Ubisoft Backing Off of 'Always On' DRM

[Tharic-Nar]

Among my gamer friends, there's one single word I can utter at any given time that can cause instant and very audible groans: "Ubisoft". Now, it's not because Ubisoft publishes bad games, because the reality is quite the opposite. The problem instead lays with the company's insistence on treating its customers with no respect, by punishing them with harsh DRM that can, and has, made gameplay painful or impossible.

You can read the rest of our post and discuss here.

 

[Optix]

Good stuff. Doesn't make a difference to me because I can count on one hand the number of times I've had a problem with my connection in the past 10 years. Now more people can enjoy Watch Dogs, which I'm super excited to check out.

 

[Rob Williams]

If it doesn't make a difference to you, it's because you've never wound up in a situation where it could have. I don't lose Internet very often, but if I did, and it prevented me from playing my single-player game, I don't think I'd be too pleased (almost ran into this issue once with Borderlands; net was down and I was really worried Steam wasn't going to let me on to play, since I was offline. Luckily it had).

 

[Kayden]

To answer the question Where are the numbers? I give you this excerpt from a blog I wrote entitled Why the PC is Not about Piracy:

Here’s another point about companies not being completely upfront about piracy. Earlier this month, I read an opinion article over at PC Gamer entitled “Ubisoft, piracy, and the death of reason.” For quite some time now, Ubisoft has been treating all PC gamers like criminals with over the top DRM requirements, such as being online 100% of the time to play and not saving your game locally, so losing your connection means losing all your progress. Now, long after these DRM requirements were implemented, we’re hearing about their sales. They’ve dropped by a staggering 90% on the PC. The sales on the console have not picked up in response to this dramatic drop, either. The crazy part is that Ubisoft called this a success, and analyst Patcher was quick to blame piracy, but really, where does the truth lie? The article went on to talk about a recent Ubisoft game called Driver: San Francisco and how Rock, Paper, Shotgun’s review influenced PC Gamer writer Rob Zacny to not buy this game. There were many PC basics and advanced features that should’ve been included but weren’t because they cut corners to make a quick port, obviously. The truth is this, he saw a problem with this game—and so did I from a technical standpoint, so I wouldn’t want to buy it, either.

What actually happened is that they successfully drove away their early adopting paying PC customers and the pirates just kept pirating like nothing changed, because in reality it didn't. They were still able to bypass their DRM and all you need to do is look at Assassin's Creed 2 to prove that. I think what happened is that some one high enough in the chain of command said "Hey, something is better then nothing." Thus began a change in their view of their DRM being a success from a year ago.

I agree that all that matters is that they wised up and dropped it, but I think they did it to try and prevent Assassin's Creed 3 from being pirated and bring their paying customers back. I just don't think it will be enough since it's being released in two months for the PC and any one who really wants to play AC3 and not have that online requirement, has all ready preordered it for their console.

Those who don't want to pay for it plan to pirate it anyways or they are like me and planned to wait for it to go on sale when the always on DRM had been dropped. I have done this with every Ubisoft game after that always on DRM policy started, and since I had no plans to get it because I knew the always on DRM would be there earlier this year, I have no plans to get it until next year at the earliest.

This is a problem that will haunt Ubisoft for sometime and I'm sure there are people out there spinning it's all a lie or something, thus I seriously do no think this will help sales on the PC for AC3 until it's been out for sometime for people to budget it or know that Ubisoft is serious about dropping the always on DRM.

 

[Rob Williams]

That's a great blurb, Kay. I had no idea it affected Ubi's pocketbook like that, and to call it a "success" is just laughable. I admit that I never truly realized how seriously people were taking that DRM, which was really helped by the fact that I haven't played any Ubisoft title in the past two years to any large degree. I played From Dust, but only for five or so hours.

I agree that all that matters is that they wised up and dropped it, but I think they did it to try and prevent Assassin's Creed 3 from being pirated and bring their paying customers back.

The problem I still see is... Ubisoft never admitted fault. In this RPS interview, it seemed like at multiple times we were going to get the answer we were hoping for, and it just never came. As a gamer, I really don't care enough about it because I -want- to play the games, but they know damn well they screwed up, and I'm happy to know it.

 

[Kayden]

I agree the lack of admitting fault is a serious thing, but I have 3 kids all under the age of 10 who won't openly admit they did something inappropriate or short sighted unless I've caught them in a lie or they get hurt, at least a majority of the time. I think the odds of any adult in a management position at Ubisoft admitting that always on DRM was mistake, is pretty slim.

The sad part is that when you get that high up in a company, you learn that admitting any fault in something reflects badly on the person as well as the company and that person can be replaced to save face for the company. This is why all shit rolls down hill, because if it's some one elses fault rather then theirs, they keep their job and the other person loses theirs, but they can't do that here. This was a decision from management and there is no one else to blame so they are doing the next best thing by obfuscating the issue and denying to talk about what really happened.

 

[Rob Williams]

Yes, I agree. It's still unfortunate, but whatever. I'm just glad that Ubisoft has seen the light, although it'd be hard not to with a loss like that. The gamers have spoken.