Ubisoft Testing PC Prince of Persia Without DRM 254
Ars Technica reports that the upcoming PC version of Ubisoft's Prince of Persia will not feature any sort of copy protection. (Not including Steam downloads, of course.) After the backlash in recent months over the DRM in games like Spore and GTA IV, Ubisoft is giving gamers the chance to demonstrate that DRM actually increases piracy. One of Ubisoft's community reps had this to say about their decision: "You`re right when you say that when people want to pirate the game they will but DRM is there to make it as difficult as possible for pirates to make copies of our games. A lot of people complain that DRM is what forces people to pirate games but as PoP PC has no DRM we`ll see how truthful people actually are. Not very, I imagine. Console piracy is something else entirely and I`m sure we`ll see more steps in future to try to combat that."
Of Ubisoft and DRM (Score:4, Informative)
Ubisoft's actually bowed to customer pressure on DRM before. Consider Silent Hunter III and IV.
III shipped, if I recall, with StarForce---and Ubisoft eventually patched it out, and new bargain copies are completely DRM free.
IV, in response to the outcry over StarForce, shipped with SecuROM---which, of course, was patched out, and newly pressed CD's come without.
Basically, their habit seems to be to ship with DRM to try to preserve initial sales, and then bow to customer demand to keep bargain sales reasonable and keep old fans happy.
So, I suppose, the moral of the story is: don't buy Ubisoft games when they come out. Wait a year, until the game's down to fifteen bucks and they're stripped of DRM.
You cost Ubisoft most of the profit they might have earned from you had they released it DRM free, and then get the game DRM free at a dramatically reduced price.
$30 right now on GoGamer.com (Score:4, Informative)
Re:How to make enemies and alienate people (Score:3, Informative)
Demos often don't give you the full sense of a game, and you need the full version to get a feel for whether you really want the game or not.
You seriously believe what you just wrote? It looks like a flimsy rationalization for pirating.
I absolutely believe that. I downloaded the demo of Medieval: Total War back when that came out, and thought it was pretty lackluster. All it was was a single siege battle. You had no choice of troops, no broader strategic decisions, none of the things that made the actual game good. I didn't buy it.
A couple months later, I got a pirated version from a friend, played it, loved it, bought it, and have bought every title in the series to have been released since then.
Sure, that sort of scenario may be the exception more than the rule. But then, you could say the same of scenarios where someone would have pirated the game, but bought it due to DRM.