who buy a game, instead of making it nearly impossible to play the legal game (anywhere, anytime).

I'm afraid that I need to find a new game genre to enjoy, not developed/published by UBI.

Herr Kaleun, I'm afraid we have to abandon the sub.
That boat is sinking.

IF our mystery dev is right, and the DRM is the first EVER to work and stop piracy, then fine, I'll see the light and happily buy the game.

But when the game does get pirated, and I can't imagine it won't... it'll be like, "what the heck was that for"???
Then the paying crowd is heavily inconvenienced, and the very thing UBI tried to stop is still happening. So in the end people would be paying for a worse version of SH5, and the pirates would be getting the free offline version.

So if this revolutionary DRM fails (and it will as they always do), it will backfire big time, and Ubi's sales will plummet to never before seen lows.
If I were Ubi I'd really be ****ting my pants right now.

900k :o

Right on.

Developer has a good point there. I see no reason why they should not protect their product. It is not easy to make a game you know :)

And eventually it will be your choice. Either play with consoles or stay online with a DRM.

What is so bad about it? I seriously hope that thanks to DRM Ubi will make a ton of profit from SH5 and can use that money to carry on with the series. Make better SH6 and etc.

And yes, i have not got any internet connection problems at all. It is year 2010 and we have steady connections almost everywhere, i dont understand what is all the fuss about :woot:

We allow Microsoft to access our computer every day. So why not let Ubisoft do the same :)

Oh just pick about any other thread that discusses the DRM issues and you will find about 20 or more very good reasons. Either you have not looked or you are choosing to turn a blind eye and remain willfully ignorant.

I have some sympathy for Ubisoft's position, I recently visited two shops in the Game chain (the UK's largest game retailer) One in my town and the other in the city of Glasgow. I was shocked to see how few PC games were now in stock, only one small shelving unit on the floor with but a few budget and full price titles while the wallspace is now entirely devoted to the console market.

To me it looks like the console manufacturers (including Microsoft) and the retailers are now tyring to kill off the PC games market entirely. And it's easy to understand why, console games are easier to create, the PC is a support nightmare, and the profits/returns are much higher on console titles and piracy is now rampant on the PC platform a situation that will only worsen as broadband gets faster and faster.

I do believe that PC titles need some form of DRM/protection as the piracy levels are now extreme, however I think the new Ubisoft system is going a bit too far and may make the game too slow/ unplayable. Something like Storm Eagle's (Jutland) (originally much hated) connect once a week with no save game thing would be much more acceptable to gamers.

I hardly think that because 100 people dont buy this game to play it, then it means they have lost the sale of 100 copies - thats really a stupid argument. Howevere, I still think that they have lost significant sales because of pirates...

I think that in all of this discussion we forgot to aim our frustrations at the PIRATES!
They are the root cause of this mess.

Now we CAN argue that DRM is a really bad thing, but we cant blame Ubisoft for trying to protect their investment.
Problem is that is has been proven again and again that the protection will be broken by somebody, so we dont trust DRM to be any different.

It seems like we just get caught in the middle og the battle between Ubisoft and pirates.

So, if any of you know pirates I suggest you go and have a go at them as well :arrgh!:

I think the choice of the DUDE word is a bit poor.
I would have done the same mistake, but, look, he is a stranger to you, you have never shaken hands, never drank a beer together, and never gone to school together.

Therefor a SIR, or MIster X would have been more appropriate.
It is also, not only showing personal respect, but also respects what he does.

And plus, i would never never ever ever go to someone , and ask him for something, and then call the man a Dde, or the Lady a "chick" or something.
Thats just not nice.

You have learned a lesson here i take it?

I suppose I have...for what it is worth...but i think he was more angry at the content and what it meant. I think it was just his way of firing back. But then again what do I know. None the less as I wrote back to him to explain where I am from it is not considered an insult or disrespectful. However it is also like many other words all in the inflection...and of course you can't hear how I'm typing it...so He hears it how he is reading it in conjunction with the problem being written about. Hind sight 20-20 I wish I would have started it differently.

I am sorry. I just dont have time to read trough ALL those arguments about DRM. I am sure that "very good" 20 arguments will eventually boil down to 3 things. 1:People are whining because they feel that they have no freedom if they cant play this game offline (does not matter that most of their computers are anyway always online)
2: People are whining that the UBI service will affect their gameplay. (Server downtimes and etc.)
3: People are whining because they are not willing to let UBI have access in your computer. (But we allow MS services to do this every day whether we like it or not)

But who am i to say what is right and what is wrong. I am just a silly human who chooses to remain willfully ingorant. :rotfl2:

Dude, many native English speakers say "dude" all the time... to anyone. We Australians also tend to use "mate" a lot more, and we use it on everyone, even people we don't know.
It may be impolite to you, but it's friendly informality.

This place is a Battlefield at the Moment, Torps and DCs being used like there was no tomorrow Starshells in the sky, and in the distance, two Tankers are burning.

You are mad, I am mad, he might also be mad... We are humans after all, and that is very good thing.

You and me are sitting in opne Boat, BUT you do not exactly know what kind of Boat he is sitting in.
Therefor, having a white flag with you when making contact is always a good idea.

:up:

I don't let Microsoft have access to my computer every day, because I don't like it.

Might be so, but why does UBI think that those 900.000 guys would actually BUY the game if they couldn't play it?

In my opinion, most of them would simply altogether pass on it, and that's all. They don't have the money, or if they do, they rather spend it on something else. There are LOTs of people out there with emule downloading all day things like films and games they don't ever get to play at all.

