Ubisoft's DRM Cracked — For Real This Time 443
therufus writes "A few days after the release of Assassin's Creed 2, naughty piracy sites were announcing they had cracked Ubisoft's Online Services Platform. Turns out, that wasn't entirely true. While it was possible to load into the game, players were unable to advance past a certain memory block. But now, it seems Ubisoft will need to draft a new response. A new crack has begun circulating that removes the DRM entirely."
Let The Excuses Begin (Score:5, Insightful)
Ubisoft has brought this upon themselves and now they'll use the fact that their "unbreakable" DRM has been broken to justify their further efforts. Asshats!
Re:Let The Excuses Begin (Score:5, Insightful)
The reasonable approach would be "Unbreakable? Yeah we've heard THAT before, no thanks, let's not waste money bothering with this. Lets use the programmers who would be designing complex DRM systems and have them join the team that's actually creating the game." Unfortunately I think that what you said will come to pass. They won't recognize that "try harder" is not the correct way to deal with a failed idea.
I wish people would act more ethically (Score:5, Insightful)
The only ethical response to ubisoft is not to buy their product, not to use their product, not to infringe upon their product and then tell them you are doing it and tell your friends.
I'm irritated at the pro-piracy attitude, it hurts open source as well. Without respect for at least copyright-driven IP you can't have real opensource that allows the creator to specify how it is propagated (GPL). All you would have would be the BSD, and we saw what Apple did with that eh?
There WILL be unbreakable DRM, heres how: (Score:5, Insightful)
Here is how unbreakable DRM will eventually work:
When internet connections are high enough bandwidths and low enough latencies, you will only have video transferred to you, all game assets will be entirely stored and run on their hardware, never will anything be stored on YOUR end that you will can manipulate.
That is, you will play "unbreakable" games remotely.
Re:I wish people would act more ethically (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There WILL be unbreakable DRM, heres how: (Score:3, Insightful)
At which point prices will have to drop significantly because you're no longer selling a game; you're selling a subscription to a game.
Hypocrisy at it's best ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Attached to the "readme" file that comes with the hacked content (which can be found here), Skid Row alerted other hackers that the group's methods were safeguarded against reverse-engineering in order to fend off competing hacking groups and Ubisoft itself.
Let me see if I got it ... you are against the draconian practices of ubisoft ... so you crack the game and ... protect the source of your crack?
I guess how you differentiate between hackers and crackers, this guys are nothing but thieves.
And, before anyone replies saying that this is to protect the patch against ubisoft ... ubisoft created the DRM, they don't need to take a look at the crack's code.
Re:Let The Excuses Begin (Score:5, Insightful)
In that respect, DRM is like a witch trial directed at legitimate paying customers. If the DRM stays intact, the witch sinks and dies, and the DRM perpetuates its own myth by "proving" its own success. If the DRM is cracked, the witch floats and lives only to be burned at the stake, and the DRM perpetuates its own myth by "proving" the need for harsher measures.
Either way, the DRM isn't really doing anything but killing witches - I mean, eliminating paying customers.
Re:I wish people would act more ethically (Score:2, Insightful)
So, why the fuck would you want to play their games if they are total assholes? It is not as if they are the only people who have ever made any games.
Re:There WILL be unbreakable DRM, heres how: (Score:5, Insightful)
At which point prices will have to drop significantly because you're no longer selling a game; you're selling a subscription to a game.
Hahahahahahahahahaha
Re:I wish people would act more ethically (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I wish people would act more ethically (Score:2, Insightful)
This is exactly the point. Do not feed them, you teach them nothing if you still buy their product. Refuse to buy their product, tell them why and tell everyone else.
Proprietary software is not necessarily immoral or unethical, but treating your own customers like common criminals is arguably unethical (this goes for Apple too).
Re:There WILL be unbreakable DRM, heres how: (Score:5, Insightful)
You think they will drop their prices? Obviously, you don't know anything about the greed of the media companies.
Re:I wish people would act more ethically (Score:4, Insightful)
That is why the parent was talking about ethics. Unfortunately, these days for most people protesting is fine as long as you don't have to actually sacrifice anything.
