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[charlequin]

I'm not sure how you would demonstrate that piracy had an effect one way or the other, as you don't have a reliable control.

Actually proving it beyond all doubt is quite difficult for the reason you state, but there are plenty of situations where you can see correlations that support it -- see software sales on 360 (piratable) vs. PS3 (not piratable), see software sales on various platforms that only became piratable well into their life (which do not meaningfully decrease as a result), etc.

 

[D4Danger]

Reading this today -> http://performancetrap.org/2010/04/23/pc-gamer-boycott-ubisoft/

It sounds like PC Gamer magazine have stepped up their campaign against Ubisoft games.

In the June 2010 edition of PC Gamer magazine, Logan Decker, PC Gamer’s Editor-in-Chief, urged readers to boycott the newly released Assassin’s Creed 2 by Ubisoft, which requires a constant Internet connection to function, even though the game is played offline.

[..]

Others will just avoid Ubisoft’s games altogether, a position advocated by PC Gamer magazine. Decker refers to Ubisoft’s DRM as a “graceless, unpleasant kludge.” In reference to Assassin’s Creed 2, he writes, “Last month, PC Gamer took the extraordinary step of recommending against the purchase of an otherwise excellent game, solely on the basis of its obnoxious digital rights management.”

The magazine has since expanded its boycott recommendation to all Ubisoft games that use the verification DRM. “PC Gamer can’t recommend purchasing any game using Ubisoft’s new system,” says game reviewer Andy Mahood.

Now Assassin's Creed is cracked, I'm sure Splinter Cell won't be far behind and there's not much else they can do except move more and more stuff to the cloud which just makes the problem worse.

 

[Grampa Simpson]

Personal observation here, but most of the piracy that I see is among people who's existence is paid for by other people and who have little discernible income of their own. I see high school students and college students who have a console or computer paid for by their parents and not much other income. They know that they can get 2-3 games out of the parents per year, but if they spend their much more abundant free time working out how to get the games for close to free, and use that limited capital from their parents to buy blank discs or a mod chip, or the little materials that they need to rewrite their drive firmware. Parents are either ambivalent or like the idea because they don't need to spend significant money or hear about it. Additionally, if it ever becomes an issue with some sort of authority they can play dumb.

I think when you have an individual that has decent full-time employment they tend to purchase their games because their time is much more limited than their money. The exceptions (once again personal observation) have been coworkers that have been focused on being able to pirate the games and the tendency has been for these people to have grown up in a country where piracy is institutionalized - of particular note were (and I'm really really trying to not be racist here, but it still comes out that way a bit no matter how I phrase it) four Chinese guys that all hung out together and all seemed more interested in being able to pirate games than actually playing them.

I think that there is also another group that pirates games when it's ludicrously easy to do, and that includes the decent full-time employment people. The success of the R4 is a direct consequence of that group. I think that this group is also in danger of becoming institutionalized into that way of thinking.

My conclusion is that unless the games are really easy to copy and play, the companies are probably not going to lose much money to piracy as most of those who do pirate aren't very damn likely to buy the games anyway. Overly harsh copy protection is more likely to harm them than help them as it punishes their customers who legitimately buy the game as well as their non-customers who don't have the funds to buy games as they're spending that money on blank discs or better computer parts instead.

There has to be a better way to go about this.

 

[Hawkian]

My conclusion is that unless the games are really easy to copy and play, the companies are probably not going to lose much money to piracy as most of those who do pirate aren't very damn likely to buy the games anyway. Overly harsh copy protection is more likely to harm them than help them as it punishes their customers who legitimately buy the game as well as their non-customers who don't have the funds to buy games as they're spending that money on blank discs or better computer parts instead.

There has to be a better way to go about this.

QFGESBCFT

 

[gillty]

apparently settlers 7 has been cracked :lol

Razor 1911 proudly presents:
The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom
(C) Ubisoft

Scene-related rants & stuff:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As far as previous 'cracks' of Ubisoft's new DRM system are concerned:

Both of Skidr0w's releases show us they haven't had a look (probably
even didn't find) the actual protection code and everything hints on em
using parts of publicly collected 'challenge/response' pairs. Luckily
Assassin's Creed II is probably the only target ever where this approach
of 'emulating' the server by a static lookup will yield any measurable
success (due to a basic design flaw in an otherwise pretty neat
idea of software protection). In fact, we considered this approach as
generally too unreliable and 'unworthy' of a scene crack, so we didn't
care about doing it. Instead we opted for going for the arguably
most challenging implementation of Ubisoft's new DRM first
(emulating actual server-side game code). So here it is: The first
Ubisoft DRM crack!

