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The good: Ubi is dropping Starforce. The bad: You might want to sit down.
- Thread starter Peronthious
- Start date
faceless007
Member
I was actually thinking about double-dipping on AC2 after beating the PS3 version just because the PC would still be the superior version. Screw that.
Snapshot King
Member
Hopefully this will damage review scores. It should, anyway.
brain_stew
Member
Fafalada said:
For massively multiplayer games, yes, there's no guarnatees that it'll transition smoothly to all games. There's 30 million gamers that have accepted Steam DRM system, is that not a happy compromise for the time being at least?
Maybe if Ubisoft were planning to offer something tangible from this, server side saving is nice, but its not a big enough carrot.
jaundicejuice said:
yep. It's gotten to the point where attempts to combat piracy actually drive people to pirate, since piracy is easier for the consumer than simply buying the product. It's crap like this that led me to stop gaming on PC entirely a few years back, and I was only lured back by the convenience of Steam. It looks like my stay will be short lived if this is going to be the norm going forward.
It's as if publishers are actively trying to drive away their audience with crap like this.
So what, they're actively trying to make people pirate their games now? I didn't think DRM could get more stupid. An activation at startup I can live with but this BS about being connected all the time and having to reload a save if your connection drops is the single most stupid thing I've heard in my entire life!
While Steam has proven to be an extremely successful platform, and has proven to be an extremely viable solution for the biggest blockbuster game of the year (Modern Warfare 2), you guys need to realize:
1) Not every publisher wants to give up entire control of their game to Valve.
2) Impulse, Direct2Drive, and other already refused to carry Modern Warfare 2. Perhaps Ubisoft doesn't want that happening with their games
3) While Steam is "acceptable DRM" for many enthusiasts, that doesn't mean it effectively battles against piracy. Every Steamworks game is quickly and easily cracked, unlike Bioshock which took a month to get cracked, or Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory which took nearly a year
I don't like Ubisoft requiring always-online, but at the same time, it doesn't affect my gaming scenario at all.
And I think people are underestimating the capability of what can be done when an online connection is always required. If Ubisoft is creative enough, this can legitimately hold of piracy for an extremely long time.
It'll be interesting to see what happens on release, that's for sure.
1) Not every publisher wants to give up entire control of their game to Valve.
2) Impulse, Direct2Drive, and other already refused to carry Modern Warfare 2. Perhaps Ubisoft doesn't want that happening with their games
3) While Steam is "acceptable DRM" for many enthusiasts, that doesn't mean it effectively battles against piracy. Every Steamworks game is quickly and easily cracked, unlike Bioshock which took a month to get cracked, or Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory which took nearly a year
I don't like Ubisoft requiring always-online, but at the same time, it doesn't affect my gaming scenario at all.
And I think people are underestimating the capability of what can be done when an online connection is always required. If Ubisoft is creative enough, this can legitimately hold of piracy for an extremely long time.
It'll be interesting to see what happens on release, that's for sure.
epmode said:
Sudden boycotts aren't the problem. It's the slow erosion of the player base as a result. People don't buy products to be hassled, and if you hassle them long enough, they quit buying. It's generally not a publisher-specific boycott, they just stop being customers in general.
It's something publishers never take into account because it won't affect their numbers this quarter, but the effect is there and it's very real.
I believe that long term, anti-piracy measures have taken a larger toll on PC gaming than piracy has.
This is the stupidest DRM I have ever heard of.
At least Steam will go, "hey it looks like you don't have a connection right now, you wanna restart in offline mode?" and I'll be like hell yeah and then I'll play whatever I want that's not online multiplayer.
At least Steam will go, "hey it looks like you don't have a connection right now, you wanna restart in offline mode?" and I'll be like hell yeah and then I'll play whatever I want that's not online multiplayer.
ShockingAlberto
Member
Please don't do this to Splinter Cell, please don't do this to Splinter Cell
ZombieSupaStar
Member
ok I dont get it, any "hackneyed half brained plan of drm" companies come up with (outside of a master server for huge community games like MMOs or very popular fps's), Will be circumvented. And yes I know you can play on pirate mmo servers and fps servers but well im sure that quality of service rings true with the "get what you pay for" motto...:lol
The pirates wont have to connect using this crap, they will find a way to "emulate" whatever the app is calling to and from, but the paying customer will be out on his ass when the net goes down.
either make your game an MMO, a hugely popular fps (that will still get pirated but will sell fuck millions!, or a huge popular franchise that can still outsell and make money like The Sims, Bethesda stuff, etc).
The pirates wont have to connect using this crap, they will find a way to "emulate" whatever the app is calling to and from, but the paying customer will be out on his ass when the net goes down.
either make your game an MMO, a hugely popular fps (that will still get pirated but will sell fuck millions!, or a huge popular franchise that can still outsell and make money like The Sims, Bethesda stuff, etc).
Yet the number of people who mess with shit like spoofed servers has got to be multiple orders of magnitude lower than people who deal with "regular" cracked games.ZombieSupaStar said:
The article makes it sound like saved games are only stored on the server, not stored locally at all. That means that hackers would have to:
1) Find a way to extract the saved game out of cached memory
2) Find out how to spoof the connection to the server
3) Find out how to interface the retrieved saved game with the spoofed server
4) Find out how to distribute those spoofed servers to people who actually want to play the game
And on and on and on.
I'm sure it'll eventually happen, but not any time soon. Just like Bioshock went for a month without being cracked (and then went on to sell more than a million copies on PC), just like how Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory took more than a year to be cracked, the same could easily hold true with this new system.
brain_stew
Member
Yoritomo said:
Nadeo are owned by Ubisoft.