Re:There WILL be unbreakable DRM, heres how: (Score:5, Insightful)
And that sort of "Streaming" of a game will totally eliminate the re-playability of the game.
I have games that are 5, 10, 15, 20+ years old that I STILL go back and play. Some of the companies that made the games I have do not even exist anymore! No game company is going to pay to keep servers running so customers can continue to play the game that long after it was released.
I will NEVER EVER buy a game that is not totally contained on the media I am purchasing. I like to go back and re-play games for DECADES to come.
Re:There WILL be unbreakable DRM, heres how: (Score:3, Insightful)
He doesn’t have to. He only has to know something about basic physics of a market.
No price drop -> no buy -> bankrupt
price drop -> buy -> PROFIT
Re:depends on the meaning of "for real" (Score:1, Insightful)
not necessarily so, they could have bought the original game and used the crack to play it offline ( i think), and that doesn't sound to me like 'pirated version'.
Re:There WILL be unbreakable DRM, heres how: (Score:5, Insightful)
and this is why a high school level economics education is not sufficient to properly understand market forces.
Re:I wish people would act more ethically (Score:2, Insightful)
Do you really think that they don't take a peek at how well seeded the torrents of their games are? They have a pretty good idea when a game is being pirated and when it just sucks. The pro-piracy attitude is nothing more than being too cheap to buy the game and not having any respect for the developers. If you like the game, then you associate some value to it and you should buy it. Otherwise, don't play it.
Re:There WILL be unbreakable DRM, heres how: (Score:4, Insightful)
And why do you think that media companies will always be in control?
Sooner or later, someone will come up with a viable economic model that isn't based on scarcity; knowledge, information and data is inherently both copyable and modifiable, and any scarcity is artificially imposed.
The traditional model fails because it relies on the price of copying being higher than the price of buying.
The ad model fails because it relies on the data not being modifiable.
Games, books, or anything else that is basically data, need a different economic model altogether. One where you can copy and play as much as you like, and where a successful originator can't rest on his laurels, but will be forced to continue to create to get income rolling in.
Perhaps an art tax, where each tax payer gets to tell who gets his art tax at the end of the year. Or perhaps something else. One thing is certain: The current system is broken, because it bases itself on limiting the supply.
Re:There WILL be unbreakable DRM, heres how: (Score:3, Insightful)
ISP bandwidth caps and the lack of network neutrality will prevent that from being successful.
Re:get a clue (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody that pirates is a "potential customer". The end goal of the piracy movement is that it is all free or it isn't even made, and we are about 50% along the way towards that now.
DRM is a pointless hiccup along the way to utter destruction of revenue from digital goods. Now, whether you think that is good or bad is perhaps interesting. But it is undeniable that this is the goal and where we are going very, very quickly.
China gave up on selling music already. The US isn't far behind. Europe might be there before the US. Asia, Africa and South America never paid for anything anyway.
Re:There WILL be unbreakable DRM, heres how: (Score:3, Insightful)
I have no idea how these OnLive guys are going to handle frequent hardware updates since high-end games continue to push hardware.
Not really. Most games are essentially using DirectX 9 with additions because that's what the current generation of consoles supports. When the next round of consoles comes out they'll support DirectX 12 and you'll see nothing but DX12 games for the next five years. The boundary-pushing games are a thing of the past simply because that only works if you only release for the PC. Everyone else is tethered to what you can do with the chips found in consoles.
Re:Skidrow didn't do the hard work (Score:5, Insightful)
One involves deception or not telling the full truth.
Re:Let The Excuses Begin (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Let The Excuses Begin (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed, different company, but same issue here: I was going to buy Spore when it came out, because it sounded cool. When I found out about the DRM that amounts to their installing a rootkit on my system, I just downloaded the cracked version instead. I figure if they're going to treat me like a criminal from the get-go, why not earn the punishment? Turns out I had a much easier time of things than most anybody who actually paid for and installed the software. Go figure.
It's like the parents who leave the house for the afternoon, and tell the kids they have to do chores/homework and aren't allowed to watch any TV. Instead of trusting the kids at all, or even waiting till they get back to determine if they broke the rules and watched TV, the parents decide to punish the kids ahead of time because they know they'll break the rule anyway. Well, since they've already been punished for it, why wouldn't the kids watch TV when they aren't supposed to?
