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Originally Posted by voidster
actually the DRM is working. If you take the time and go visit pirate boards you will see people jumping for joy over sh5's crack only to see them complain about not being able to even complete the first part of the career. It must update the servers or vice versa once you complete an objective, then UBI's servers sends the proper data to unlock other missions or whatever. At least thats the theory..
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Well, up until yesterday i think. Recent (deleted) posts on the UBI forum by angry legitimate owners suggest there is no network traffic relating to missions whatsoever, it's all in your SH5 folder. Just edit a couple cfg files after you complete each mission and you're good to do.
The game is fully functional without an internet connection because, apparently, the developer team never intended it to be dependent on one and didn't design it this way. It was just an afterthought by UBI that was slapped on before release.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Commie
Same old propaganda peddled by companies that do not want to support the PC but prefer the consoles. Console piracy is also strong, but you rarely see anyone whining about it.
XBOX/PS3/Wii : This is the reason that PC games are not being supported as much, it's a cheap standardised platform that maximises revenue and minimises cost of development.
The move to multiplayer gaming also means that games that are initially pirated end up being bought by the pirates for the multiplayer. Check out the high sales of Battlefield Bad Company 2 on the PC to kill off the old lie that piracy hurts sales.
So called piracy is EASILY combated. Look at games by Matrix Games or Stardock. Pirates tend to only pirate the very first versions of them and the games become like a demo, as extra features and fixes are released insubsequent patches which you can only get by registering your unique key! People that aren't really interested in the genre won't bother with the game, they wouldn't have bought it anyway but fans tend to buy the game even if they pirated it in order to get all the benefits.
THE ONLY REASON Ubi DOESN'T do this is because they are loathe to support their products besides the bare minimum, they don't want to keep adding to a game like Stardock has done with GalCiv II, supporting it for YEARS! Why not? If they really were worried about pirates taking all their profit, wouldn't it make more sense to fund after sales support to give free updates and improvements plus DLC for a year or two extra? It would also keep the game in the spotlight longer and generate more sales. The simple fact is piracy is a negligible problem and is just an excuse to cut development and quality control on the PC in order to concentrate on where the real money is.
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This post hits the nail on the head. All these piracy and DRM issues are mainly an excuse to stop making quality PC games.
Even if there was no piracy, PC games are usually more complicated than console games, or at least the PC platform gives them the potential to be. That means they take longer for the developer to make, but they also take longer for the player to finish, they have some replayability and they can also be gifted, loaned or resold.
What does that mean? That in the time you paid $40, have finished a single SH5 campaign and are getting to ready start your second career, a console gamer might have gone through 3-4 separate titles of $40 each. That's the real deal here guys and i'm glad that people in the sim genre like Oleg Maddox understand it and openly state that for a simulator to succeed you need a good product and loyal fans (that means good support), instead of artificial fiery hoops tacked onto the release which legitimate buyers will have to jump through while fighting a bear with one hand tied behind their back before the game actually lets them play
It's sad to have developers that strive to advance this hobby and then have their efforts destroyed by the publisher's whims or delusions of grandeur. See for example Rise of Flight, same story. Limited content, online DRM (i think that even now with the offline SP patch you can't fly the campaign unless you're online, just the single missions), micro-payment model and all that because the team ran out of money and had to rely on some investors, who naturally want a fast return of their invested money.
In a perfect world our games would be distributed and published by companies with a sim-heavy background and i bet they'd do really well too. Imagine a handful of companies like the Maddox team or Aerosoft having the publishing rights for 90% of the simulator titles. They know how hard it is to make a good one, they are not afraid to delay the release if that means a more complete product but most of all, they know that the money with simulators is not the impulse buyer, but the long time fan. These are not your weekly distractions, they are games that keep being played for as much as a decade. Good support, nifty after-sales incentives to own an original version and a steady stream of improvements and you're going to make enough money to not only stay afloat as a company, but also fund your next project for some years (exactly what happened with IL2 funding the development of the next sim series starting with battle of Britain).
The question is who's going to bother. The answer is obviously companies that already have a simulation background and not the jack-of-all-trades megacorps who aim mostly at "firework" products (5-6 months of immense sales and gameplay, then the game gets totally forgotten).