The gawd-almighty merged DRM in Silent Hunter V thread

[Brag]

Heckler, welcome aboard

[onelifecrisis]

Originally Posted by scrapser

Yes I remember the old system of being asked for a specific word on a certain line on a certain page in the game manual. I also remember the day I was selling my Commodore 128 to buy an Amiga 500 and having a guy come to my door asking if I wanted to join the pirate club he belonged to. He had a box full of floppy disks with many of the games that were current at the time and photo copies of the game manuals.

I told him to get lost.

I remember when games started using that word-from-the-manual trick. I remember my dad got a game which had that kind of "DRM" and he was outraged at the inconvenience of it. The funny thing was that his copy was a pirated copy of the game, complete with a photocopied user manual, and he was still outraged.

[Stryck_9]

I lurk and dont post but wanted to toss in my 2 cents on this I started playing sub sims with Silent Service 1 & 2 and Aces of the Deep I Love SH3 (esp with GWX) like SH4 & was looking forward to this one but now am putting it on hold due to the DRM.
I dont mind registering my cd key,guid or some other method to show I bought my copy but I am not keen on having to be connected to play and having my games saved on the ubi servers. I have played my share of Ubi online games and remember many days/nights when the servers were down and no gaming was possible.So despite how lovely the graphics are and how curious i am about the new iteration it goes on hold until we see what actually happens

[piri_reis]

Originally Posted by onelifecrisis

I remember when games started using that word-from-the-manual trick. I remember my dad got a game which had that kind of "DRM" and he was outraged at the inconvenience of it. The funny thing was that his copy was a pirated copy of the game, complete with a photocopied user manual, and he was still outraged.

Yeah those were the days!
Monkey Island had this printout of a wheel, a spinner, where you matched two faces that came up on game start, and put in a certain code..
Wasn't the internet days where it would've been scanned and distributed easily.

Dial-A-Pirate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Se...l-a-Pirate.jpg

[guynoir]

Wow, that new DRM from Ubisoft is really sounding great! Apparently PC Gamer especially loves it: </sarcasm>

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/02/17/you-maniacs/

"Incredibly, the worst is true in Assassin’s Creed 2 – and, it appears, will be for Settlers 7 too. No matter what you’re doing, no matter what the reason, the game will refuse to let you continue playing if it decides you’re not online. You’re dumped right back to a menu, losing any progress made since the last checkpoint. If you don’t have a constant, uninterrupted internet connection, you can’t play. Let’s list some of the reasons you might drop your net connection, shall we? Router crash, ISP problems, cat playing with the cable, microwave muddling your wi-fi connection, train going into a tunnel when you’re on 3G, Windows having a networking befuddlement, someone else in the house torrenting the bandwidth dry…

"Incredible. In-cred-i-ble. It’s like someone taking away your food mid-meal because your napkin’s fallen on the floor. It makes us want to pull an expression we’re not physically capable of, like this."

I bought SH1+exp, 3, and 4+exp partly for the fun and partly to support sub-simming, but excuse me if I continue to boycott Silent Hunter V, no matter how much fun it potentially is, until Ubisoft strips this junk out of it...

edit. Oh, and this could potentially be the last thing many virtual U-Boat captains see in their short, eventful careers:

[onelifecrisis]

Originally Posted by guynoir

Wow, that new DRM from Ubisoft is really sounding great! Apparently PC Gamer especially loves it: </sarcasm>

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/02/17/you-maniacs/

"Incredibly, the worst is true in Assassin’s Creed 2 – and, it appears, will be for Settlers 7 too. No matter what you’re doing, no matter what the reason, the game will refuse to let you continue playing if it decides you’re not online. You’re dumped right back to a menu, losing any progress made since the last checkpoint. If you don’t have a constant, uninterrupted internet connection, you can’t play. Let’s list some of the reasons you might drop your net connection, shall we? Router crash, ISP problems, cat playing with the cable, microwave muddling your wi-fi connection, train going into a tunnel when you’re on 3G, Windows having a networking befuddlement, someone else in the house torrenting the bandwidth dry…

"Incredible. In-cred-i-ble. It’s like someone taking away your food mid-meal because your napkin’s fallen on the floor. It makes us want to pull an expression we’re not physically capable of, like this."

I bought SH1+exp, 3, and 4+exp partly for the fun and partly to support sub-simming, but excuse me if I continue to boycott Silent Hunter V, no matter how much fun it potentially is, until Ubisoft strips this junk out of it...

Wow, they didn't pull their punches, and neither did the PC Gamer blog that they linked to. Now I'm getting interested. If the gaming press call in unison for a boycott then all you OSP haters may just get your wish!

[piri_reis]

Originally Posted by onelifecrisis

Wow, they didn't pull their punches, and neither did the PC Gamer blog that they linked to. Now I'm getting interested. If the gaming press call in unison for a boycott then all you OSP haters may just get your wish!

Yep, here's the link to PCGamer blog about their review of Assassins Creed2
http://www.computerandvideogames.com...35290&site=pcg

"The game first starts the Ubisoft Game Launcher, which checks for updates. If you try to launch the game when you're not online, you hit an error message right away. So I tried a different test: start the game while online, play a little, then unplug my net cable. This is the same as what happens if your net connection drops momentarily, your router is rebooted, or the game loses its connection to Ubisoft's 'Master servers'. The game stopped, and I was dumped back to a menu screen - all my progress since it last autosaved was lost."

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Brag

Gentlemen!

Tempers are rising as DTD Day approaches. We are beginning to see too many personal squables and the hurling of insults. This is happening even among people with equal viewpoints.

The proDRMies, as few as they are, are entitled to their opinions.
The Anti DRM Freedom Fighters should remain calm and softly and privately chuckle at the ProDRMies heroic efforts of swimming against the flood of legitimate outrage.