These fucked up DRM schemes are exactly the same - if I'm going to be punished for following the rules (heavy restrictions on use, rootkits, compatibility issues, etc), why the hell would I follow the rules? A lot of people already know most cracked versions are easier and more convenient to play compared to the retail versions, so where is the incentive to buy retail? Some people are honest enough to buy retail and then get the cracks, but you're still breaking the law so why bother buying in the first place?
Re:Let The Excuses Begin (Score:3, Insightful)
I think he's trying to say that games without DRM are more successful.
While it's hard to argue that piracy affects the bottom line of game sales (if piracy is an option, it WILL reduce demand for the retail version), there is little to no evidence that DRM measures reduce the amount of piracy. Due to their digital nature (the very thing that makes them easy to copy in the first place), once a game is cracked that particular version is cracked forever, and anybody with an internet connection can get it. Because no security can ever be 100% effective, DRM will always be cracked eventually.
What this means is companies are spending tens of millions of dollars that buys them just a few weeks of unpirated sales. That's it, it does not take the incentive to pirate away at all, and in the long run even the most draconian DRM only has a marginal affect on the amount of piracy that occurs. Therefor, any company that spends only a minimum amount of effort on a DRM scheme saves those tens of millions of dollars at the cost of those few weeks of unpirated sales. As Ben Franklin said: "A penny saved is a penny earned."
Assassin's Creed 2 is just one of many games that are proof positive of this fact.
I could *not* care less. (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck Ubisoft. Fuck EA. They've both lost a paying customer [slashdot.org] by pulling this bullshit, and I buy a lot of games.
Fuck 'em both.
Re:There WILL be unbreakable DRM, heres how: (Score:1, Insightful)
Maybe you missed the gaming news last week, where 100s of thousands of people showed they were willing to buy a virtual flying horse they not only didn't own, but had to pay $15 a month to have access to for the price of $25 in World of Warcraft.
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:There WILL be unbreakable DRM, heres how: (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:There WILL be unbreakable DRM, heres how: (Score:2, Insightful)
"Price is not based on "greed"
And you just failed economics *AND* you failed to understand human nature.
Ever wonder why we have to haggle on prices? Because motherfuckers are greedy.
Re:There WILL be unbreakable DRM, heres how: (Score:1, Insightful)
So you assume that the average slashdotter has never heard of supply and demand and tell them they 'need a mandatory economics lesson' but I'm the arrogant one? The fact is the posts you're replying to seem to have a better understanding of our economic system than you do.
don't use the crack, don't play the games (Score:5, Insightful)
Do not use the crack and do not play the games with DRM if we want to really see an end to DRM. Even playing the game without buying it can be good publicity that generates sales for those who would complain they are not selling enough. Resisting the temptation to consume products instead of creating our own is the real problem. Instead of consuming things because we feel we need to, if we do not agree with the product we should instead work to create our own. We cannot let self-doubts and temporary failures prevent us from being creative if we are to bring about a new creative renaissance without DRM.
Re:There WILL be unbreakable DRM, heres how: (Score:1, Insightful)
If I had mod points, you would have mod points.
The transition to digital downloads has seen initial prices remain high, and average sales prices increase. Why increase? You don't get the shelf-clearing discounts, used sales, etc that you get in the real world. Steam excepted, you don't generally see games decrease substantially in cost in digital-only marketing. Further, the companies want to maintain the impression of value in their products, and as such don't want to cut their own legs off. In essence, if a game is worth $60 to the player, the delivery mechanism isn't as important as the content.
I find it funny that people are talking about the "greedy media companies" in an environment where game development companies are going broke and laying off left and right. I was laid off in December, with a group of 50 other developers. EA had layoffs. Activision laid off half of Radical, large chunks of Neversoft, and all of Luxoflux. I'm looking for a job right now, and am competing with the hundred or so developers that Sega let go of last week. While those numbers are pretty small in any other industry, there are maybe 20 studios with open design positions right now across the US. The Sega layoffs could fill those positions alone. And until people start hiring again, we're going to continue to lose experienced, talented developers. Once the economy is moving again, you're going to see late, poorly-produced titles being created by people who have little experience with the realities of 200-man team game creation.
