Assassin's Creed 2 Review and test of DRM

First you tell me it's not possible, then you tell me it's impractical.

It took me 10 minutes to come up with the chess situation. I'm pretty sure that if you got a group of people together and gave them a little more time, they'd think of something.

There's quite a difference in cost between running a small script on a server versus giving everybody who purchases your product a hardware key, which is really just a small computer.

 

It's always a matter of profit vs cost, if it's deemed a possible solution even if it's a solution that is going to cost more than simply forget about piracy, then fine. Just that game developers are profit makers, not police to uphold your moral values.

Having a server side code is always a balance of whether it's enough to prevent emulation and the cost incurred from having unnecessary load. You pay MMORPGs a monthly fee, and part of it is used for the maintainance of all those servers. How are you going to go about doing it for a single player game? Or are you going to start making losses just to spite the pirates?

Currently, it's not possible to win against the pirates, unless you don't mind making losses just to spite them, but they will probably laugh at you anyways.

 

There's obviously already server-side code with Ubisoft's DRM.

 

That's why it's a balance, in this case, they have too little server side code to allow it to be easily emulated and cracked. However, they can't have more lest they start making losses. I'm betting $10 Ubisoft will come out with a patch to disable any server connection needed very soon rather than increasing server sided codes. Simply because it's now pointless and they would rather make profits than to get laughed at by pirates.

 

If you think that DRM is too costly and ineffective, then that's fine. But that's a separate issue. Just don't come telling me I'm wrong when I say that's it's completely possible for Ubisoft to implement an uncrackable DRM.

 

Since you're such a genius when it comes to DRM, you should tell Ubisoft to pay you a few millions to solve their problems.

 

DRM doesn't solve any problems, I'm pretty sure that's been said a time or two in this thread.

 

i dont get it.
first you say drm can be made uncrackable.
then you say drm cannot solve any problems.

huh???

 

What he means is that his version of DRM is uncrackable, but it doesn't solve any problems because the cost of implementing it defeats any purpose of implementing it in the first place because instead of earning more money from preventing pirates you actually lose money from using such kind of DRM, and pirates will just laugh at your stupidity if you ever use something like this. However, it's still uncrackable theoretically so it's something.

Then again, doing this will greatly affect game performance anyways, and any DRM that greatly affects performance, ie starforce in spellforce 2 etc, will make the game ty, and put the game under the category of "not even going to bother pirating", so yes, it prevents pirate in another way as well.

 

ah i see.
uncrackable but useless essentially.
ok i get it

 

Fundamentally, as long as P != NP, you can implement uncrackable DRM.

No one has ever been able to show whether P == NP or P != NP, but it seems like it isn't, and as long as no one can show that is, you can implement uncrackable DRM.

 

I agree, the only way for us to show that we don't like DRM is not to buy the game.
Its like with that petition from cod mw2 players regarding those dedicated servers. Why would they (the company, game designers, etc) listhen to the consumers since they already bought the game? If people would have made the petition & reinforced it by action, namely not buying the game untill they got what they wanted, it would have been an entire different story.

Its not so difficult to organize a boycot these days, internet is the best way to do this. I think i'm gonna wait it out, maybe ubisoft will release a DRM-free version after a year or two when their income is secure. I bought the first part of AC two years after the release aswell anyway.

 

What I mean by "DRM doesn't solve any problems" is that the conversion rate from pirate to purchaser when you implement DRM is about 1:1000. Maybe that changes if ALL games implement uncrackable DRM, but there's no data to support or refute that.

 

then what is the whole point of an uncrackable drm if it costs too much, angers your customers, and doesnt increase sales?

 

Probably:

1. NOT losing sales revenue to people who pirate the game.
2. Not much point really considering all the costs ploughed into the DRM development and the negative publicity generated.

 

not really. many people who pirate will not buy the game if they are forced to pay for it, thus they are not lost sales.

it all seems like a pointless exercise. especially this phone-home stupidity.
lets say for example it actually works.
most pirates cant pirate the game but still dont buy it leading to no sales increase.
many customers who do not have cheap, consistent, readilly available hi speed internet all the time dont buy, leading to a decrease in sales.
the cost of upkeep of servers increase, leading to an eventual price increase and further enrages customers.

in all points its an epic fail. as ive mentioned previously, even microsoft who has arguably the most to lose out of piracy, and has vastly superior resources to ubi, isnt stupid enough to implement something like this.

 

According to Steve Ballmer, 90% of Microsoft employees will be working on something related to cloud services within a year. That's where the industry is heading.

