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Comments: 377 +-   Ubisoft Working On a New Anti-Piracy Tool on Tuesday July 28 2009, @05:30AM

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday July 28 2009, @05:30AM
from the surely-to-be-welcomed-with-open-arms dept.
games
entertainment
Ubisoft recently revealed that their game sales have seen a 50% drop over the past quarter, blaming the overall market slowdown and piracy (particularly on the DS) for the low numbers. They also announced that four of their games, including Splinter Cell: Conviction and Red Steel 2, would be delayed until 2010. The company's CEO, Yves Guillemot, now says they are working on a new anti-piracy tool that should be ready by the end of 2009. He didn't offer any details about how it would be implemented.
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  • Spend your money right (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dk90406 (797452) on Tuesday July 28 2009, @05:34AM (#28849515)
    Ubisoft: Your development budget is better spent on developing good games (I am not saying your current games are bad - I have no experience with them), than yet another copyright scheme that will be broken.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by donscarletti (569232)

      I am not saying your current games are bad

      Well, you should. I haven't bought OR pirated an Ubisoft game for the last six months for the exact same reason: they suck. The last game I did buy was the new Prince of Persia, which I was deeply disappointed with. Prior to that, I bought Assassin's Creed, which I was mildly disappointed with and Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent which was terrible.

      I usually do not pirate Ubisoft games because they don't warrant the effort. The only one I have ever pirated w

      • Re:Spend your money right (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Gulthek (12570) on Tuesday July 28 2009, @06:49AM (#28849925) Homepage Journal

        Bummer. You let critics ruin what would otherwise have been an enjoyable game.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by farrellj (563) *

        Of course, not only is quality of product important...but, Has Ubisoft heard about the World Wide Recession?!?!?!?! Do you think it *might* have something to do with their sales?!?!?!

        And if they want to compare to a Movie...well, a movie is almost an impulse buy, with maybe $8-$15 price wise...but when you start talking around $50 for a game....if you don't know where you next pay check is coming from, it's hard to justify a layout of $50 a pop,

        Way back when, games for 6502 CPUs used to have all sorts of co

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by PitaBred (632671)
        I haven't been impressed with their PC games, but damned if the Raving Rabbids titles on the Wii aren't fun

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by Mister Whirly (964219)
          Don't ever fall off your high horse - it is a long way to the ground.

            • Re:Spend your money right (Score:5, Interesting)

              by donscarletti (569232) on Tuesday July 28 2009, @12:48PM (#28855583)

              It may amaze you that I am actually a professional computer games developer. I am a "victim" who's work has been pirated probably many more times than it has been paid for. However in the industry, even with the publishers, your hard-line attitude is not particularly common. The key goal is to get people to pay money for software, not to stop people from playing the software without paying. If a copy of a computer game is bought by someone who has seen his friend play a pirate version, then that is a sale as much as any other. That is what makes money. I would get more money from someone who buys ten games and pirates another ten than one who plays none at all.

              Secondly, what you clearly don't understand is that developers _want_ to have their game played, just like an artist wants their work viewed. It is nothing even close to being just a profit making venture in the eyes of the developers (I could be making double my salary in another field). THAT is why Ubisoft should be and for the most part probably is thanking pirates, since they are largely the ones playing the games. Developers mainly want more people to look on their works and be impressed, money just allows them to make more.

              Anyway, sadly I cannot continue this argument due to time constraints, it's been fun but ultimately pointless.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Mister Whirly (964219)
          Or possibly they are just out of new, innovative, and fun ideas. Or that the economy is in the toilet and all businesses are suffering, especially the "luxury entertainment" sector.

            • Re:Perform Game Concerts (Score:4, Insightful)

              by Mister Whirly (964219) on Tuesday July 28 2009, @12:14PM (#28855071) Homepage
              Actually, bands (I manage a couple) make a hell of a lot more money by performing than they do by selling CDs which they get less than 10% of the take on. A band can play one show and earn (depending on venue and turnout) $150-$1000, plus whatever merch they manage to sell. To make say $500 on CD sales, they would need to sell about 500 CDs. So in that case, the pirates are absolutely right. You see, when a band plays live, they don't have to give 90% of the profits to their music label, they generally get to keep most of it (minus the manager's and the booker's cuts). Talk to any bands. They will be the first to tell you that they would rather have you come pay for a live show and download all their music free than to buy all of their CDs. Labels make money from selling CDs, bands make money by touring. How do you think the Ramones did it for over 20 years? It wasn't by getting airplay and selling CDs, it was by constant touring and selling T-shirts at shows.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Good games? They have no clue what the hell that is, they're too busy pumping out trash like Imagine Babyz [gamespot.com].