TemplaerDude
Member
they lose more sales by doing this. people who actually care about this shit are going to read it and not drop cash on their games. this makes no sense at all.
ZombieSupaStar
Member
dLMN8R said:
im saying is the answer to piracy is to create uncopyable value by buying the game legitly, a pirate server on an mmo will not be as good as the public version with 13208912 more people (which is the whole point of an mmo) to most people. same with online fps games, sure you have a few people that get by using the pirate server method, but imo the value of legit buy far outweighs the 20 bux someone saved pirating it.
And just when it was looking like DRM wasn't going to get any stupider. 
At least Ubi doesn't have a very good PC catalog so they'll be easy to ignore.
At least Ubi doesn't have a very good PC catalog so they'll be easy to ignore.
they aren't giving up control over their games any more than using securom gives up control over their games to Sony.dLMN8R said:
A good point, I'm actually against all PC versions of a game using steamworks, I don't like the monopolistic slant it has. But I do think that games sold on steam should use steamworks and/or no additional DRM.dLMN8R said:
This is an incredibly fallacious argument. Bioshock only didn't get cracked right away because it was the very first game to use the new securom server side authentication; so no cracking group had seen it before. Subsequent games have been cracked pre-release, most notably the sims 3, so don't go holding it up as an example of DRM done right. NO drm scheme so far has been "effective" against piracy. Sure, if you want to invent a new DRM for every single game you release, it'll take longer to crack each one, but no company wants to pay for that kind of R&D. Steamworks games are "less" cracked than games using the Bioshock-esque securom since no one but Valve has the keys to decrypt them before release day.dLMN8R said:
wolfmat
Confirmed Asshole
Well, they'll probably implement a workaround along the lines of "write stuff to registers at startup, write registers to file at shutdown". Because that way, all it needs is a general UbiHack which nops the networked savegame stuff and fakes the whole net-awareness thing.dLMN8R said:
Yeah, it'll take a few weeks, I agree.
water_wendi
Water is not wet!
Sounds like Steam. ill pass.
dLMN8R said:
1) they don't have to, the game does it for them, all they have to do is watch as it happens.
2) No harder than what they've done to take out server authentication for Securom
3) Again, if the game does it all they have to do is watch how it works.
4) don't have to distribute anything, just get rid of the server requirement.
The first principle of DRM that people should be aware of is that you fundamentally can't make a secure system in which you sell decryption devices to the people wanting to crack it. Once you do, all you have is obfuscation, and that only lasts so long in an open operating environment like the PC.
magicalsoundshower
Member
Man, what a terrible idea. Also, I don't think there's been any form of "phone home" copy protection that hasn't been cracked so far.
Psy-Phi
Member
They should do this to console gamers too. Afterall, every system is capable of constantly being online. Sounds like a great idea to me, and could stop piracy AND used sales to boot because they'd have to have keys and the like associated to consoles.
I wonder how this all went down in the meetings?
Johnston: A large portion of the PC gaming-base seems to dislike Starforce for some bizarre reason, how can we replace it and still retain control over who can and can't play?
Johnson: I know, lets make a system where they have to connect to our own servers before playing the game! it works for Steam right?
Johnston: Hmmm, Johnson you're on to something. But Steam games still get pirated. So we'll have to go the extra mile and make sure they're always connected to us, from the 20 opening company logos, to the end credits.
Johnson: Won't the gamers hate that more?
Johnston: No, we'll make sure we tell them no more Starforce. They'll be so giddy this will slide right past them.
*grumble*
I wonder how this all went down in the meetings?
Johnston: A large portion of the PC gaming-base seems to dislike Starforce for some bizarre reason, how can we replace it and still retain control over who can and can't play?
Johnson: I know, lets make a system where they have to connect to our own servers before playing the game! it works for Steam right?
Johnston: Hmmm, Johnson you're on to something. But Steam games still get pirated. So we'll have to go the extra mile and make sure they're always connected to us, from the 20 opening company logos, to the end credits.
Johnson: Won't the gamers hate that more?
Johnston: No, we'll make sure we tell them no more Starforce. They'll be so giddy this will slide right past them.
*grumble*
water_wendi
Water is not wet!
Brashnir said:
Well thats the way i remember it from when first launched. And even though everyone says Steam has changed and its all good now, there will be a post every month or so about someone who couldnt change it to offline mode while their internet was down. So no thanks.
What I've seen in popular online games (both those I've worked on and others) shows a pretty even split between people that play single and multi player modes(when both are available). Actually some cases single player is dominant against what you'd expect based on the game type.brain_stew said:
It remains to be seen how new players implement and execute these things, but precedent exists that it can work.
The point is that with online games you don't have to. Portion(or possibly all) of gameplay-content is kept server-side - the only "hack" against that is to replicate the said content.Vaporak said:
The good thing about the open nature of the pc platform is there will probably be .exe cracks available shortly after launch.
Oh and this is officially pirates 1 gamers 0. They'll be the ones who won't even pay for the game, and also avoid this authentication.
Thanks for sticking it to the people who actually buy the games UBI.
Oh and this is officially pirates 1 gamers 0. They'll be the ones who won't even pay for the game, and also avoid this authentication.
Thanks for sticking it to the people who actually buy the games UBI.
rollingstart
Banned
ShockingAlberto said:
yeah, let this skip over Splinter Cell and Far Cry 3. please.
and I would like more retail games that activate with Steam. MW2 and FEAR 2 did that; was cool.
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