@RELOADED:
Congrats on your recent advances in automating your Solidshield VM cracks.
We actually respect that. However, we wonder why you didn't go all the way
and recompiled the fixed decompiler output to optimized native x86 code as
we did as early as with Perry Rhodan (followed by Anno 1404).

Although we think there's not much merit to discussing technical details in
.nfos (mostly because it's impossible for anyone lacking the skills and
sources to fact-check these statements) we feel the need to preempt all
that made-up "they-ripped-it-from-some-unprotected-tuvaluan-multi12-binary"
bullshit that's sure to follow:

We invite anyone who is able to and interested enough in this to check the
history of scene-released Solidshield VM cracks taking into account things
like availability of possible alternate sources for the protected code
fragments at the time of release, similarity to compiled code (i.e. 'copy &
paste cracks' from differently protected or unprotected binaries), the
rebuilt code's resemblence of the original VM instructions regarding
sequence of mnemonics etc.pp. We're pretty confident (read '100% certain')
you'll come to the conclusion that we were first with respect to rebuilding
actual Solidshield VM code.

Nvm, 'mild respect'!


P.S.
Finally, there's a chance of the good ol' times coming back (when
protections had to be dealt with on a per title basis by skilled
individuals) and an opportunity of telling the sharpies from the fakers
again. Thanks Ubi! (Yup, we're actually serious about this )

 

[Sh1ner]

Is Settlers 7(?) even out yet?
*I have zero interest in the series + don't even know how big its following is.

 

[Brobzoid]

Settlers is big. But it's big with an audience that isn't 14 year old and actually buys shit, you know, sorta like Silent Hunter... -_-

 

[ymmv]

Is Settlers 7(?) even out yet?

The game came out a month ago.

 

[Deleted member 17706]

I'm very happy to see these games cracked, but I'm still not going to buy them until Ubisoft actually removes the DRM. It's too bad, too. I'd love to replay Assassin's Creed 2 on the PC and I really want to try Settlers 7 and Splinter Cell: Conviction, too, but I can't, in good conscience, give money to Ubisoft while they still operate these terrible, terrible DRM.

 

[NinjaTehFish]

I'm very happy to see these games cracked, but I'm still not going to buy them until Ubisoft actually removes the DRM. It's too bad, too. I'd love to replay Assassin's Creed 2 on the PC and I really want to try Settlers 7 and Splinter Cell: Conviction, too, but I can't, in good conscience, give money to Ubisoft while they still operate these terrible, terrible DRM.

this......ubi's lost my splintercell money....and i was really looking forward to playing it

 

[neorej]

You have links to these studies? I know there was a study that showed that people who pirate more, purchase more as well, but that isn't the same thing. I'm not sure how you would demonstrate that piracy had an effect one way or the other, as you don't have a reliable control.

http://techdirt.com/articles/20090119/1943093458.shtml

 

[Gully State]

I'm very happy to see these games cracked, but I'm still not going to buy them until Ubisoft actually removes the DRM. It's too bad, too. I'd love to replay Assassin's Creed 2 on the PC and I really want to try Settlers 7 and Splinter Cell: Conviction, too, but I can't, in good conscience, give money to Ubisoft while they still operate these terrible, terrible DRM.

Same here...buying the game and then applying the crack is a message to Ubi that it's ok for them to do this. I've decided to boycott all ubi games as there are other companies that respect my rights as a consumer.

 

[arstal]

Settlers is big. But it's big with an audience that isn't 14 year old and actually buys shit, you know, sorta like Silent Hunter... -_-

True, but if said group gets pissed off enough- they will crack their stuff, and maybe not buy the game in protest.

 

[Hawkian]

http://techdirt.com/articles/20090119/1943093458.shtml

holy shit, thanks for the link.

 

[Gully State]

Reading this today -> http://performancetrap.org/2010/04/23/pc-gamer-boycott-ubisoft/

It sounds like PC Gamer magazine have stepped up their campaign against Ubisoft games.



Now Assassin's Creed is cracked, I'm sure Splinter Cell won't be far behind and there's not much else they can do except move more and more stuff to the cloud which just makes the problem worse.

Didn't see this. It's pretty ballsy of PC Gamer to do this. Good to see a publication take a stand.