      (No really, that's not my misspelling.)

      • Re:Spend your money right (Score:5, Insightful)

        by JohhnyTHM (799469) on Tuesday July 28 2009, @12:12PM (#28855045)
        The parent is spot on. Most UbiSoft releases are utter dross.

        The only title of theirs that I have been interested in recently was Far Cry 2, which I didn't buy (or copy) due to the SecuRom with limited installs. There was a thread on the UbiSoft website begging them not to use SecuRom, with some polite, thought out reasons why it was a bad idea. When the game was cracked five days before the official release date I pointed out that those downloading it didn't have to put up with SecuRom and limited installs like the paying customers did. My forum account was banned. For telling the truth. Apparently it was considered to be promoting piracy.

        Way to fuck off those willing to buy your games Ubi!

        Maybe this is the real reason sales are down?

    • Re:Spend your money right (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tehSpork (1000190) on Tuesday July 28 2009, @07:10AM (#28850069)

      I am not saying your current games are bad - I have no experience with them

      You've saved yourself some money and hours of crappy gameplay then. Assassin's Creed was almost enjoyable (if it hadn't been so buggy), other than that I haven't really enjoyed an Ubisoft title since Chaos Theory (released in 2005). I had been looking forward to Splinter Cell Conviction, however with the way they keep delaying it and changing things by the time we get it I doubt it will resemble the original franchise at all.

      A note to game developers: Just because a franchise is successful doesn't mean that it will survive a substantial change in gameplay like we got with Double Agent. Furthermore, after a bomb like Double Agent it would be wise to return more towards the style that popularized your game in the first place before branching out in new directions. I'm not asking for EA Games Madden-esque repetition here and not saying that taking franchises in new creative directions is not good, but when you fail so badly take it back to base before you try again.

      Also: If you notice game sales going down it probably has a correlation to your games sucking, regardless of the actual effects of piracy. Since the industry has pretty much stopped offering demos often times the only way to try a game is to download it first. If it sucks why would you bother purchasing it? "Better" DRM isn't going to help you on this front, however games that don't suck would. =)

  • Anti-privacy tool? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2009, @05:35AM (#28849517)
    At first I misread the title as Anti-privacy tool, on second reading i realized this might be close to the truth.

  • Anti-piracy tool (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mwvdlee (775178) on Tuesday July 28 2009, @05:36AM (#28849527) Homepage

    they are working on a new anti-piracy tool that should be ready by the end of 2009

    In other news, hackers are working on breaking Ubisoft's new anti-piracy tool. They expect it to be cracked by the end of 2009 plus one day.

    • Starforce again? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2009, @06:01AM (#28849673)

      Brought to you by the same assholes that loved [gamespot.com] Starforce [wikipedia.org] (until they were sued [techdirt.com] for their crippleware).

      Guess SecuROM isn't intrusive enough for them.

  • Details (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jurily (900488) <jurily@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday July 28 2009, @05:38AM (#28849537)

    He didn't offer any details about how it would be implemented.

    Because he doesn't know, obviously. Oh, and there is no copy protection that won't be cracked on release day. Again, there is one and only one method I've seen so far that worked: make the server you control essential to gameplay, see WoW. (Oh, and Blizzard actually releases their client without copy protection whatsoever.)

    You don't control my computer, and you deserve to go bankrupt for trying.

        • solution: put the "server" on a chip, inside the game cartridge :-)

          They tried that in the Super NES era, with the "DSP" and "Super FX" and "SA-1" and "SDD-1" coprocessors. All ended up cracked.

          • Re:Handhelds can't play MMORPGs (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Darkness404 (1287218) on Tuesday July 28 2009, @08:55AM (#28851245)
            Ended up cracked -years- later. After the SNES had ended its production run for the most part. Plus, back then to "pirate" a game you bought the game from some shady guy for $5, today that wouldn't fly, we want our games for free if we are going to pirate them. Today what people do is simply place them on a flash cart and go. The DS is unique in the fact that its going to be hard to truly emulate the experience of having a real DS on a computer. So all they need to do is release a chip with the games and stop most casual piracy. Will it be cracked? Of course, will it happen after the game is profitable, yes.

