If UBI's DRM scheme is unacceptable...

[MikkOwl]

The UBI titles that had 'constant internet connection required' had that disclaimer on the boxes. This one instead is the same that SteamWorks titles use.

I read an article some weeks ago stating that UBI would withdraw their 'constant internet connection required'.

UBI publishes all(?) their games on Steam. Some of them are exclusive, such as R.U.S.E. from September 2010.

Put these infobits together and you get big arrows pointing to SoW using Steam as delivery platform. Can buy it on DVD or through Steam. Have to activate it with Steam once regardless. Patched through Steam. Multiplayer (probably) through Steam.

Steam is tolerable because it does permit playing without needing to be online. The inability to resell the product is an agreeable tradeoff from them permanently storing & delivering the game to you online whenever you want.

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by leggit

this is the 21st century....if your using a machine without internet access you really should rethink your setup....i have to agree regarding this whole copyright protection arguement its old and out of date....the FACTS are that studios are turning away from the pc platform because of the constant problem of piracy...suck it up people if you want quality games for your pc in the future its got to have some sort of DRM...you can't have your cake and eat it anymore.

Well, i agree with some sort of DRM. What i don't agree with is "i'll take any kind of DRM they throw at me". Nope, not gonna happen. If i can't play a game due to factors outside my direct control i won't support it, or at least i'll wait until it drops in price first.

And for clarification's sake, a problem within my direct control is a drivers problem or a busted graphics card. I can work to repair such a software issue or save some money, go out and buy a new GPU.

However, i can't do jack about a road construction crew accidentally cutting a bunch of fiber optic cables midway between where i live and the country's capital (where incidentally, the main hub to connections in other countries for all local ISPs happens to be).

This is not within my control and as such, it's not fit to have something that depends on it as part of the system requirements. If it is part of them, i refuse to support such a title at its initial asking price or completely.

And before someone says i got a wild imagination, this exact thing happened a couple of years ago and i was stuck with a DSL line that dropped the moment my router requested the slightest amount of traffic. Sorry, but i wouldn't pay for a car i can't drive whenever there's a storm half way across the globe, so i won't do something similar for a game either.

The encouraging bit for me is that Ubi's in-house DRM already failed and mr. Maddox himself has said he's not partial to such solutions.

I've never used Steam and i'm getting mixed opinions and reviews about it from different people. To be honest i'd prefer they have their own infrastructure just for activations and maybe an integrated multiplayer server browser, with the rest of the network traffic being exchanged between the users to keep bandwidth costs down. All the server browser would need to do is tell your installation that it needs to "talk" to a certain server/host/IP, then your PC would communicate directly with that IP address.
As long as the rest of the game runs locally on our PCs without a constant connection requirement the traffic would be cheap enough to manage for someone like Ubi, but since they went "all or nothing" on their previous DRM that flopped so badly maybe they can't afford it anyway

The ideal process for me would be something like this:
1) Go to the game's website and create an account.

2) While the sim is installing log into the website's members area with this account, go to your profile, click on "bind your account to your product key" or something similar and input the product key found in your DVD box. This tells the service that your account corresponds to the owner of a legally purchased copy.

3) Use this verified account to log into the game in order to "unlock" your installation and you're done, but ONLY the first time a fresh installation of the game is being executed.

4) Allow unlimited installs/uninstalls. This way i can grab the DVD box, my TrackIR and my stick, go to a friend's house while we're having a LAN party, install it on his PC, log in with my account to activate it and do some free advertising for the game. But how will this stop me and my friend from "sharing" one key so we can both play the game? See next point.

5) Whenever i'm connected to the internet the game communicates with the authentication servers in random intervals. It could be once a week, once a month or even every single time, whatever, but it ONLY happens when i'm ALREADY connected to the internet. If i'm not if won't ask me to.
So, if i am online and it detects that the same key is used more than once simultaneously, both players get an "multiple log-ins detected" message and they need to reactivate. I can, since i know my account details, my friend can't since he doesn't. If he likes the game that bad, he's gonna have to buy it

6) Want to take this one step further? Allow customized "client" installations without any activation required. What for? So we can fly in multi-crew with people who don't have the game yet. Restrictions for such an installation would be
a) unable to fly any single player missions (apart from 1-2 sample missions or certain QMB scenarios, hey, presto, we got a demo this way)
b) unable to host multiplayer sessions
c) able to join a multiplayer session hosted by a player with a fully activated installation, or a dedicated server
d) once joining a multiplayer session, unable to act as the only human player in the aircraft (so, no piloting single seaters for you if you don't buy the game, actually, no piloting bombers either if you don't have a registered fellow in the same airplane)
e) able to join in with a player who has an activated installation into the same aircraft, either as pilot/copilot or as a bomb aimer/gunner.