DTD Day = Death to DRM Day.

LMAO....the truth is out there, does anyone know the url?

[martes86]

Originally Posted by piri_reis

"[...] The game stopped, and I was dumped back to a menu screen - all my progress since it last autosaved was lost."

What a major piece of "c-that". That ain't no longer protecting their rights, it's a down unprofessional development which destroys game progress if disconnected (which results in life-time lost to a dumb programming logic), it's just plain wrong. (And note I'm note critizising any Devs, but the final product that ends up in the user's hands, and that is a direct consequence of the corp's management incompetence to bring up a better solution other than just screwing around with those that make possible that they earn money).

[Nordmann]

You see, this is why it's worth waiting a while before buying it. If Ubi continue to receive unfavourable press, you know they are going to drop their DRM like a live grenade! After all, there's nothing worse then bad press, and I have a feeling there's plenty more where this came from.

The next few weeks should be interesting, hopefully Ubi will see sense, patch the game and remove their internet requirement (though I doubt it). In the mean time, I finally got around to buying UBM, so I'll be playing that while I wait for more info.

[Nisgeis]

Let's hope they review it, taking into account the disconnections and rate it acordingly. This has annoyed me slightly, especially as Neal's preview was played through a net connection loss. It seems it didn't have the fully fledged DRM system in it then.

[Nordmann]

Originally Posted by Nisgeis

It seems it didn't have the fully fledged DRM system in it then.

Likely on purpose. After all, they don't want previewers seeing the full extent of the restrictions this system will impose upon how, when and where you play.

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by Nordmann

Likely on purpose. After all, they don't want previewers seeing the full extent of the restrictions this system will impose upon how, when and where you play.

Originally Posted by Nisgeis

Let's hope they review it, taking into account the disconnections and rate it acordingly. This has annoyed me slightly, especially as Neal's preview was played through a net connection loss. It seems it didn't have the fully fledged DRM system in it then.

That's possible, but it would be very unethical, imo. I asked and they tell me yes, exact same DRM. I am following up on that with another source.

I asked a high ranking Ubisoft manager (not the dev team) about the DRM, I said I wanted to relay some more information to the community, and here is our exchange.

Me: Per our phone conversation, let me share some thoughts with you. You mentioned a detailed message explaining the exact nature and characteristics of the DRM, I think that's a good idea. It should as accurate as possible. What is it, how does it work, what kind of load times can a player expect, server up-time, and how will it affect the gameplay?




Hi Neal,

Thanks again for your email and the many salient points that you bring up. There is a lot of stuff in there and I hope to cover it all!

In a nutshell, our online services system was designed for two main purposes: to help combat piracy and to allow us to offer services to our customers that had been specifically asked for by them. Obviously we're not able to give out all of the details about how it works - we're not here to give a head start to hackers - but I know that the main focus of many comments is regarding the permanent online connection requirement.

Basically the online connection allows us to periodically authenticate users - specifically to ensure that only one person is using an account at a time. And of course it allows us to save games so that the player can re-access the game from wherever they left off and on any computer where they have installed the game. The permanent online requirement is clearly stated on the front and back of every box and we are working with our online partners to ensure that it's noted on their product pages too, as well as included in all point-of-purchase marketing materials. We're making every effort to ensure that anyone who buys our products that include the online services system will understand this requirement before purchasing the game.

The system of course sends information to our servers. The only personal information that it sends it that which is required to sign up for a Ubisoft account. The actual exchange of information while playing the game is very minimal. Players will only need the minimal broadband connection and the game runs with less that 50 kbit per second. For example, if you play Assassin's Creed II for a total of 20 hours, the game will have only transferred 2 MB of data. The game play won't be affected by such small amount of data.

It's clear that the community is sceptical that this platform will be crack-proof and that is understandable. But I cannot stress strongly enough the effect that piracy has had on the PC market. If you want to scale it back to the very basic - we feel that this effort to combat piracy allows us to continue investing creative resources into PC development.

Can we guarantee that the platform is crack-proof? I guess it's impossible to make that guarantee but I can say that we would not be releasing the system if we didn't believe that it's worth its salt.

Do we know that this kind of thing is bothersome to a certain group of gamers? Absolutely. And we're not happy to be frustrating a group of people who play our games. But we do feel that the services that we can offer with the system offset some of the frustration and, more importantly, the efforts that we put into limiting piracy will ensure that Ubisoft can continue investing in developing true AAA game experiences for PC gamers..

Thanks again!

[Steeltrap]

What a load of marketing bollocks.

It might be interesting to ask "what is it about your system that is superior to Steam (which many PC gamers accept) with its off-line ability?".

Let's see them answer that. All they do is offer hot air about all these 'things' they can 'offer', completely ignoring the fact that a large number of people are not interested in any scenario that mandates online connection for a single player game. So they say it will "allow us to offer services to our customers that had been specifically asked for by them". What services, exactly, and how many are asking? They might want to get some of these customers who have asked for this to post in various places, as the majority of traffic in most sites I've visited is universally damning.

I sincerely hope they get a real slap in the face when it comes to release time.

And if the SH franchise dies as a result of their insistence on this system? There are worse things than death.....

Originally Posted by Steeltrap

So they say it will "allow us to offer services to our customers that had been specifically asked for by them". What services, exactly, and how many are asking?

Selling them the other 2 years of u-boat war for 14,99$ each. Oh, wait.

And what did i read on the FAQ of the Ubi-DRM? "What happens when the servers are to be shut down?" Answer: "We will release a patch [...]". Wasnt there something with SH3 and Starforce? Removed in patch dunnowhat? And no official patch allowing me to play without using you-know-what?