by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Sunday April 25, 2010 @11:57AM (#31975686)
I work at Ubisoft as a programmer, which is why I'm posting as an AC. What the next step will be in the DRM, the ramp-up, is gameplay code that is run from the server. So in order to crack that one the pirates will have to fully emulate the server side code. Not the whole of the gameplay code mind you, just a small, but necessary and essential, portion. This should be in effect for the coming summer releases. For the record I think Ubisoft are being asshat idiots in continuing to ramp up this obscenity of a slap in the face to paying consumers. And I'm not alone, you should see the in-house mailing list flamewars about this (which also means that other employees are freaking greedy douchebags, it's not just the suits.)
Thanks for sharing. I feel sorry for you working there. If I were you, I'd be looking for alternative employment, as Ubisoft seem hell-bent on driving their own business into the ground.
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Sunday April 25, 2010 @01:10PM (#31976348)
Oh, I'll be leaving soon, but for other reasons. Mostly because they work you into the ground sweat shop style, they are hellbent on NOT making innovative fun games (it's always about how it looks, not how it plays), and because the place is full of greedy capitalist douchebags.
I had the exact feeling about their games when I bought the last Prince of Persia (I bought it because it was DRM free) the game was all about looks but not about fun, I am not sure when Ubisoft changed their attitude, but the game was clearly not good although it looked spectacular. Seems like the last PoP will be the last game from them I have bought in a long time, since they are hell bent to keep up their DRM.
if there is any good going to come to society from this, it will be from people like you who stand in deep in the middle of the shit, but do not immerse in it themselves.
If Ubisoft can't keep servers up from launch day on which only return a response value, how could they possibly hope to keep up servers that have to actually do any heavy lifting?
The funny thing is, that they will alienate even more customers by this... interesting to see how a company runs itself into the ground by sheer stupidity and greed.
Actually I see it more as a testing ground on how far they can go, Capcom currently tries to pull the same stunt on the PS3. The PC market while not as big as it used to be still is very big, you just do not see it officially because the charts are usually done by the retail sales, but the market has moved over to online sales to a very big degree. Add to that that the console market is also fragmented over platforms and you have a general pc market which is about as big as a single console platform. Hardly a
as he said they only have to move small amounts of game code to the server. Crackers will either have to get a leak of server code or re-write it themselves. Both are very difficult propositions compared to capturing streamed data.
Problem is you you move parts of the code to the server you run into bigger load problems than Ubisoft currently has, they obviously do not have the infrastructure to keep that alive without outages, then you have the lag. Etc... it will become harder to crack, but they will alienate even more customers that way, and in the end no one will buy their games anymore. Sersiously, if the industry is going to move to DRM like that I will give up gaming, or just buy independend anymore. It is not like it hurts if yo
Actually I personally think that in the long run this will be outsourced to companies like Google or Akmai who have the knowledge to run such infrastructure. Just look at what google provides with their app engine, and you can see that they are preparing their infrastructure for cloud outsourcing customers. Problem is, that companies like Ubisoft probably do not want to give their servers away but neither have the infrastructure nor the knowledge to keep up such services reliably. Add to that that after 2-3
Hi I am your ex customer, tell your greedy stupid ass**** in the management, that your DRM alone on my person has lost you about three sure sales, and I will boykott your games as long as your DRM is unpatched by you. (And I am probably not alone, just look at amazon, your reputation currently is flushed down the toilet, and I do not care if the crackers have done a service you guys should have done, I still will not buy AC2 which I originally wanted to buy)
F*** Ubisoft, you do not deserve any better than go
Upps sorry, sometimes I should read the entire posting, thanks for positing your honest opinion, all I can say, is leave this shithouse they are hell bent on destroying themselves for the sake of greed. I personally still think the entire thing will end up in a sales and reputation fiasco which will be hard to fix.
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Sunday April 25, 2010 @03:54PM (#31977896)
And I'm not alone, you should see the in-house mailing list flamewars about this (which also means that other employees are freaking greedy douchebags, it's not just the suits.)
And I'm not alone, you should see the in-house mailing list flamewars about this (which also means that other employees are freaking greedy douchebags, it's not just the suits.)
Please leak them.
Probably that would get me fired (contrary to the troll-griefer who posted I was going to get fired, I wasn't.) It would make for a helluva fun and interesting, albeit morbid and disturbing, read. The discussions are about half and half. Where you have those on the one side passionately defending the DRM and proposing ways to make it even more draconian and consumer unfriendly. Very chilling, it makes one shudder with a mix of fear and disgust. The other side, against the DRM, are a lot less vocal and a lot
Actually, something you could do that wouldn't violate any ethical or legal principles would be to provide contact information for non-purchasers to air their displeasure... preferably multiple physical or electronic addresses that don't resolve to a circular file.
If they do not have a complete buy-in from their employees on this policy they will most likely experience data leaks that enable the crackers to make unauthorized servers. Unhappy employees and data security is a bad combination.
It's been said that managing programmers is like herding cats. The open source world only exaggerates the effect, and the open source GAMES world is downright pathological. Entertainment is subjective. Games are entertainment software. What I think is fun and what you think is fun are almost guaranteed not to match all the time, and could easily be totally disjoint sets. So getting more than one person to work on the same project is very difficult. And it gets worse...
