What if the DRM works?

[Boris]

This is a hypothetical question:

What IF, just imagine...

If the DRM actually worked and SH5 cannot be cracked by pirates? And the only way you'll ever be able to play SH5 is buy buying it.

Wouldn't this completely justify the new DRM?

[McBeck]

If it had an offline mode that worked
If it had an online mode that worked
If it could not be cracked

Yeah, then it would be good.

[walsh2509]

What is this DRM? I know little other than putting a disc into my pc loading the game and playing it.

This connected online ?

So when I go to my PC shop and buy SH5 get home and install it , I have to be connected to the internet to play it ? even with the disc in my PC.

So if servers are down or my connection goes down , I can not play it even though its on my hard drive and disc in my pc.

[McBeck]

Originally Posted by walsh2509

What is this DRM? I know little other than putting a disc into my pc loading the game and playing it.

This connected online ?

So when I go to my PC shop and buy SH5 get home and install it , I have to be connected to the internet to play it ? even with the disc in my PC.

So if servers are down or my connection goes down , I can not play it even though its on my hard drive and disc in my pc.

Yup...thats pretty much the case

[Letum]

Benjamin Franklin said:
"Those who would trade in their freedom for their protection deserve neither."

We are being made to trade a freedom for the protection of someone else (Ubisoft).


Now perhaps I am using over grandiose quotes and using them out of
context, but I think there is a point in there none the less.

[onelifecrisis]

Originally Posted by Letum

Now perhaps I am using over grandiose quotes and using them out of
context, but I think there is a point in there none the less.

Keep looking for it and let me know when you find it.

Nobody is having any freedoms taken away. We are all perfectly free to buy the game or not buy it. We're being fully informed about what buying it will entail (with regards to the DRM). There's no infraction here, just some pissed off would-be customers, many of whom (I have no doubt) will become actual paying customers, DRM or otherwise, if they have a stable internet connection and the game turns out to be good.

[Boris]

Originally Posted by Letum

Benjamin Franklin said:
"Those who would trade in their freedom for their protection deserve neither."

We are being made to trade a freedom for the protection of someone else (Ubisoft).


Now perhaps I am using over grandiose quotes and using them out of
context, but I think there is a point in there none the less.

Nice thought, but what is freedom here? We're free to buy this game or not. If we do buy it, we do know what we're in for.

On a side note, as a student of political science, I can say that according to many philosophers a person is only free in a socity of rules that "protect" freedom, whereas people living in a lawless anarchist world have no absolute freedom, since personal freedoms can be undermined by others at any time.

[Nisgeis]

Originally Posted by Mikhayl

If we assume that pirates don't buy games anyway, then it's just like a bookstore forbidding people to read in the alleys. They won't get one extra penny from the "alley only reader", and such policy will piss off many regular buyers. Clear loss.

At one point you used to get demos on magazine covers and you could decide if you liked a game before purchasing it. This is the same with the reading books in an alley. The bookshops eventually caught on that if they provided seating and coffee, people would sit more and would consequently buy more books. Treating customers like decent folk gets you more custom. Treating them like potential thieves isn't always the best way to do it.

[Boris]

Originally Posted by walsh2509

What is this DRM? I know little other than putting a disc into my pc loading the game and playing it.

This connected online ?

So when I go to my PC shop and buy SH5 get home and install it , I have to be connected to the internet to play it ? even with the disc in my PC.

So if servers are down or my connection goes down , I can not play it even though its on my hard drive and disc in my pc.

Yep, that's pretty much it. No connection, no play. But you do have one thing wrong... they're offering this awesome service where you don't need the CD in the drive to play!!!!
And your savegames are stored safely on their server!!! What a "service"

[sergbuto]

Originally Posted by Boris

And your savegames are stored safely on their server!!! What a "service"

There is also a drawback to that. I remember people complained about long loading times of SH3 and that was loading from the hard drive. No loading via internet connection can be compared in speed to starting directly from the hard drive in the player's PC. This might be especially annoying for people trying to mod/working on a mod to the game since the game needs to be often restarted to check the changes made.

[karamazovnew]

Originally Posted by McBeck

If it had an offline mode that worked
If it had an online mode that worked
If it could not be cracked

Yeah, then it would be good.

+9000!!!!!!

[Alienfresser]

Don't think so. There is no real technical reason for such a complicate and error prone (I-Net is no reliable medium) solution.

And it won't solve the resale of used games, because you can create one account for every game as long as you have enough e-mail addresses. Common practice for "Account" games.
They will maybe get 5 % additional sold unit from this, but will loose 10% or 15% of their customer-base because of that system. Guess EA will be ready for a hostile "integration" of UBI when the concept is failing.

But with the competence UBI has shown in past there isn't a very high chance that the concept will work very good.

[onelifecrisis]

Originally Posted by Boris

This is a hypothetical question:

What IF, just imagine...

If the DRM actually worked and SH5 cannot be cracked by pirates? And the only way you'll ever be able to play SH5 is buy buying it.

Wouldn't this completely justify the new DRM?

You hit the nail on the head.
Unfortunately it won't work, and as usual it'll be the paying customers who have the hassle of the DRM while the non-paying customers don't.
Not that that will stop me paying. I have an always-on connection. Lucky me.

[BigBANGtheory]

If it worked 100% technically, with 99% customer satisfaction then Ubisoft would have a very lucrative patent on their hands worth more than the games they publish.

What are the chances of that vs noobing it up?

I remember threatening to take a retailer to court because they wouldn't accept that the DRM system on Crysis was faulty. Just because I had a certain type of DVD drive securom decided I wasn't using the proper disc. It was reported by 100's of users on behalf of 1000's and they didnt even acknowledge the fault I mean wtf?

There are just better ways to handle anti piracy than DRM or atleast until someone comes up with a DRM solution that works.

Seems to me that mfg's need to re-evaluate there selling and marketing techniques, the world is changing and the old over the counter sales pitch no longer works. Intead of putting preasure on the the honest customer, they need to focus on bringing the cheat into the fold where the benifits are greater than those of the pirate.

eg:- Bands no longer need the binding contracts of ruthless managment, they have the internet. Media is a multi-trillion dollar industry, if all that power and weath cannot over come the pirate without bashing me over the head every time I put a DVD on to watch a movie, some thing is wrong, and I would have to say, it's not the folks in here.