  • New anti-piracy tool, eh? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Caboosian (1096069) on Tuesday July 28 2009, @05:40AM (#28849549)
    Here's your best anti-piracy tool: Drop the price on new PC games to $40, and ffs, stop treating your customers like thieves.

      • Re:New anti-piracy tool, eh? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by borizz (1023175) on Tuesday July 28 2009, @06:17AM (#28849761)
        Actually, no. At $1 I'd buy a shitload of games.

        I'm just not ready to drop 50 euros on a game (which is what they ask where I live). For example, I waited until Left 4 Dead was on weekend special on Steam so I could get it for under 20 euros. That's a price I'm more than willing to pay.

      • Re:New anti-piracy tool, eh? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by SanityInAnarchy (655584) <ninja@slaphack.com> on Tuesday July 28 2009, @07:12AM (#28850085) Journal

        When I was employed, I had plenty of money to afford games, and I was willing and ready to spend it. I wrote this journal entry [slashdot.org] describing that situation:

        If Mirror's Edge comes, say, as a Steam game -- not like Bioshock, but actually just a Steam game, with no additional protection -- I'd buy it in a heartbeat. On opening day. Make it DRM-free, and I'll consider preordering.
        If it comes with anywhere near the level of DRM you're currently requiring for Spore, even this "relaxed" version, I will head over to the nearest torrent site and download a copy. I have plenty of money to spend, yes, but not plenty of time to waste proving that I own something.

        Now, understand, I'm not saying everyone is like me. But I was pretty much their ideal customer -- young, male, computer enthusiast, I love games, and I had money to spend on them. If they're losing me as a customer, it raises the question: Just where do they think they're going to get customers?

        As it is, I'm unemployed, so I don't have that money -- nor do I really have much time to game, when it could be spent looking for a job. As you say:

        You can live without a game.

        You also made a good point without realizing it:

        Piracy is the competition

        Any company that actually realizes that piracy is their competition has taken the first step towards fighting it. If you treat piracy as this evil, criminal act, and try to stop it with force, you will get nowhere. Instead, you can stop it by making the legitimate copy a better product than the pirated one.

        Now, to address your other points:

        They could be selling it for $1.00 and still they would pirate it. Probably coming up with some excuse that it is so cheap that it should be free anyways.

        If this were true, don't you think the same would happen to Amazon MP3 and the iTunes store? Yes, people pirate, but those stores are still wildly successful.

        In fact, that's probably the point.

        High piracy rates show that there is demand for the game

        They show that there's demand for the game at zero dollars. They don't show that any single person who pirated the game would've been willing to pay for it, if piracy wasn't an option.

        As I said, I'm currently unemployed. My choice now is to either not play games, or to pirate games. I mostly choose to not play games, but the effect on the developer is the same -- they don't get my money.

        And I'd think they would rather have me pirate the game than not play at all.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by SanityInAnarchy (655584)

            They think they are! That's the whole point of DRM... Make it so the pirate copy isn't as good as the legal one.

            No, that's focusing on the wrong side of the equation. Focus on making the legit copy better, not on making the pirate copy worse.

            There's no way to make the legal copy better than the pirate one, other than the fact that it's legal and you don't feel bad about it.

            Not true.

            Even MMOs eventually get server emulators.

            Yes, they do. And you know what?

            The various WoW emulated servers are much worse than the legit ones. Quests are constantly screwed up, every update breaks something, it's difficult to even get a copy, at which point you still have to compile from source...

            The legit WoW servers are where all your friends are. That network effect alone is what keeps people on Facebook, for

        • Re:New anti-piracy tool, eh? (Score:5, Funny)

          by thisnamestoolong (1584383) on Tuesday July 28 2009, @07:27AM (#28850233)
          "But no, I actually agree with you. If you don't like the price and/or DRM scheme the appropriate response is to not buy it and not pirate it. Pirating the game just adds fuel to the fire and will lead to an escalating arms race between publishers and pirates that ultimately only hurts the honest consumer."

          What arms race? This implies that there is a legitimate contest between advancing DRM schemes and pirates -- there isn't, DRM is usually broken on release day, and the titles are customarily up on the torrent sites by that evening. A much better analogy would be to imagine the publishers as Dick Cheney, DRM the shotgun, the pirates a pheasant, and legitimate customers his friend's face.

      • Most of the people who create their own 'backups' and want to run from their hard-drives most probably got their copies from a warez site or a friend of theirs own a copy and they want one too.

