3 reasons Ubisoft's DRM is good

[McBeck]

Originally Posted by GMU

As far as I'm aware there is still no crack for sh5 v1.2 available. Causes of this I guess are unknown, but might be pretty fair that crackers felt too lazy to mess with it once again lol. Shoot me for mentioning the word "CRACK" but drm seems to be holding upperhand at least for now.

Done

[krashkart]

Whoopsie! For any of ye scurvy newbs here, learn from what just happened to GMU. Don't repeat his mistake.


Ours is not to question why. Ours is but to do or die.

[thyro]

Originally Posted by Magnum

Is true, but we r not allowed to talk about here. Never understood why, but that's the rule.

the rule, rules!

talk no more!... I'm back to my zombeeee stuff

[Iron Budokan]

Heh.

[Brag]

We were somewhat overdue on a reminder of Ubi´s stupid version of DRM.

Once Ubi removed the star force DRM, I bought a second DRM-free SH3 copy. It lives on my hard drive and the disk is on the shelf. All I need is to click on the desktop icon and SH3 starts loading.

[sabretwo]

I haven't been in the SH5 threads for a while. Too bad UBI is still holding to their guns. At least they get points for perseverance.

That said, still no money out of my wallet. Until they drop the asinine constant connection requirement I will not buy another UBI product (including the two UBI wii games my kids begged me to buy for them). So far UBI is out at least $130 from me. Maybe they made that $130 back from some former pirates that now bought their games.

Personally, I think its sad so many people caved in and bought the game. Every sale was just reinforcement for UBI's position and encouragement for other developers to follow suit.

The whole thing is very sad. A short while back I was an avid UBI supporter and fan. Now, I wouldn't piss on their headquarters if it was on fire.

[janh]

Originally Posted by sabretwo

Personally, I think its sad so many people caved in and bought the game. Every sale was just reinforcement for UBI's position and encouragement for other developers to follow suit.

I agree, somehow I had expected that more people had higher principles, but it seems modern generations don't care about that anymore. Anyway, Ubisoft has chosen this route, and it will soon show how real the damage by piracy was. If their products are now cracked and distributed less, and much later than the first release dates, the common "downloads theory" would require their sales to "sky-rock" now (well, at least they should be able to measure a lower number of hacked downloads now, and correlate that with an increase in sales, if their theory is not entirely flawed). In about a year or two, we will see whether they were right -- and so many other companies that follow them suit as well. Or whether a few companies now do serious harm to themselves and proof that the customers turned away because they didn't provide quality and service anymore.

[sabretwo]

Originally Posted by janh

....If their products are now cracked and distributed less, and much later than the first release dates, the common "downloads theory" would require their sales to "sky-rock" now (well, at least they should be able to measure a lower number of hacked downloads now, and correlate that with an increase in sales, if their theory is not entirely flawed). In about a year or two, we will see whether they were right -- and so many other companies that follow them suit as well. Or whether a few companies now do serious harm to themselves and proof that the customers turned away because they didn't provide quality and service anymore.

You're right. Maybe one good thing out of this mess is we finally have case examples and data sets to help quantify the true loss owing to piracy.

My hypothesis:

A. The true number of lost sales in relation to pirate downloads will be far less than anyone thinks. I strongly suspect that few former pirates and torrent trolls will now buy the games that they previously downloaded illegally...especially games like SH that appeal to a rather limited audience.

B. If "A" is proven true, UBI will not release that data. If "A" is true, than UBI's DRM was nothing in the end but a colossal inconvenience for the gaming community.

Time will tell for sure. For now, there's SH3, SH4, and plenty of games from other developers out there. I hear Shogun 2: Total War is on the horizon now.

[Reece]

Well it could take a year or more before a DRM free version is available, if one doesn't come out so be it, I'm not that bothered not playing it anyway!

[Rockin Robbins]

And Ubi hasn't figured out that profits all come from people who buy the game. People who don't buy the game are the ones they are concerned with and they'll never pay Ubi a penny, DRM or no DRM. What a shame! And Ubi SHOULD be ashamed.

Maybe they made that $130 back from some former pirates that now bought their games.

See paragraph 1. Pirates don't buy games. They steal them or go without. Either way they contribute nothing to a game company. They aren't worth the time to punish your paying customers for their actions.

[McBeck]

Guys...lets drop the piracy discussion!

[Nisgeis]

No one has any data.