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Followers of the penguin, witness with me the insolence that is Ubisoft's most recent tomfoolery. Speaking to GameSpot, Ubisoft VP of digital publishing Chris Early enlightens us with what many of us knew years ago, namely that any game will be cracked and made available online given enough time and effort. Here's the kicker! Developing games that people actually want to pay for fixes this! No way!
Sounds reasonable, right? Well, as is logical, take one step forward, two steps back. As this visionary goes on, it is eventually revealed that the focus shouldn't merely be on developing better, more compelling games, rather, that Ubisoft's games should have more online services (which pirates do not have access to) built into them.
Ahhh, what Ubisoft really means is that current DRM is failing, so new DRM needs to be brought in to fix this. Got it. To my knowledge, Ubisoft does not yet have a presence on Linux, but with Windows gamers constantly getting shafted, do Linux gamers want such a company to join the fray? Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Ubisoft VP of digital publishing Chris EarlyWhat becomes key for us is making sure we're delivering an experience to paying players that is quality. I don't want us in a position where we're punishing a paying player for what a pirate can get around. Anything is going to be able to be pirated given enough time and enough effort to get in there. So the question becomes, what do we create as services, or as benefits, and the quality of the game, that will just have people want to pay for it?
Sounds reasonable, right? Well, as is logical, take one step forward, two steps back. As this visionary goes on, it is eventually revealed that the focus shouldn't merely be on developing better, more compelling games, rather, that Ubisoft's games should have more online services (which pirates do not have access to) built into them.
Ubisoft VP of digital publishing Chris EarlyI think it's much more important for us to focus on making a great game and delivering good services. The reality is, the more service there is in a game, pirates don't get that," Early said. "So when it's a good game and there's good services around it, you're incentivized to not pirate the game to get the full experience.
Ahhh, what Ubisoft really means is that current DRM is failing, so new DRM needs to be brought in to fix this. Got it. To my knowledge, Ubisoft does not yet have a presence on Linux, but with Windows gamers constantly getting shafted, do Linux gamers want such a company to join the fray? Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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It's not just the concept of online services in and of itself that people think is bad.
It's predicting what those services might actually be based on historical evidence.
Online services, especially when it becomes a companies primary method of making money, are almost always bad for the game and for gamers.
Who knows though, they might surprise us and make online services that completely leave the game uneffected or even change the game in a positive way. But the odds are not on their side at all.
That's just it: They're denying choices. In Japan, they already have DRMs that only allow you to play a movie that you BUY (NOT RENT; BUY) only a set number of times on ONLY a single DVD/Blueray player before you can't play the disk anymore, in some cases even "self-destructing" (no boom, just it wont play). Games there have very similar DRMs (like only 1 computer/console). So if anything happens to the player (like X-Box, X-Box 360 often broke), you basically lose ALL your games instantly, no refund.
Things seem to be headed in the same direction in the USA and other places. You must be young, or at least ignorant, and you haven't experienced the Golden Age of Gaming that was the whole of the 90s to early 2000s. Games used to be reasonable prices back then, even for big hit popular games, brand new were $9.00 to $29.99 (same with movies). To people who actually understand what DRM is and is doing, it means the company is telling you "This game/movie is MINE and only MINE, even if you buy it! I get to do with it whatever I want with it, even after you buy it! I can take it away at any time! You're just borrowing it for an exact amount of time that I set, for a hefty price! You're a criminal by default; guilty until proven innocent (which is NEVER, BWAHAHA!)! You deserve it you thieving pirate scum!" You can think of it as even worse than Harry Potter goblin's ideology of ownership.
And it's only gonna get worse. Trust me, I've played plenty of Ubisoft and EA games before, and they have been getting worse and worse in terms of games and DRM. I understand the allure, but I stopped playing because I wasn't allowed to play them anymore, and again the game quality was getting horrible. If you really want to play the games, at least cheap-boycott them: wait until the game gets old and the price comes down to $9.00 - $19.99 (actually the reasonable prices). Play games one generation behind in the mean time; They're MUCH better anyway, and what's the problem in waiting?
Oh come on! Their ports are not that bad, everyone seems to be panicking and I don't know what about. Honestly what is the problem, I hear complaining about Uplay all the time, all because it takes a bit longer now to launch games? Their optimisation also seems normal to me, although like I said, I play games after they get patched up.
I bought only one UPlay-reqiring game and luckily, it was in Steam sale, so I wasted only 5$ or so. UPlay service went down as usual when sale, new game, full moon or pretty much anything else happens and stayed dead for entire weekend. But that mattered little for me, as I never actually reached past login window. And by never I mean to this day, about two years later. Ubisoft support was really nice, communicative, and manually-automated, so they closed my case as "firewall problem" after few mails. Thus I never actually managed to run that game... Well, I did, but only after downloading it from TPB.
And, well, according to Steam forum, I'm not first guy to get this problem. I'm not even in first thousand. And that's only one of many ways how U-Don't-Play can prevent you from playing game that you bought. Good reason for many complains, isn't it?
/signed
Even people who were there at the time do not seem to remember what it was like back then. Everyone seems to have such short memories.
I'm among those who think that Steam for Linux has been good for our beloved OS. Gabe Newell's evangelization for Linux on the desktop has had some pretty far-reaching influence, more than (gasp) Linus Torvalds or RMS has, in fact. I have heard some complaints about indie crappy games being far too prevalent in Steam's Linux offerings, but listen to a Windows gamer complain about indie crappy games. The bitterness!
Oh, and yes, there were some amazing games that came out in the so-called Golden Age of Gaming, and most of them seem to available on GOG.com, and many are very playable using (usually) PlayOnLinux. When GOG rolls out their Linux collection, I'm sure that there'll be DOSBox wrappers and SCUMM, just as there are for Windows games which require them. It maybe that those games that they sell that do have Linux clients will offer native versions. GOG is owned by RedProjekt, which promises zero DRM, even with their upcoming online service.
Enough rambling, I guess!
I think you are missing my point. IMHO a system will work properly:
1. When that system provides a huge amount of choices, good and bad.
2. When that system has the means to auto-correct itself.
3. When the majority stake of that system is the one to define it's trends but not the only one.
I am not saying that DRM is good _but_ there are multiple layers of DRM. By presenting the worst case of DRM (Japan) you mislead and create FUD.
What I am saying is that we want multiple choices. If us, the users, are not happy with Ubisoft's DRM we will not give them our money. For example, I wanted to play Crysis 3 so badly. The fact that it was only on Origin kept me away and as far as I know many people did the same.
Linux is the definition of an open system so it's easy to auto-correct itself. We just need multiple support from big and small companies and everything will work just fine.