Ubisoft's new deal, for new games. Players must be connected to play offline...

[csThor]

Bye bye Ubisoft. Don't let the door hit ya on the way out.

Im certain that ubi are not involved with SOW anymore so i dont think this will effect it.

[Letum]

Thank goodness 1C got away in time.

[HFC_Dolphin]

Well, this limitation is still enforced with some code, so... guess what will happen.

In any case, all this piracy talk is repetitive and gets to one conclusion: People pirate only what they wouldn't buy in any case.

Proof is in everyone's home, where you can see carefully stored copies of IL-2 (or other fabulous music/games/etc.) and numerous cd/dvd copies of X-silly product being torn apart by kids, as no one cares to protect them.

[TheGrunch]

As I said on the Ubi forum...great, now I can get booted from an OFFLINE game when my wireless connection goes down. Cheers Ubisoft, that's my favourite part of gaming.

I think that in some cases software developers have themselves to blame, how many times have we all splashed out £30 - £40 on a game only to find its rubbish or full of bugs and needs patching or simply runs very badly on the PC your using. I'm not advocating piracy but i do know some of my friends will download a cracked copy of a game to try before they buy.

[TheGrunch]

Originally Posted by Tree_UK

I think that in some cases software developers have themselves to blame, how many times have we all splashed out £30 - £40 on a game only to find its rubbish or full of bugs and needs patching or simply runs very badly on the PC your using. I'm not advocating piracy but i do know some of my friends will download a cracked copy of a game to try before they buy.

Well, add to that that it's the only industry I can think of where you can get a quarter of a game's price for selling it second-hand and then the shop you've sold it puts it up for sale at 90% of its original price...perhaps the numbers are a slight exaggeration for most cases but you get the idea.

[genbrien]

Originally Posted by Tree_UK

I think that in some cases software developers have themselves to blame, how many times have we all splashed out £30 - £40 on a game only to find its rubbish or full of bugs and needs patching or simply runs very badly on the PC your using. I'm not advocating piracy but i do know some of my friends will download a cracked copy of a game to try before they buy.

I'm pretty sure a 99% that guy that made a game want it to be wright, but its the top guy with the $ that decide when to release the game, finished or not.....

Dont blame coders please

[Avimimus]

This may be fine for the average game - but it will kill the sim industry. We rely on having stable installs without automatic patching (so that we can customise the install carefully), and the community relies on having new people be able to buy second-hand copies of games often ten years after they ceased being sold by the original distributor.

It is potentially almost as much of a disaster as the EA debacle (which almost killed the genre and took out 75% of flightsim studios).

This is one more case of the high-development cost, large studio, low replay value, consol style game industry's philosophy being misapplied by management.

This will also make it impossible to play using offline (stable) machines or in areas where dial-up connections are the only ones available.

If need be I'll forgo SoW and just send Oleg's team a cheque to show my support. I may as well not enjoy the sim if the industry is doomed anyway!

Hysterically,

-Avimimus