        Even if "most" have pirated the game, some have purchased a lawfully made copy and want to run it on a smaller laptop, and smaller laptops happen not to have a built-in optical drive and a battery to support an external optical drive. And if a friend owns a copy, then perhaps the other people are trying to simulate the "spawn installations" of the original Starcraft and the "DS Download Play" of Tetris DS, which don't need a pirated copy in order to become player 2, 3, or 4 on a LAN. Make legitimate ways fo

      • Re:New anti-piracy tool, eh? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by EsbenMoseHansen (731150) on Tuesday July 28 2009, @07:15AM (#28850113) Homepage

        I don't like piracy (check my history if you don't believe me), but I do dislike having to type a 20-digit number to play a game I bought. I think that is what is meant by "treating like thieves". For the windows-crowd, you also hear about more serious issues, like CD-burning software stopping to work. I have no first-hand experience there.

        Now DVDs are pretty bad. Sometimes they force-show a movie about not copying. Hello?! If I am watching the DVD, I patently did not copy it illegally. At least, I doubt the "pirates" actually include that bit :)

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by EsbenMoseHansen (731150)

            My advice is for the game developers to make games that are mostly placed on a server. That would truly make piracy hard, and would even lend some limited value to the customer (no downloading patches and so on).

            Of course, that means that playing without internet connectivity becomes impossible. So it is a trade-off, but I hope this way that PC gaming will endure.

  • When will they learn (Score:5, Insightful)

    by raymansean (1115689) on Tuesday July 28 2009, @05:41AM (#28849559)
    When will they learn that lack of sales != piracy? Lack of sales implies that people are not willing to pay the price you want for what you have to offer. This may be a direct cause of a tanked economy or your product sucks. There are plenty of reasons why your product will not sell piracy is not one of them.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by raymansean (1115689)
        I would guess that piracy is lost in the noise of monthly sales. The entertainment industry uses piracy as a scape goat in order to convince the bond holders that neither the quality of the product nor the current price of the product is driving sales down substantially. "If you only invest more money, we will be able to develop this new almost unbreakable scheme that will stop piracy. Then our sales will rebound." Two facts of life: 1) Piracy is the oldest profession. There will always be dishonest men. 2)

  • Delaying sounds like a good strategy (Score:5, Funny)

    by janek78 (861508) on Tuesday July 28 2009, @05:42AM (#28849561) Homepage

    If they keep delaying their titles that will surely teach the pirates a lesson. Look at Duke Nukem Forever, no-one has cracked that one yet!

  • Let's see what ubisoft's successful games are... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by freedom_india (780002) on Tuesday July 28 2009, @05:44AM (#28849573) Homepage Journal

    ...FarCry, Unreal, heroes of might & magic, & Prince of Persia.
    All these had their day and now are as dead as Duke Nukem. The Rest of Ubisoft's vaunted arsenal of games are either unplayable or so bad that using them as coffee coasters seem an insult to the coffee.
    Ubisoft's CEO seems to have his head so far up his a$$ that he gets high on his own "perfume".
    Instead of blaming his company's utter failure to produce good, replayable games with deep themes and good graphics, he blames an outside factor that his beyond his ability to control.
    What makes him think he will succeed where the Evil Empire Sony's SecuROM and other hundreds of copy-protection have failed?
    His Capitalism 2 doesn't play on Windows 7 64-bit. When asked, his company's cold reply was that i switch back to Windows XP.
    Uru was a rockin' failure and a complete insult to Myst.
    As usual, corporate CEOs are so far removed from reality that they can continue to fool stockholders every single day with more fairy tales of their own.
    I would start shorting Ubisoft's stock from today, if i can.

  • anti-piracy tool (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Krneki (1192201) on Tuesday July 28 2009, @05:45AM (#28849577)
    Repeat with me, there is no such thing as an anti-piracy tool for offline gaming.

    After 30 years of gaming, I was hopping that maybe they will get it.

  • The DS fails commercially at the most basic level (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rix (54095) on Tuesday July 28 2009, @05:55AM (#28849637)

    For less than the cost of a single DS game (and they're only about $30), you can buy a cartridge and microSD card that can hold all the games you could ever want and then some *and* lets you play old school [s]nes/gameboy games. No juggling or losing cartridges, it's all just there.

    Why would I want to participate in the for-pay DS economy when the pirate experience is far superior?

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by loufoque (1400831)

        Stealing a car is illegal, reading a game from an SD card is not.

