SOW - with new DRM model by UBI ?

[Igo kyu]

Apparently, it's a bust.

http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/0...ked-In-One-Day

I still don't know whether SoW will be on UbiSoft.

[Blackdog_kt]

The comments on that slashdot page are hilarious

Engineering hours building unbreakable DRM: $1.6M
Marketing devoted to managing customer hostility to new DRM: $800K
Lost sales due to customers boycotting your product: $2M
Having some wiseass kid from Sweden break your DRM on the first day: Priceless
Discovering you just spent a ton of money to make the pirated version more attractive: Doubly Priceless.

The thing is, the latest stream of DRM implementations have a very ironic effect. They make the purchase tied to and dependant upon the release of a crack, ie some people buy the games thanks to the pirates. How is that so?

Well, i have frequent ISP problems. I will never buy something that doesn't work offline for single player. However, if SH5 is cracked i can buy it and install the crack on top of it and i'm good to go.

On one hand you could say the bean-counters will get the wrong message because all they look at is the amount of sales. What i would consider a good middle ground solution however, would be to buy the game, crack it and e-mail them telling them that the cracked version works better and we would prefer to buy that one if we had a choice.

I don't think DRM will survive in the long run. It's already being phased out of the music industry (where it was first introduced) and the first signs of weakness have appeared in the gaming industry as well. Look at EA. After the debacle with Spore (one of the most pirated games ever), their latest titles shipped with little to no DRM at all. For example, Dragon Age:Origins had a one-time online activation if you bought a digital download copy, while the boxed editions had a simple disc check. Look at other high profile examples as well, Fallout 3 had no protection whatsoever and it sold like mad.

In the day and age that we live in and having years of previous experience, it's naive of company executives to think they will be able to contain,railroad and manage the habbits of the PC gamer for their own needs. So, the only viable alternative for them is a very simple course of action that's been the cornerstone axiom of the market business since the ancient times: If you want to make good sales you need a good product, respect your potential customers and don't p*ss them off.

Or they can just keep chasing their DRM chimera until they go bankrupt.

[Wolf_Rider]

Originally Posted by MikkOwl

Good analogy with the supermarket there. I'm going to remember it for the future. Copyright crimes are very different in that no one is deprived of anything, unlike the supermarket analogy. But the concept of business doing something that is good/bad for them is absolutely the same.

Actually, it was a terrible analogy, though ya get used to that sort of thing

but there is something which is quite, quite misunderstand there as well, I think... a purchaser, in reality only buys a license to run the game/ sim. The inner workings/ code. etc. etc belongs to the author/ developer/ publisher.

With copyright crimes... there is a hint in there... there are losers. They would be royalties, ownership, sales profit, etc.

Could you give some more detail on your hesitation at having to be online to perform an uninstall? (similar to online activation but for removal from the system... the uninstaller throws up a code for removal verification)


There was a court case down here in Australia featuring the movie and music houses versus ISP's. The issue was forcing ISP's to monitor and flick illegal downloaders. The plaintifs hired private investigators to join up to bittorrent, etc, and log IP addresses. The IP addresses were forwarded to the target ISP (IInet, which is the smaller of the big provider) at a volume of 3,000 per week/ over a few weeks and their refusal to honour their own ToS forced the legal action (the refusal was based on the sheer volume of complaint). The case went in favour of the ISP but is in appeal.... two weeks after that, a local got busted uploading the new super mario bros game, a week before release... his out of court settlement to nintendo was a ridiculous amount of money - AUD$1.5 million. The Federal Government here is battling to have installed a China type site/ keyword blocking service through the ISP's.

[T}{OR]

Originally Posted by virre89

What a bunch of sissys , so IF BoB would require an internet connection you'd actually skip it? I know Oleg already confirmed they won't go down this road more or less, however some people are just so pecky it's both funny, ridiculous and retarded at the same time. But fine if you wanna miss out on ROF and SH5 , it's your loss no one else, and frankly i would've liked BOB to have a constant Internet connection requirement as well just as a principle.

If a DRM stops you after years of waiting i feel sorry for you and how you value the products.

The World doesn't rotate around you, you do know that?

Jokes aside, I don't want to reply in aggressive manner, like your post sounds - instead I will say this: not all people have internet connection, especially the crowd that plays SH5. There are two different roads publishers can take:

1/ Intrusive, draconian DRM style, which will only make them loose sales because people do not like to be forced to do certain things. And, like any car can be stolen, so can any software protection be cracked.

2/ More open to the community and buyers, by offering quality products and add ons to those that have the original copy. This is just the tip of the iceberg, there are many ways in which they can profit much more than the obvious message they are giving to the buyers now, which is: 'we do not care'.

[MikkOwl]

Originally Posted by Wolf_Rider

Actually, it was a terrible analogy, though ya get used to that sort of thing

Heh heh. I thought it was good, because he was only talking about smart business as far as selling copies went. The supermarket is much like the game developers in the sense that by having unguarded easily accessible collections of good scattered about, people in there can easily grab them. And some of it gets lost. They could do it in other ways to minimize theft, but they don't, because they earn more profit in the open way.

but there is something which is quite, quite misunderstand there as well, I think... a purchaser, in reality only buys a license to run the game/ sim. The inner workings/ code. etc. etc belongs to the author/ developer/ publisher.

Almost everyone that buys a game, considers it to be buying a product - it is theirs. Maybe not to reverse engineer and re-sell parts of the code for their own profit. But the unlimited use of it, and the ability to sell their copy of it to others. Technically you are absolutely right - there's all those 'you must agree' things popping up in order to be able to install it.

With copyright crimes... there is a hint in there... there are losers. They would be royalties, ownership, sales profit, etc.

