Ubisoft Ditches Always-Online DRM Requirement From PC Games 218
RogueyWon writes "In an interview with gaming site Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Ubisoft has announced that it will no longer use always-online DRM for its PC games. The much-maligned DRM required players to be online and connected to its servers at all times, even when playing single-player content. This represents a reversal of Ubisoft's long-standing insistence that such DRM was essential if the company were to be profitable in the PC gaming market."
The full interview has a number of interesting statements. Ubisoft representatives said the decision was made in June of last year. This was right around the time the internet was in an uproar over the DRM in Driver: San Francisco, which Ubisoft quickly scaled back. Ubisoft stopped short of telling RPS they regretted the always-online DRM, or that it only bothers legitimate customers. (However, in a different interview at Gamasutra, Ubisoft's Chris Early said, "The truth of it, they're more inconvenient to our paying customers, so in listening to our players, we removed them.") They maintain that piracy is a financial problem, and acknowledged that the lack of evidence from them and other publishers has only hurt their argument.
About damn time (Score:2, Insightful)
'nuff said.
Yeah Right (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll believe it when I see it, not when they say it.
Financial issues? (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmm, maybe that doesn't stem from piracy so much as the constant firehose of low-quality games from Ubisoft?
You can fool people for a while, but eventually they're going to notice you're charging $50 for what other companies would release as a $10 DLC.
Finally... (Score:5, Insightful)
Finally somebody starts to get it. When you make it more convenient to pirate the game than to pay for it there's something badly wrong.
Will they patch existing games? (Score:5, Insightful)
If they patch existing games to not use this as well, I may consider purchasing one (Heroes 6). I've held off on this purchase specifically because of this.
People will just find some other justification... (Score:5, Insightful)
...to pirate. This will make no difference in the piracy rate, but it's nice for their user base.
Took them long enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
DRM serves to inconvenience legitimate users and does little to stop pirates: all it takes is one smart cow [wikipedia.org] to open the gate and all the other cows can follow.
Steam seems to provide a good service to game sellers and players: reasonable DRM to reduce casual piracy while not being hideously obnoxious (you only need to be online once to activate the game, after that you can play offline), fast downloads, decent anti-cheating protection for multiplayer games, frequent sales, millions of regular viewers (so promotions are more effective), automatic updates, very simple click-to-buy procedure without any hassle, etc. Why wouldn't game developers sell games on Steam rather than creating their own obnoxious systems?
Are you listening Blizzard? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:People will just find some other justification. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that's entirely the point. DRM or no DRM does not affect the piracy rate but it DOES impact the end-user. If the end-user's experience is affected by something that does not affect the illegitimate users then they need to re-evaluate their goals. There are extra costs in development and overhead with the implementation of DRM which must be factored into the ROI. It appears they are coming to the realization that their implementation negatively affects the end-user experience, impression of their brand, and does not provide any additional sales (which is the whole point, really) so they're on the wrong end of that ROI.
Pirates Aren't Customers (Score:5, Insightful)
When companies start realizing that they're not losing money to pirates because pirates aren't customer (or even potential customers) they can focus on things their real customers are interested in.
Re:People will just find some other justification. (Score:5, Insightful)
The people who are pirating will probably keep pirating, but it's not because of some other justification. It's because the vast majority of them are in a country or culture where it's the norm.
To countries like Armenia [tumblr.com], they don't even consider that there is DRM in a game at retail because they usually are acquiring it via bootleg salesmen or pirated downloads. It's as if the DRMed game never existed.
And that's why the one, two, and sometimes three or more layers of DRM doesn't do anything but hurt the customers in the culture where paying is the social norm.
Too Late (Score:4, Insightful)
Games (Score:4, Insightful)
Produce a game I want to play, and make it a program that I don't cringe as I try to install it.
It's not hard. Hundreds of them are on my PC at the moment. I don't think there's a single Ubisoft one among them (except some really old games before they started bundling pure shit along with their shitty games and trying to sell it for full price).
The DRM doesn't stop the pirates.
The DRM does stop me.
If it's taken you this long to listen, believe and understand what people have been saying to you for YEARS, I see no reason to reward your years of ignorance now.
Re:Took them long enough. (Score:4, Insightful)
reasonable DRM to reduce casual piracy
How casual? If they seriously cannot apply a crack, I highly doubt they can figure out how to use Steam.
But I don't believe "reasonable DRM" exists, anyway. Steam itself would be okay if you could optionally detach the games from it so that you could run them without it, but not being able to do so is what makes it DRM.
Re:About damn time (Score:2, Insightful)
'nuff said.
No, not quite. Now that they are ending their oppressive DRM, I will end my purchasing boycott.
How is this different? (Score:3, Insightful)
Can someone explain to me (because I don't own any Ubisoft PC games) how this is different than being forced to log into Battle.net even if I only want to play Diablo 3 single player?
If it's not any different, why is Ubisoft on the receiving end of such unbridled nerd rage, but not Blizzard?
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:WoW. (Score:2, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)