Re:Skidrow didn't do the hard work (Score:4, Insightful)
And both involve stealing from someone else
No, as a matter of fact neither of them do.
please unthink what you have just thunk aloud (Score:3, Insightful)
Comparing games to food and drink is just ridiculous. One you can't do without - the other, you think you can't do without because obviously you have more money than sense. Well, some people 'can't live' without heroin either, I'm sure they convince themselves that the drug is more important than food, a roof, friends and family. Good for them, and good for you!
Of course it is like a luxury item that people will stop buying. YOU are addicted to gaming if you think that nobody has the resolve to just unplug from the cycle. I haven't bought or played any games for years - DRM has always been one of my hates because it punishes ME for what everybody else is doing, but primarily because outright bullshitting on the system requirements by every single company made it impossible to judge what to buy, without doing incredibly monotonous research on hardware and benchmark sites which no one should have to be subjected to. Hardly as big or invasive an issue as DRM, but still enough more me to think 'fuck this for a laugh', so just how much worse is DRM in my opinion and in the minds of millions of other people?
I struggle to understand how anyone can be intrested in 15 pages of pie charts and framerates for every single graphics card that has ever been packaged as if it tells you anything more than how much money you owe Nvidia or ATI to keep getting the next-next-gen franchise-ware that EA/Activision/UBI have carefully appropriated unscrupulously from more independent and imaginative companies and proceeded to either bastardise into the recurring sports-themed-shit production line or just senselessly killed off for no other reason that to sit on the rights so that no one else can be a threat to them. Good riddance big gaming companies, you'll be driven into the ground by the same simple minded, overbearing buisness environment that you created to make yourself fat and rich off people's ignorance.
Re:There WILL be unbreakable DRM, heres how: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll throw in my .02 here. I stopped buying games. I stopped buying games because they became VERY expensive, are hogs, are being dumbed down to run on the console first and the PC second, and because the DRM is becoming ever more intrusive. Case in point: Supreme Commander 2. I LOVED the original TA game, I enjoyed Supreme commander 1, and now this... Built for console, dumbed down for the PC, and it requires STEAM. No sale. I like FPS, I play UT2K4 and once in a blue moon UT3. I have tried Battlefield and some others but nah too expensive and more and more complex. UT3 was even a PITA with better graphics but gameplay that wasn't as interesting to me and nowhere near as many 3rd party levels - maybe that has changed - and DRM that was more difficult than UT2K4 to deal with. I don't want to have to go find my DVD, I don't want to HAVE to be connected, and I don't want my machine inspected to see if I'm running software the company doesn't like. Yes, I actually had one of those pseudo DVD mount programs running for something other than game piracy and it kept me from installing a legit game I had purchased.
The game industry has shot itself in the foot. They are moving to consoles just as fast as they can and dumbing things down because of it. It's a real shame that just as PCs have become quite powerful and video cards disgustingly fast that video game companies seem to have decided to abandon the platform. It sucks for people like yourself but when games are so ridiculous as to REQUIRE you to be online to play them then the companies have asked for the crap that follows. Sell me a game for say $25 that doesn't completely suck and I'm all over it. It doesn't need video realistic graphics just decent gameplay and the ability for 3rd parties to expand it ala UT2K4. Then the company can spend a little less development time on the graphics and a bunch more on a decent engine that will last a good bit longer.
FWIW - we already see poorly-produced titles being delivered late with tons of bugs - that's reality.
P.S. I own a Wii, a PS3, and a 360 (if this one doesn't fry) but I really prefer the PC for games. On those consoles I buy USED games and play them FAR less than my PC. While console development is of interest to the game companies it's not much interest to me - not at $60 a game!
