Assassin's Creed 2 and SH5 owners get free UBI game (merged)

[Bilge_Rat]

Originally Posted by Commie

What a crappy selection. At least the AC2 buyers have some reasonably fun alternatives!

what did they get?

[SteamWake]

Hrm... I dident get the email.. probably got tossed as spam

[Commie]

Originally Posted by Bilge_Rat

what did they get?

Well they got HAWX, Heroes over Europe, EndWar, as well as the same as SH5 sufferers Prince of Persia. Admittedly far from great, but still...compared to snowboarding they seem to have at least a bit more relevance for a sim community.

[Nordmann]

Heroes over Europe wasn't too bad, I didn't like HAWX, and haven't played EndWar.

Hey, at least they you something, other than the finger of course.

[UnSalted]

I hear the plan is now to give those who bought the previous SH series but not SH5 a free copy of their 5 best sellers. They will call it a salute to those who trust in Ubisoft's reputation for gaming enhancements.

[Bilge_Rat]

Originally Posted by Commie

Well they got HAWX, Heroes over Europe, EndWar, as well as the same as SH5 sufferers Prince of Persia. Admittedly far from great, but still...compared to snowboarding they seem to have at least a bit more relevance for a sim community.

yes, I would rather have HAWX than Prince of Persia.

[Arclight]

No, you wouldn't.

Seriously, just a poor rip-off from Ace Combat.

[Nordmann]

Originally Posted by Arclight

No, you wouldn't.

Seriously, just a poor rip-off from Ace Combat.

Played the demo, and that's about the right of it. Not good at all.

[gimpy117]

Well the shaft or not we did just get free stuff from ubisoft. Most other companies would send us an email simply saying "sorry" and go F@$& yourselves.

Even if its a ploy the make us happy...it shows they care. they fixed the servers, they didn't have to give us anything...but they did. and that was nice of them

and besides my mommy told me not to look a gifthorse in the mouth

[Commie]

Originally Posted by gimpy117

...it shows they care.

It shows they are desperate more like. For a company that has just created such a DRM in order to stop even one copy being pirated, to then give away it's products shows that they really are in the ****. They don't give a rats about SH5 customers, they just want to sweeten the image of their company as they know that Splinter Cell Conviction and Settlers 7 are coming out next with the same DRM crap and they want to encourage as many as they can to give their fun DRM a go and buy their games with the psychology of 'well if it doesn't work that well, I'll get a free game anyway' instilled in the potential customer.

UBI know that give something for free, even a turd, it will generate an irrational sense of goodwill in many.

[Catfish]

For all those who chose the snowboard sim ...



I pirated this from the official UBIsoft SH5 forum ,
it's from Tinkerbell12 - Great job lol

Greetings,
Catfish

[Nordmann]

There is only one thing to say to that. ROFLMFAO!

[gimpy117]

Originally Posted by Commie

It shows they are desperate more like. For a company that has just created such a DRM in order to stop even one copy being pirated, to then give away it's products shows that they really are in the ****. They don't give a rats about SH5 customers, they just want to sweeten the image of their company as they know that Splinter Cell Conviction and Settlers 7 are coming out next with the same DRM crap and they want to encourage as many as they can to give their fun DRM a go and buy their games with the psychology of 'well if it doesn't work that well, I'll get a free game anyway' instilled in the potential customer.

UBI know that give something for free, even a turd, it will generate an irrational sense of goodwill in many.

The Thing is piracy is a big problem today, more so then when SH3 came out and possibly even more than when SH4 was released . Furthermore the only reason those servers went down was because of a malicious attack on them by hackers. This was by no means UBI's fault so for them to apologize for one and a half days of having my game out by giving me 30 bucks worth of free stuff...id say that's a good deal to me.

but by all means man continue to make lemons out of lemonade...I'll take your code and get both games if you wanna give it to me

[walsh2509]

Of course they need to fix the game with more patches , but as others have said some companies would have either ignored the problem or sent an email saying sorry.

A free game , ok not a great choice , but its better than a poke in the eye with a jaggy stick.

[janh]

Originally Posted by gimpy117

The Thing is piracy is a big problem today, more so then when SH3 came out and possibly even more than when SH4 was released . Furthermore the only reason those servers went down was because of a malicious attack on them by hackers. This was by no means UBI's fault so for them to apologize for one and a half days of having my game out by giving me 30 bucks worth of free stuff...id say that's a good deal to me.

I once was of your opinion, but I have had quite a time looking at this from different perspectives by now. Pirating does damage, and costs sales. As does shoplifting. But the recent decade is just too full of example of small start-up studios and developers that land a "first-try superhit". Why? Because they deliver a highly valuable, product, and one that customers want (satisfies their wishes, ideas etc, and is novel, not just copy of an old game idea/concept with new eye-candy), instead of delivering something "that a company wants to sell" and is developed orthogonally to market/customer interests. And they didn't die of piracy, but actually customers voluntarily buy their products, and pay the money. Sales are high, that is why it is a superhit. Let me elaborate further.

And to do so, I will pull up the counter example of companies like Microprose that went away long before piracy and downloads were developed (to this extend, or at all). Hence, you cannot claim piracy as primary cause for their end. But what you will find if you think about their fate, is for one that their casual products did not succeed in the broad market (for many reasons), and their specialized nice-products (like a sub simulator) didn't generate enough revenue. That is what it is, and if you get into the business of developing a niche-product, you can't expect to be a millionaire in no time, if at all.
Now, there is also a second class of examples, and that is companies that just warmed up game ideas time after time, and didn't spice the product up enough. To make it enticing. Say "Sid Meiers Gettysburg" was a successful game, but the sequel "Antietam" ended the series -- why? I guess it was but a new map, and everything else was just the same. And there is many examples of that class, maybe even the two points I mentioned above are just two symptoms of exactly this issue here.

And that was even before the times of harsh DRM or OSP-DRM, which now add a very bitter taste to everything particularly for legal owners, and induce them to see minor flaws of a product in a darker light then without. (EDIT: ) Moreover, the entertainment business has been expanding at a much faster rate than population growth or wealth ("money") increase. Each entertainment sector, movies, games, music, books, and real-life from sports to paintball, has grown strongly over the last 10-20 years. But since the consumer are limited (in number, their free time and money), every company and product will naturally get a smaller piece of cake every year and will have to present much better than average "products" to expand.

So I begin to think, and I bet with the SHV disaster it could have proven clearly this time if the pirates had for once stayed out of this, that it is the companies failing to bind customers by delivering "novel" games, added-value products (a thick printed manual, and other thing that you can't download on a site) and better service!

I think SHV would be a premier example of a product developed tangentially to what the community had hoped for (see Neals review), and that is why there is so much outcry and disappointment. And this may turn into lack of commercial success, and the consequences. I think Ubisoft may have done more harm with a repeated buggy release and the OSP-DRM to its own sales than the pirates could have.

Unfortunately I have as little credible and unambiguous evidence for my hyothesis as you do have for yours, so it's not worth arguing about anything that we can't change either opinions on. But I want to put it out there as a possibility that may be worth thinking critically about, and not focus on one possibility and ignore all the others (thats why the world is round...).
The future will likely teach how bad piracy really is, or whether companies are actually harming themselves more by not treating the customers as kings.