Maybe yes, maybe no. It is a potential loss, and I think there are people who definitely would buy it if they could not copy it elsewhere, if they could justify the expenditure, if they wanted it badly enough, if they had the money, if they liked the company enough, if there was not something else they would rather spend the money on, if they were willing to risk buying something that might be very shitty, and perhaps without being able to sell their copy. Knowing who would have done what in what circumstance is impossible, and is only speculation.

A copied work does not destroy the original, and a copy in itself is not considered a "rival good" legally, and as such, not lost income. Unless, of course, someone is literally selling unauthorized copies at large quantities, and passing it off as as the official, original product/seller etc.. Like trying to sell imitation apparell with the label of the original company to people.

Could you give some more detail on your hesitation at having to be online to perform an uninstall? (similar to online activation but for removal from the system... the uninstaller throws up a code for removal verification)

(Code as in you just have to enter a code to uninstall it that is on the case/manual/disc, or actually be online and connect to some server? It does not matter much though, as my specific objections are similar for both cases).

I am concerned about the potential problems it would cause if my install become non-functional due to any reason (hardware failiure the most common, but also me messing about with tweaks in my XP Home Edition, or by modding the game). This meaning that the install could dissappear off my drive (the drive itself could have died), or that some files are missing that do not permit the uninstaller to function, or internet to function in corellation. I then see the really significant pissed off expression I would have at the prospect of having a game I bought and not be able to install it, because it was not uninstalled, without messing around with begging for them to 'authorize' me to install my game on my hardware.

I'm also just not accepting the idea that the copy does not belong to me and that I would not be able to sell it to someone else. I'm not very firm with this principle though.. For example, I use Steam, and I bought several games there, including IL-2 1946. Steam does not require me to have neither a DVD in a drive nor to be online, which is as it should. But of course, I cannot sell the games to others. I have never once sold a game to anyone in my life though so it's probably why I'm letting it slide. But principally I want to be able to. :p

I am fine with some DRM/functionality limitation. But only in non-invasive ways and in ways that do not limit my freedom with 'my copy' beyond a minimum of hassle. I have 100mbit internet fiber optic connection which flies at 12 megabytes per second, yet it, as well as my router, just is not stable enough.

There was a court case down here in Australia featuring the movie and music houses versus ISP's. The issue was forcing ISP's to monitor and flick illegal downloaders. The plaintifs hired private investigators to join up to bittorrent, etc, and log IP addresses. The IP addresses were forwarded to the target ISP (IInet, which is the smaller of the big provider) at a volume of 3,000 per week/ over a few weeks and their refusal to honour their own ToS forced the legal action (the refusal was based on the sheer volume of complaint). The case went in favour of the ISP but is in appeal.... two weeks after that, a local got busted uploading the new super mario bros game, a week before release... his out of court settlement to nintendo was a ridiculous amount of money - AUD$1.5 million. The Federal Government here is battling to have installed a China type site/ keyword blocking service through the ISP's.

Scary stuff. The EU and Sweden (my home) is experiencing similar things. The movie/record industry and some of the game industry are lobbying like MAD in all the local governments and in the EU headquarters. They build networks and manage to even, in a couple of cases, appoint corrupted judges to judge in critical cases regarding copyright infringement interpretation (The pirate bay trial).

Over 90% of the Swedish population (and we have a representative democracy system - or so we thought) is completely against the idea of copyright extending to include copying media/software for private, non-commercial use. Yet the laws that are being altered represent the interests only of the industry special interest group.

The governments are also very keen on surveilance and wire-tapping + storing all communication through ISP's and mobile phone companies of EVERY citizen in the whole country irellevant of being suspected of a crime or not, which is being implemented too. I think the two are related. Need infrastructure to carry out either of them, and they are both mutually supportive of each others' cause, so..

[HKLE]

Originally Posted by virre89

What a bunch of sissys , so IF BoB would require an internet connection you'd actually skip it? I know Oleg already confirmed they won't go down this road more or less, however some people are just so pecky it's both funny, ridiculous and retarded at the same time. But fine if you wanna miss out on ROF and SH5 , it's your loss no one else, and frankly i would've liked BOB to have a constant Internet connection requirement as well just as a principle.

If a DRM stops you after years of waiting i feel sorry for you and how you value the products.

Hi

I was absent for some time and am surprised to find so many comments.

Just to answer this comment:
The point is not to be online or not - the point is, if you like being thrown out in the middle of a dogfight because of no internet connection or a connection broken down. This - in my opinion - is a killer for my motivation even to BUY the game. Single player status is offline by definition - even if UBI wants to change that.

This problem happens much more likely with games such as SH5, where missions tend to last several hours. So - this game may not be affected so much - still I do not want such a DRM applied to it - and as said above - I would not buy it.

Additionally - customers get confused by these online options. There currently is a discussion going on (at subsim), where people lost save games because of DRM forcing them to store it online. UBI meanwhile gave them the possibility to store locally as well, but synchronizing with server saves seems to be tricky sometimes.

You like cloud computing in this way - go ahead. I shall not follow. And I do not think, that I am pecky because of this opinion, or retarded or ....

[Wolf_Rider]

fair enough mikowl... you have some good points there and interesting in your country's parrallel situation, re 'net filters.
The onselling of copy (books/ software/ music, etc) though is where the writer/ copyright holder suffers a loss in losing out on royalties.... this is the part which needs to be kept in mind.

out of curiosity, what operating system do you run?


~


it boils down to, I suppose, some peoples' right to protect their work and other people feeling it is their right to ignore that, eh?
(socialism can never work effectively without capitalism)

[tagTaken2]

Originally Posted by virre89

troll troll troll troll etc

Get out.