Ubisoft Considers Always-Connected DRM "A Success" 224
Ubisoft made headlines a couple days ago for bringing back their restrictive DRM for an upcoming racing game. Speaking with PCGamer in response to the overwhelmingly negative feedback to this news, a Ubisoft representative said the company has seen "a clear reduction in piracy of our titles which required a persistent online connection," adding, "from that point of view the requirement is a success." One wonders how they measured this, and how they compare it to sales lost due to the bad press it's generated.
It is a sucess (Score:5, Interesting)
I spend much less on games now
Game developer == Hollywood studio (Score:5, Interesting)
While most software development companies (Microsoft as the biggest example) had long ago given up copy-protection for software, game development companies seemed to be a strange exception to the rule.
But it's no anomaly: As games have drifted more toward the category of movies and away from the category of software, it's only natural that they've begun to see things the MAFIAA way.
The Second Law of Public Relations (Score:4, Interesting)
... is: never admit failure. Just talk about what a wonderful success whatever you're being asked about has been. If the product really is a failure, keep talking about its success until the people who make the decisions get around to canceling it. After that, if you're asked about it, dismiss it as yesterday's news and change the subject to what wonderful successes your other products are.
The Mac Cube [wikimedia.org], for instance, was a major stinkburger. [wikimedia.org] Did Apple ever say anything to that effect publicly? Nope. They were always bright and sunny about how well the Cube was doing, until the day they killed it. [apple.com] At which point inquiries about the failure of the Cube were answered with glittering stories of how well their other Macs were selling.
In other words -- what a company's spokesperson says about the success or failure of something like a DRM system is meaningless. They will always say it is a great success. The only way to learn the truth is to watch whether the company puts more effort and money behind it, or less.
Re:How does one measure the value of "nothing"? (Score:5, Interesting)
I know so many people who used to pirate music before music became DRM-free. Then Apple got through to the studios, and people still pirated because they didn't want to deal with iTunes. Finally, when Amazon started offering mp3s and no crappy software to download, 8/11 of the people I still keep in touch with switched. There were two big changes: they'd all grown up and could now afford music, and the music was easy to buy, download, and use. No messing with bloated programs, no DRM restricting where you could play the songs, no problems.
I feel largely the same way about movies and TV. Right now, I use Netflix and Hulu with smatterings of Redbox to get my video media, as well as OTA signals. I'd buy digital downloads of movies and TV shows from Amazon in a heartbeat if I could play them anywhere, any time, without an Internet connection. I've been tempted many times to buy them anyway, however because they won't play on my iPad or offline laptop, I won't. I could buy from Apple, but those videos won't play on my laptop at all. So I won't buy there, either.
I genuinely want to give these people my money. They just don't (yet) offer a product I'm willing to pay for. So instead, I use free or cheap options that almost certainly don't help them.