You're missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
And there's always the problem of latency (Score:3, Insightful)
The longer the latency, the worse the user experience. This is because it is a lag of everything, including user interface. You do something, you don't see it happen until later. That is noticeable, and is annoying. Now the problem with latency is that the only real way to combat it is to have the source and destination physically closer to each other. Reason is that light speed is the ultimate limit and while it sound fast, it isn't when talking data latency. Light can orbit the Earth around 8 times per second. Sounds really fast and is, unless you are talking data. To state that another way, that's 125ms. So what that means is that if you want to send data half way around the Earth, you are talking a minimum theoretical latency of above 100ms. Even assuming everything is perfect, that's just how long it would take light in a vacuum to get there and back.
Of course in reality it gets worse. Fiber optic cable has an index of refraction, which means light travels slower in it. It moves at maybe 66% of c or so. Also you don't get to have a nice direct line with fiber. It snakes around mountains, follows railroads, goes down to the bottom of the ocean, etc. It is longer than "as the crow flies." Then of course there's the routers. No matter how good, they are going to add some latency as the process the information and forward it to the right port. Finally there's the fact that an actual data payload takes time itself to transmit.
So you have to have servers distributed near to the clients to maintain a nice low latency and make the system work well. This is a problem for two reasons:
1) Cost. It will cost a hell of a lot more to have servers in data centers all over the world than to try and host them all at one site.
2) Security. This is the biggy. Given that the point of the is copy protection you have a real problem. If everything is at your site, ok you can take measures to do a real good job securing it. However if it is at various ISPs all over the world, that's a problem. All it takes is someone who works at one of those ISPs who also works with a pirate group to get the actual program off your server, since they have physical access that you can't monitor, and then the program is out in the open. Trying to secure against that with hundreds of sites around the world would be impossible.
Re:There WILL be unbreakable DRM, heres how: (Score:5, Insightful)
And that would be relevant if they had equivalent sales. As things stand, it actually argues against your point: ebook sales in the US last year come to about $13 million dollars out of a (roughly) $23 billion dollar a year industry, according to the AAP. If the quality of the product and the price of the alternatives are the only driving factors, then I conclude that people are unwilling to pay equal amounts for a product that has no associated baseline costs and a product whose cost is dominated by those factors.
The low numbers are partially because the baseline cost is free - go to the library (or Project Gutenberg [gutenberg.org] for pre-1923 works, the last year to probably ever be public domain [wikipedia.org]). The truth is, the product you buy is not a product, it's a one-platform non-transferable DRM encrusted unresaleable bunch of words that will be disabled when the dot.com at the other end of the wire decides it's profitable to abandon [boingboing.net] or goes out of business [bricklin.com], sold for the same price as a tangible product. Ebooks are massively crippled so they are worth even less than a sherlockholmes.txt [gutenberg.org] ASCII file, and yet have still been priced uncompetitively, almost so they won't make a dent in the centuries-old paper codex business.
The only sheeple customers who can't say no to DRM seem to be those who respond to marketing that tells them they need to buy the latest gadgets to be cool and fashionable. Why do you think iPhone buyers were so upset when the price of the phone dropped from $600 to $400 [macnn.com]? Because more people could afford to join the fashionista club.
Re:There WILL be unbreakable DRM, heres how: (Score:1, Insightful)
...nothing but impossibility.
If all the data is stored on company servers, and the company goes belly-up, then the data will only be saved by the BENEVOLENCE of someone within the company. If nobody actively chooses to save a complete data set at the time of failure, then the material is gone, poof.
OTOH, many games from dead companies have been saved purely by fans getting together, reverse-engineering a little bit of the code from their old install disks, and putting out a version that will play on modern systems or via emulation. Public-domain, abandonware, gog.com, whatever -- they can't resurrect an old title if nobody has a functional copy of the game.
To put it another way, we don't know what will be considered relevant in the future. We've lost many, many silver-screen titles, early television shows, and early works from later-famous actors due to inadequate archiving. The ordinary sit-coms weren't such a huge loss, but the sports recordings, the newsreels, the old interviews of famous people, the artistic works... A big part of that loss is a result of only one or two copies of most of these things existing, and those being in the keeping of companies with no real interest in dropping money on preserving old unprofitable junk. Fans are the ones that keep old media alive. Today, most any fan can afford a terabyte-sized drive, which will hold a LOT of media, video games or otherwise. Asking fans to trust some company out there to NOT axe 5, 10, or 20-year-old games that they probably didn't even design themselves during some round of budget adjustments is bogus.