        • Re:The DS fails commercially at the most basic lev (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Norsefire (1494323) * on Tuesday July 28 2009, @06:34AM (#28849845) Journal
          I realise that, I was (partly) joking. The "I pirate because X" crew really are frustrating, as each time whatever their gripe is (DRM, need disk to play, etc. etc.) is fixed they shift the goalposts ("Okay, the game no longer needs the disk to play, now I want them cheaper"). The argument is a strawman, it's been refuted to the point of inanity and its frustrating that you can't skip past it on DVDs, but it does help to give people who (claim that they) pirate because pirating grants them a feature they don't have a little perspective.

  • Couldn't just be (Score:3, Funny)

    by Pvt_Ryan (1102363) on Tuesday July 28 2009, @06:06AM (#28849703)
    that the games they have released were crap and they are delaying Splinter Cell yet again..

  • Best Antipiracy Tool (Score:5, Insightful)

    by whisper_jeff (680366) on Tuesday July 28 2009, @06:07AM (#28849711)
    The best antipiracy tool is to make something that is good enough that people are willing to spend money on it. Quality. That's your best antipiracy tool.

    • Re:Best Antipiracy Tool (Score:5, Funny)

      by wjousts (1529427) on Tuesday July 28 2009, @07:16AM (#28850121)
      Rubbish, you best anti-piracy tool is lack of quality. Make the game so shit that nobody in their right mind would even want to waste their time downloading it. Many publishers seem to be currently working on this strategy.

  • Copy Protection (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Razalhague (1497249) on Tuesday July 28 2009, @06:09AM (#28849719) Homepage
    The only type of copy protection that won't be cracked is the one protecting something nobody gives a shit about.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Yogiz (1123127)

      Having played the last few Ubisoft games, it seems that they have already started to implement this new anti-piracy tool.

  • How about... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by planetoid (719535) on Tuesday July 28 2009, @06:54AM (#28849969)
    How about you lazy Ubisoft shitheads fix the UI bugs in Chessmaster that have plagued the software since release instead of worrying about preventing pirated copies of the next Imagine Babiez?

    Oh man I sure love being in Academy mode, moving a chess piece as the tutorial requests in a drill, and then getting stuck in the tutorial because moving a piece made it suddenly think I'm in Game Edit mode, which isn't supposed to happen when you're in a tutorial.

  • Anti-piracy measures killing sales? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2009, @07:16AM (#28850115)

    I forget what big titles Ubisoft came out with recently.. but I remember a discussion in my forums where most people were saying they didn't give a shit how good the game was.. They wouldn't buy it because of the DRM. I gotta admit that I'm now in the same boat.. The vast majority of pc gamers in my forums were saying the DRM would prevent them from buying the game.. PC Gamers aren't retarded console gamers.. They do their research on the game AND the DRM that comes with it..

    I have been told I had to buy an internal cdrom drive because my external usb wasn't valid.. (wtf) because of drm issues.. I have been told to 'wait until the Tages servers are back up' before I can play.. I've had cd keys just all of a sudden no longer validate. And, I've had games install all sorts of crappy software on my 64bit windows xp that weren't made for 64bit.. so it causes problems.

  • Entertainment sales and recession (Score:5, Insightful)

    by VGPowerlord (621254) on Tuesday July 28 2009, @07:17AM (#28850129) Homepage

    Entertainment sales dropping during a continued recession isn't exactly a surprise. People have less money, so they buy less.

    That's why I thought Time Magazine's conclusions [time.com] last year were just ludicrous, as they predicted that entertainment sales would go up.

    • My download went at 1.2MB/s filling up my 10Mbps connection.

      Good for you, but downloading a big PC game from an online store is not for everyone. In some places, the two options for high-speed Internet access aren't cable and DSL but instead satellite and 3G, and these usually have monthly usage caps between 5 GB and 8 GB. If you had such a cap on your Internet connection, would you still download from the publisher's online store?

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Artifakt (700173)

        One of the best ways to get rid of DRM and make the DMCA appear irrelevant would be if the dedicated pirates didn't crack ubisoft's new system for a few weeks, but sales sucked just as much anyway. The challenge of beating a new system quickly means crackers focus attention on the game even if there's little reason for anyone else to want it once cracked. Then they flood Usenet and torrents as part of bragging about their success. Companies interpret all this attention as demand, which would theoretically o

        • Re:I don't care... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Dr_Barnowl (709838) on Tuesday July 28 2009, @07:10AM (#28850065)

          Even better ; if all the cracking groups publicly announced that "We played your new game, and it's not worth cracking because it's shite".

          But that won't happen because the crack is the game to them...

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