If you consider the minority of those guys who were playing pirated games and now will buy it, and compare it with the number of guys who actually bought all games and now will stop doing it (Like me), that would give you an exact figure. And I guess the result wouldn't be nice either.

Last, UBI seems to forget that the public for sub simulators is quite different than the one playing Assassins' Creed, Modern Warfare 2, Mass Effect 2 etc.

OK, if that's the modern industry trend then very well, I'll stop playing new video games and just play the old ones, or simply pass altogether on that.

I am mature enough and have a personality that allows me to have thousands of different hobbies I enjoy the same or even more that playing games. I don't need the videogames at all.

As a fellow Romanian, I would kindly remind this unnamed dev a few facts of life that might shed a new light on the issues of DRM, piracy and the money earned from a game.

1. There's always the 'stick and carrot' policy, in this case the stick being the over-intrusive antipiracy methods (starforce in the past, online checks now) and the carrot being an intelligent way of promoting a product / a game. In history, it has been proven that carrot is always better than the stick - that's also why democracy won over dictatorship. In my personal view, instead of enacting a kind of DRM that alienates many, a gaming company should emphasize on the extra services and advantages of being the legal owner of the preferred game. There's many ways it could do this, from a competent support (really competent, I mean) to all kind of niceties the user could receive with the purchased game (badges, pens, even an online club he should be proud to belong to, meetings of game owners and fans etc.)

2. The game should be readily available everywhere it is in demand. As you must certainly be aware, except for developed countries, in the rest of the world most people do not have bank cards in Euros or USD, which prevents them buying a game on the internet. Here, in your home country, dear Ubi Romania, did you ever wonder how many Romanians hold a card in Euros? Moreover, given that games still address a teen or pre-teen market segment, how many of these youngsters do you think have the bank cards needed to purchase a game online?
Here, in its home country, the only option for buying the games made by Ubisoft Romania is online. I never saw them in their hard form (box, DVD, etc.) in any specialised store so far (actually, there's almost no specialised store, only supermarkets have dedicated areas for games). Even in the first weeks after SH3 and SH4 got launched, they were quasi-inexistant for the Romanian gaming market. No advertising, nothing at all that would have let Romanian gamers know that the "Sim of the Year" (as labeled by many magazines) had just reached the market.
If Ubi really wants to fight rampant piracy (yes, I am aware it exists), maybe it should "invite" people to buy its games, advertise them the smart way, and make them so readily available and desirable that every gamer feels the urge to buy them in their shiny box, rather than go illegal. Especially if these gamers really like what they play.

3. There's an old debate over how many pirates would really buy a particular game, if unavailable as illegal download. I will not open this can of worms, but only refer to the Silent Hunter series. Submarine simulations are a special breed. They are not your usual shooters, they are still mostly single-player (in a world of multiplayer), and they target a mature audience, with a higher level of conscience (related to piracy=theft) and more willing to support the producer of the games they prefer. So, I really doubt Subsims are pirated to such an extent. And - as far as I can say based on intuition alone - I don't see so many of (let's say) "casual pirates" saying something like: "Hooray, here it is, our latest sub game, let's donwload it en masse." It's rather "Huh, what's this Silent thing about? A submarine game? What on earth could this mean? Submarines are booooring. I'd rather play Call of Duty and shoot 10 people a minute."

4. Last, but not least, there's a "Big Brother" fear mounting everywhere in the world. People tend to grow over-suspicious at everything that intrudes their personal lives (and computers). Games are the last on a long list of such intrusions and this online DRM has come at the worst moment possible. Yes, game companies have the right to protect themselves against theft, but just the idea of the game "calling back home" goes against the "freedom" tradition that was imprinted upon the gaming community during the last two decades. As I said, sub simulations are mostly played by grown-ups, by people formed in the "democratic" spirit that characterized IT and internet since they were born. Maybe a teen can easily live with the idea of "ET phone home," but those used to live by some standards feel the market changes really hard and are not as willing to "re-educate" themselves.

Sorry for the long post, but I really felt i had to speak my mind.

And BTW, I would not call Assassins' Creed and Modern Warfare 2 "the best games." To me, they look rather arcadish and console.

It is not impolite to me... i VERY MUCH prefer being called "DUDE", or "Hey man", or just plain "Yo, Leon, take a look at this!"

People call me Mister, and Sir, when i am on the Job, and: Damn, DUDE - does that make me feel Uncomforteable!

But thats just what it is like, being in contact with people that do not know you - its tact. And it takes some time to overcome that distance.

But once you overcome that distance, I have found a few customers very to be quite cool, and even swapped Telephone nubers with one of them.
No. Not the Business Telephone numbers. It led to some really interesting events. (grins)

Still, Both sides need to approach each other with Mutual respect, both Feeling and Expressing it.

The Fun and beerdrinking comes later.

"do we cancel ALL PC games FOREVER and concentrate on everything else (consoles, casual, social)? No, let's be fair to the people and give them a chance to support the games that entertain them every day".What is hidding behind the: "support the game every day" Is actually that DRM gives UBI the power to control your account daily. And most probably you will be asked to "support your entertainment" by transfering money from your bank account for every update/patch/addon they're gonna release in future. RDM turns out to be a perfect tool of manipulation IMO. Under no circumstances I will ever agree with these kind of terms that are still hidden from public, nor I let myself to be fed with any speculations that DRM is good for you, future vision, or provides a must have services.

If they wanted to make us happy about having to be online all the time why not write some content that actually takes advantage of it. People have been bitching for good multiplayer for ages. So if you want to convince people being connected is better write something that takes advantage of it, instead of just saddling us with the negative aspects?