Game companies: give me hard copy, give me a GOOD reason to connect to you (MMOs qualify), or keep your software to yourself, lest I remember your game fondly in fifteen years and not be able to replay it.
Re:I wish people would act more ethically (Score:2, Insightful)
Reading comprehension is a very useful skill. So is common sense. Do you actually think that half a dozen angry letters/e-mails will make any difference? That is, if they read them in the first place. In the real world, most people will either pay and put up with the DRM, pirate it, or not play and don't care at all. The company is trying to make a profit and the customers are trying to have fun. That's all there is to it.
You said "except Ubisoft doesn't know whether you illegally download their game or not, so pirating it and not playing it all have the same effect, that is: Ubisoft will assume piracy." You mentioned that as though it were a valid objection that the parent post had not already addressed. He did in fact address this before you said anything about it. You did not critique the way he addressed this objection. No, instead you acted like he never even thought of it.
You can bring up another, separate issue like the effectiveness of refusing to play this game and making sure Ubisoft understands why. If you would like to admit that you have failed to read and understand the initial post, I would at that point be happy to discuss this separate issue with you.
Meanwhile bringing up this separate issue in an effort to save face isn't fooling anyone. All that does is demonstrate that you cannot admit you made a mistake and are therefore not being terribly honest. That means I do not anticipate having a productive conversation with you about the gaming industry, as it's difficult to do that with someone who wants to convince me that I didn't just see what I plainly just saw.
Re:I wish people would act more ethically (Score:5, Insightful)
So... You don't like Ubisoft's DRM but since you really really like AC2, you wait for a crack then still buy the game?
Look it's your money and everything so you're free to use it however you want, but to me buying their game whilst hating their DRM is very short sighted and counter-intuitive. If the current DRM-Crack arms war continues to escalate, I fear we'll just end up with a subscription model or something so draconian that pirates might just not be able to crack. You might be able to play Assassin's Creed 2 for now; but come Assassin's Creed 3, we'll all be fucked.
I'd rather we just all stop buying Ubisoft's product now, even if that means we won't be playing their latest games, and hope that they shape up. Send a clear message to them that they're going to lose their customers and sales unless they remove their fucking DRM.
Re:Let The Excuses Begin (Score:3, Insightful)
What part about people using your software and not paying for it a 'myth'? They are simply trying to prevent non-legitimate customers from playing the game. If the DRM prevents pirates from playing the game then it is already successful.
But it's not preventing non-legitimate customers/pirates from playing the game, it's preventing its legitimate customers from playing the game do to issues with the DRM. Thus it isn't successful at all.
Re:please unthink what you have just thunk aloud (Score:3, Insightful)
"Well, some people 'can't live' without heroin either"
They 'can', it's just not very nice. I say can as I expect suicide rates would go up quite substantially if masses of people weren't self medicating often after trying the legal stuff.
People without those kind of persistant problems (such as people taking opiates for 'fun' or for pain relief) don't seem to have too many problems giving the opiate up for good. (quite a bit of peer reviewed stuff about, esp related to pain relief or things like all the herion addicts coming back from veitnam and getting clean without too many problems themselves)
Re:There WILL be unbreakable DRM, heres how: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do you think iPhone buyers were so upset when the price of the phone dropped from $600 to $400 [macnn.com]? Because more people could afford to join the fashionista club.
Lowering the in-group bar might be why some people were angry, but I really doubt it was the main motivation for the anger. Even in the article you linked it states that people were pissed because they thought Apple was gouging the loyalists with an artificially high initial price, then lowering it to hook in the normal customers. This is a valid concern, and a valid reason for some indigence.
Another possible driving factor that is stronger than your reason, is normal anger of a price drop immediately after you bought an item. If I bought a widget for $1000 then a week later, with no warning, the widget went down to $500, I would be rather pissed myself. If I had know, I would have waited the extra week and got it at the reduced price. This, too, is a valid source of anger.
I'm sure some Apple snob-types got pissed because their exclusive club got a bit less exclusive, but I doubt it was a main factor in the anger, it probably wasn't even a massive contributor to it.