The gawd-almighty merged DRM in Silent Hunter V thread

[kylania]

Originally Posted by Brag

I lurked at the Ubi forum yesterday, the DRM bashing was in full swing. If I remember right, they had more anti DRM threads than our corralled Moo jobs

Ubi should be getting nervous. AC 2 (release 16 March) and Settlers have great opposition to DRM. Most press is against DRM. Christian Science Monitor is against. Petitions are flying everywhere. If this is a storm, we have only seen the beginning.

Sadly it probably won't have any impact. As someone on BluesNews pointed out, there was that huge uproar about dedicated servers for MW2 and that sold and sold and sold.

Assassin's Creed 2 will sell and sell and sell just for being AC2. Now, should UbiSoft get DDoS'd to hell and back when AC2 comes out, we might see something happen, but banking on AC2 not selling due to DRM simply won't happen I'm afraid.

[Nisgeis]

Originally Posted by kylania

Sadly it probably won't have any impact. As someone on BluesNews pointed out, there was that huge uproar about dedicated servers for MW2 and that sold and sold and sold.

Not for PC it didn't. Did the consoles need dedicated servers too?

[OakGroove]

Originally Posted by HKLE

Ubi Marc obviously had enough. So he closed the relevant discussion at the UBI forum ....

I guess, UBI really gets a lot of heat for this crap. They start showing nerves ???

Ban stick was swinging last time i visited, guess he put on his asbestos suit and will have to wear it for an undisclosed period.

[3Dfr34k2009]

2139 petitions signed and counting!.

Keep going guys until the battle against the Ubisoft morons are won.

[Ragtag]

Originally Posted by 3Dfr34k2009

2139 petitions signed and counting!.

Keep going guys until the battle against the Ubisoft morons are won.

LOL... epic

[frenema]

Originally Posted by 3Dfr34k2009

2139 petitions signed and counting!.

Keep going guys until the battle against the Ubisoft morons are won.

SH5 isn't the only game Ubisoft will release and they're a billion dollar company. So unless the petition signatures reach 10 million they're not going to care at all unfortunately.

And I just have one simple question to those who support DRM for whatever reason: Much has been said about how piracy is ruining PC game sales, but has there ever been a case where game sales went up because of DRM?

[Eightbit]

Man this is terrible. My net has been dropping randomly and constantly since the 18th. The last 7 hours it has been completely down. If any of you have ever had such a problem you can appreciate what a pain it is to try and get solved.

But for those that love drm. Especially this kind. Do me a favour and unplug your internet and leave it that way for 4 days and see how it feels.

Now here is the problem. Sure 99.9% of the time it may be just fine and dandy. Great connection enjoying the game etc. But it just makes that .01% of the time THAT much worse. And it's all for nothing.

Call me one of the "unlucky ones" but thats not all. Steam broke their offline feature on the 19th and only just fixed it today. So it was only insult to injury.

I like steam, and appreciate that things go wrong. But it's pretty frustrating not being to play any of the stuff I bought on it.

[Philipp_Thomsen]

The famous cryptographer and security guru Bruce Schneier has written about the futility of digital copy prevention and says it's an impossible task. He says "What the entertainment industry is trying to do is to use technology to contradict that natural law. They want a practical way to make copying hard enough to save their existing business. But they are doomed to fail."[62] He has also described trying to make digital files uncopyable as being like "trying to make water not wet".[63]

Thats from Wikipedia.

Depends on what they put on the EULA, but most likely yes.

Edited: PLEASE, read the rules. --NS


Its a long discussion whether this is nice or not, but once you buy the finished product, you will be pretty pissed off if you cant play cos of the temporary internet unavailability.

Are they paying for your internet? Nope.

[jwilliams]

Originally Posted by Eightbit

Call me one of the "unlucky ones" but thats not all. Steam broke their offline feature on the 19th and only just fixed it today. So it was only insult to injury.

I like steam, and appreciate that things go wrong. But it's pretty frustrating not being to play any of the stuff I bought on it.

The Steam i use, if it cant detect an internet (eg. if i unplug it or turn it off in windows) then it launches in offline mode. cant see how they could break it if im not connected???

Edit {unless you download a patch before the 19th that turned off the offline feature?}

[3Dfr34k2009]

I will like to see the faces of the Ubi-suits when the sales of Silent Hunter 5 are falling more deep than the Mariana Trench.

[LiveGoat]

How about DRM that is timed to go offline by a certain date? Say a game, like SH5, has OSP that basically checks the date when you start a gaming session and log on but after say 3 months (or whatever date is selected by the devs) the game reverts to an offline version with save to hard drive. Also when one does a reinstall, the game sees that the date for OSP is past and doesn't bother with the DRM. This way their peak sales are assured and when things taper off they can give the gamers their autonomy. People who buy the game during the post sales hype will get the same version but will simply have to authenticate with an included code offline like a normal game.

Is this a good idea? A dumb idea? I don't know I'm just putting it out there. There has to be a way to make everybody happy.

[scrapser]

It's a good idea. I'm sure it was discussed and would love to know why it was not pursued.

[razark]

Originally Posted by scrapser

It's a good idea. I'm sure it was discussed and would love to know why it was not pursued.

Several reasons:

1. Because if they manage to put out a really great game that is very popular, there will still be pirates in three months.

2. If they intend to sell DLC later on, piracy protection would be a good thing to have.

3. They would be giving up control.

4. People would just wait a few months and pirate it then, instead of buying it right away.

5. They haven't really released any technical information on how OSP really works. Maybe they did something like this. It's possible, but I doubt it. With the backlash they're seeing, they would have said something by now if they had done it this way.

[scrapser]

Originally Posted by razark

Several reasons:

1. Because if they manage to put out a really great game that is very popular, there will still be pirates in three months.

2. If they intend to sell DLC later on, piracy protection would be a good thing to have.

3. They would be giving up control.

4. People would just wait a few months and pirate it then, instead of buying it right away.

5. They haven't really released any technical information on how OSP really works. Maybe they did something like this. It's possible, but I doubt it. With the backlash they're seeing, they would have said something by now if they had done it this way.

Well I can sum up everything about DRM in any form it has ever had or ever will have....

"Control is an illusion."

The above idea was to mitigate loss of profits. The argument against taking a similar approach to the one described because people may wait until it expires doesn't wash because people could just do the same thing until the title hits the bargain bins. Piracy will never be stopped...it's impossible. Ubisoft is trying to do damage control and I understand that but they don't seem to be interested in working with their customers on finding the best solution. They just put stuff out there to see what happens and so far it hasn't done anything for piracy that any other company has done differently and if anything, damaged whatever goodwill people have for Ubisoft as a brand.

[Letum]

The company behind starforce have systems that work in this manner.