This way i could install "client" installations on all my friends' PCs and give the game some extra exposure, without enabling them to play it for free. It would just get them interested in it and they might buy it.
Out of about 10 people i regularly game with there are 4-5 that have an interest in WWII history, one i already managed to get into flying IL2 with me (he was into falcon 4.0 back in the day) but the rest think sims are "too difficult/time consuming". That's where the Tiger Moth and the multi-crew feature comes in, teaching them to fly. Sooner or later, i might be able to convince an extra two guys to buy a cheap stick and the game.

See, there are ways to do this that can be mutually beneficial to the fans and the developers/publishers alike

[TUSA/TX-Gunslinger]

Well, then you won't buy it I guess. The world won't change one iota because you didn't.

You'll miss out on whatever the product is and no one will have to listen to more discussion about things beyond their control. Ooops - I'm being overly optimistic there. No matter what DRM scheme is employed, I'm sure someone will have to listen to it somewhere.

My point was and is - there is not anything in this thread that will be said - which has even a 2% chance to change the world as we know it now - or in the future.

Just in case you don't understand where, I'm coming from - Why not focus your efforts on things in life (or sim) that you have a prayer-in-the-sky of changing?

Look, we have years of blathering to look forward to with this product and we haven't even seen it yet. Think of all the great threads to come:

- My Merlin is porked and Oleg did it
- My Daimler-Benz is porked and those whining Red guys did it
- I can't shoot and get kills like the Red guys so I'm going to subject all of you to endless streams of statistics and even start a web site to prove it
- Why can't the X do what my favorite dead pilot wrote (who I never knew anyway)

Do I have a bad attitude - or am I simply too old for the "revolt"?

S!

Gunny

[nearmiss]

Blackdog_kt

but the rest think sims are "too difficult/time consuming".

You said it all with that one sentence. If people aren't into our genre (air combat with realism) they won't be interested.

I gave a friend IL2 1946 as a Christmas present. He messed with it for about 6 hours and hasn't done anything else with it. Too much to learn to enjoy it...so back to his WOW.

I even offered to install the 4.10 and he said I could do it if I wanted, but he wasn't real interested to do any more with it. Typical gamer I'd say.

[SEE]

I work away from home four days a week but have a PC with IL2 installed (no internet unfortunately) but SP campaigns keep me occupied and happy. I asked this in another thread and wondered if it will be necessary to buy a copy for each PC?

I can bring my second PC home and connect to the internet for activation but, WOP for example, only allows a single installation and has to be deacivated before it can be installed on another computer.

[Wolf_Rider]

Hmm... dunno... despite all these comments on weak or no connection, they seem to be posting ok and I'm sure they have no hassle when it comes to updating their windows operating systems and downloading a sim patch/ upgrade, or device update.

it just strikes me as a curious situation

[WTE_Galway]

Originally Posted by Wolf_Rider

Hmm... dunno... despite all these comments on weak or no connection, they seem to be posting ok and I'm sure they have no hassle when it comes to updating their windows operating systems and downloading a sim patch/ upgrade, or device update.

it just strikes me as a curious situation

meh ... its not a big issue. people like myself that are offline at home will just keep IL2 alive and well for a bit longer Its not as if the odd older player like myself staying with IL2 is going to effect the viability of SoW that much.

It happened in the D&D community with 4th edition. Many of the older long term players elected to retain the old system and play campaigns by Piazo (Pathfinder) leaving 4th edition for the newcomers. 4th edition made a fortune out of the newcomers though.

[Blackdog_kt]

There's nothing curious about it. You guys tend to take for granted a service that's inherently bound with layers upon layers of complexity and dependencies. It leaves a sour taste to bind the use of a paid for product to something that has so much potential for unreliability and instability. Not to mention that nowadays we do have sufficient examples of such schemes going belly up or having to get changed under the combination of customer outcry, reduced sales and no dent in piracy whatsoever.