The next step (an insider's view) (Score:5, Interesting)
I work at Ubisoft as a programmer, which is why I'm posting as an AC. What the next step will be in the DRM, the ramp-up, is gameplay code that is run from the server. So in order to crack that one the pirates will have to fully emulate the server side code. Not the whole of the gameplay code mind you, just a small, but necessary and essential, portion. This should be in effect for the coming summer releases.
For the record I think Ubisoft are being asshat idiots in continuing to ramp up this obscenity of a slap in the face to paying consumers. And I'm not alone, you should see the in-house mailing list flamewars about this (which also means that other employees are freaking greedy douchebags, it's not just the suits.)
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for sharing. I feel sorry for you working there.
If I were you, I'd be looking for alternative employment, as Ubisoft seem hell-bent on driving their own business into the ground.
Re:The next step (an insider's view) (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, I'll be leaving soon, but for other reasons. Mostly because they work you into the ground sweat shop style, they are hellbent on NOT making innovative fun games (it's always about how it looks, not how it plays), and because the place is full of greedy capitalist douchebags.
Re: (Score:3)
I had the exact feeling about their games when I bought the last Prince of Persia (I bought it because it was DRM free)
the game was all about looks but not about fun, I am not sure when Ubisoft changed their attitude, but the game was clearly not good although it looked spectacular.
Seems like the last PoP will be the last game from them I have bought in a long time, since they are hell bent to keep up their DRM.
Thank you (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The funny thing is, that they will alienate even more customers by this... interesting to see how a company runs itself into the ground by sheer stupidity and greed.
Or it ends up working and they make more money (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Actually I see it more as a testing ground on how far they can go, Capcom currently tries to pull the same stunt on the PS3.
The PC market while not as big as it used to be still is very big, you just do not see it officially because the charts are usually done by the retail sales, but the market has moved over to online sales to a very big degree.
Add to that that the console market is also fragmented over platforms and you have a general pc market which is about as big as a single console platform. Hardly a
They don't have to do heavy lifting (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Problem is you you move parts of the code to the server you run into bigger load problems than Ubisoft currently has, they obviously do not have the infrastructure to keep that alive without outages, then you have the lag.
Etc... it will become harder to crack, but they will alienate even more customers that way, and in the end no one will buy their games anymore.
Sersiously, if the industry is going to move to DRM like that I will give up gaming, or just buy independend anymore. It is not like it hurts if yo
Re: (Score:1)
I could actually care less about what they do. I have mostly switched to consoles and I rarely play Ubisoft games.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually I personally think that in the long run this will be outsourced to companies like Google or Akmai who have the knowledge to run such infrastructure. Just look at what google provides with their app engine, and you can see that they are preparing their infrastructure for cloud outsourcing customers.
Problem is, that companies like Ubisoft probably do not want to give their servers away but neither have the infrastructure nor the knowledge to keep up such services reliably. Add to that that after 2-3
Re: (Score:2)
Hi I am your ex customer, tell your greedy stupid ass**** in the management, that your DRM alone on my person has lost you about three sure sales, and I will boykott your games as long as your DRM is unpatched by you. (And I am probably not alone, just look at amazon, your reputation
currently is flushed down the toilet, and I do not care if the crackers have done a service you guys should have done, I still will not buy AC2 which I originally wanted to buy)
F*** Ubisoft, you do not deserve any better than go
Re: (Score:2)
Upps sorry, sometimes I should read the entire posting, thanks for positing your honest opinion, all I can say, is leave this shithouse they are hell bent on destroying themselves for the sake of greed.
I personally still think the entire thing will end up in a sales and reputation fiasco which will be hard to fix.
Re:The next step (an insider's view) (Score:5, Interesting)
And I'm not alone, you should see the in-house mailing list flamewars about this (which also means that other employees are freaking greedy douchebags, it's not just the suits.)
Please leak them.
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
And I'm not alone, you should see the in-house mailing list flamewars about this (which also means that other employees are freaking greedy douchebags, it's not just the suits.)
Please leak them.
Probably that would get me fired (contrary to the troll-griefer who posted I was going to get fired, I wasn't.) It would make for a helluva fun and interesting, albeit morbid and disturbing, read.
The discussions are about half and half. Where you have those on the one side passionately defending the DRM and proposing ways to make it even more draconian and consumer unfriendly. Very chilling, it makes one shudder with a mix of fear and disgust. The other side, against the DRM, are a lot less vocal and a lot
Re: (Score:2)
At the very least, save them to release after you've left the company. Or perhaps summarize the arguments.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, something you could do that wouldn't violate any ethical or legal principles would be to provide contact information for non-purchasers to air their displeasure... preferably multiple physical or electronic addresses that don't resolve to a circular file.
Re: (Score:2)
If they do not have a complete buy-in from their employees on this policy they will most likely experience data leaks that enable the crackers to make unauthorized servers. Unhappy employees and data security is a bad combination.
Re: (Score:2)
It's been said that managing programmers is like herding cats. The open source world only exaggerates the effect, and the open source GAMES world is downright pathological. Entertainment is subjective. Games are entertainment software. What I think is fun and what you think is fun are almost guaranteed not to match all the time, and could easily be totally disjoint sets. So getting more than one person to work on the same project is very difficult. And it gets worse...
First, there's the avalanche of a
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for letting me know to keep avoiding any and all ubisoft products.
This means these games will be unplayable in 5 years and as I doubt they will be refunding the purchase price, I won't be buying it.
Re: (Score:2)