If publishers actually funded the developers with as much money as they spend on advertising and coming up with new DRM implementations maybe the developers could actually turn a decent profit to stay in the business. Make no mistake, these two are different from one another. What usually happens however is that devs do the work and get some return of investment while publishers push the crates to the shelves, get the big money and if something goes wrong they just have to abandon the developer team to fend for itself.
As a result of this, i seriously wish 1c would self-distribute in Europe too. It's no wonder more and more small, independent game developers pursue this route. Take stardock games for example. They published 2-3 titles with no DRM and made a killing despite the piracy hit since they didn't have to shoulder the overhead of a third party acting as publisher. They have grown so much that nowadays they are carrying all the AAA titles along with most of the small, independent ones and can afford to make weekly promotional offers on all of them.

This is no revolt or anything similar like it has jokingly been pointed out, just observations from recent events in the field of gaming combined with what is expected of a vendor when you buy something...you want it to WORK in a manner that doesn't inconvenience you.
If my net goes down right now the worst that can happen is losing a few lines of text on a forum i don't pay to post on, but i can still use everything on my PC that i spent money on. It's not about the actual amount of money, it's just a matter of principle and being a business with principles is what guarantees a loyal following.

As for what changes and what doesn't, if i was the only one with such an opinion then you would be right Gunslinger. Turns out i'm not however, or Ubi would still be running their always online scheme which they abandoned. I'm not glad SH5 more or less flopped, but i'm overjoyed that Ubi was forced to change their ridiculous copy protection scheme that inconvenienced only legitimate buyers, while pirates played the game just fine. Small tip: making sure your game runs worse than the equivalent pirate copy is definitely not the way to reduce piracy

Anyway, i'm not trying to step on anyone's toes or force my opinion. I'm just arguing the case that it would be a friggin' shame to lose so many potential customers when SoW has been in development for so long.

We're all just killing time and speculating here, but one thing we can agree on is that all of us want SoW to be a success. What prompted me to post is a genuine question in regards to this and nothing else. Why would any fan of team Maddox and their work want their new title to be saddled with something that could potentially cause it to have a slow launch like RoF or a fate similar to SH5?

If this, i guess purely rhetorical, question annoys people so much then they shouldn't worry about having to hear me much longer in case a problematic DRM implementations is used, as things will turn out the way they did with RoF.
I eagerly expected that title too, argued against their chosen implementation of DRM, people accused me of single-handedly sabotaging the hobby (apparently my opinion mattered not one iota but millions, all of a sudden ) and eventually my interest in the title was sapped. I left the RoF forums in simHQ, the guys flying RoF were happy doing so and i was happy not having to deal with it's initial issues (not to mention the belief blindly held by a handful of guys there that DRM was the magic wand that would ensure their favorite company stays in business)

In fact, i didn't even check out the free demo until a year and a half later when i decided to give it another chance. A year and a half.
You could argue that i'm an isolated basket case, an anti-DRM zealot, whatever. Problem for the guys selling RoF was that i wasn't the only one and it showed big time, which would indicate that maybe their strategy was wrong.
The original publisher (ND games wasn't it?) selling the title rights to the N.American one (777 studios), who in turn changed the DRM and tried to relaunch the game (the iron cross edition) proved this as plain as day, not to mention the fact that when SH5 came along many among the people who praised RoF's DRM were suddenly angry at Ubi for using a similar method

It certainly didn't flop as a game and it's much better than it originally was, but nobody can say it had the successful launch that IL2 enjoyed, with servers sprouting all around the place and massive community work in the form of skins, missions and campaigns providing added value to it.
It does have it's community doing the same things, but much later from the date of launch and to a lesser extent than IL2 did, a big reason for that being that they managed to cripple their impulse buying potential.
I remember some of their initial sales figures during their first year and it was under 500000 copies (their words, not mine), when the previous incarnation of Silent Hunter (an even more niche genre) managed to score more than a million copies.

Now why would i ever honestly want a similar fate to befall SoW?
WWI i can wait for a bit more, for u-boats i can still use modded SH3, but WWII is my main field of interest and as such, i would hate to see a game about it that's built by a company i like and respect suffer that kind of drawbacks, especially when the precedent is clearly there and the examples for avoidance still fresh.

That being said, i'm actually optimistic about SoW. Mr. Maddox more or less said he doesn't like the method Ubi used in SH5 and even if the publisher is Ubi they have changed their system after SH5's failure.

Just for the record, i do have a single title that requires online activation. It works more or less the way i described in my previous post and that's why i bought it. Oh, and it really has no problems with piracy since bug fixes, gameplay tweaks and interface improvements (much like team maddox has done with IL2) are too frequent for pirates to keep up with the updates.

[Wolf_Rider]

There's only one sector to be getting upset at, and that isn't the developers or publishers... its the thieves (the pirates), the small percentage of people that bugger it up for everyone else