 

Exactly and video games are beginning to test the waters as well. EA Sports is releasing Tiger Woods and FIFA Online where you play the game off of their servers using your web browser. And it works really, really good.

That's the future as companies want to maximize sales and minimize theft.

 

LOL!

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/98927-Ubisoft-DRM-Authentication-Servers-Go-Down

I just want to have a nice little chit-chat w/ whoever runs things over at Ubisoft.

 

in that same article, it was also mentioned that there is still strong resistance to cloud computing, and putting your essential files in some unknown server.
also im sure that MS would provide some offline mode for their programs.
imagine the lost ms office sales to travelling sales and businessmen who cannot access their files. i think they are looking deeply into this and are not doing something rash like ubi's idiotic solution.
i dont mind the phone-home solution if it were intermitent, maybe contact home base every 30 days, but not a constant internet connection all the time.

 

Uh, uncrackable DRM would solve the problem

We already understand there is no correlation between piracy and sales lost. But an uncrackable DRM would defeat piracy, but not necessarily raise sales. But that wasn't what we were talking about. Raising sales and implementing stupid DRM are entirely two different issues.

And I was serious. You could be a millionaire right now. Go, tell Ubisoft to give you the millions they spend to fight piracy and solve their DRM problem

 

i guess that's why they haven't created it.

 

If Ubisoft is really too stupid to come up with something that took me 10 minutes to think of, they know where they can find me.

 

http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/4721051016/m/7481010838/p/1

angry customers galore, many of them talking about pirating the next ubi game and using the crack for ac2.
"caveat venditor"

why wait, make millions or even zillions

 

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/ubisoft_drm_authentication_server_fail_europe_game_over

lol, fail big time.

 

Already posted earlier in the thread. But, uhh, thanks for the late update?

Absolutely, in a decade or so, most of our applications may actually no longer reside on our "PC's", but simply a server somewhere with lots of redundancies and all the data's are streamed to us in real-time.

That would pretty much stop piracy outright, but we'll see how the public reacts to his new digital movement.

 

Why are people even buying this game? I don't get it. Seems like a completely moronic DRM if I ever heard one. So much opportunity for issues. Sigh.

 

gabe newell of valve talks about piracy. skip to 3:33
he gets it. although im not agreeing with him in the price issue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87pevh2Q0hg&feature=player_embedded#

 

The issue with the servers isn't that much of a surprise, I remember farcry 2 had horrible server issues for the first few days.

 

Just read the gamespot review of the PC version for AC2, it's a shame that the DRM scheme is in place since it's actually a great game underneath all of the draconian measures. The $10 increase for US consumers probably shows you how much the DRM scheme must have cost Ubisoft to implement and how little they're going to get out of it in return.

 

Anyone know the sales figures so far for AC2 on PC?

 

i went to the mall after work today and saw ac2 retail for sale at less than 30usd in my region.
i was so tempted to buy but theres just no way i can supprt this kind of drm aside from the fact that i dont have a hi speed internet connection 50% of the time.

 

Yeah their review was awesome... we spent hours trying to connect. We had frequent disconnects from server or delays as the server tried to access gamer profile. Not only that, if you have an Xbox 360 controller, you'll find the game controls more intuitive. The problems with this game are "very prominent."

The video clips they show, the AI is extremely stupid and slow, like as if the AI was dumbed down for consoles... oh wait... every time he dual stabbed two people the third just stood around shrugging. While you are trying to get up after leaping and stabbing, I'd think the third person would stab you in the face while the two swords are still in the two dead people... That's dumb.

That sounds like joy for PC Gamers.

Exactly why should anyone who plays on PC buy this again?

 

Funny, now you said it trvelbug. As I also checked it out this afternoon after work. Price was pretty good, but knowing how internet sucks here in our country....

 

yeah i really wanted to get ac2 and SH5.
that <30usd price tag does make you think twice.
but i dont have a good connection when im not home so these would be only playable from my house. not good.
in the end i just got the dow2 expansion in steam for the same price.

 

I really hope they issue offical patches to remove this DRM. I want SH5. Great series, but just can't see buying into this crap.

 

crap indeed.
even legit owners with fast, stable connections are complaining: they cant login, it stops mid-game when the server cant connect, saved games have been lost, etc.
at first ubi said that the servers couldnt handle the number of players, then they said it was actually an attack by pirates causing the server problems. and most recently they said that it was actually inhouse server related issues.

right now there 36 pages of angry AC2 owners in the official ubi forums.
everyone is upset but no one more so than these legit owners

 

And that's why server sided DRM is not practical, look at AC2, even a simple originality authentication code is putting a strain on the server, can just imagine what happens when they decide to put half the game's code on the server.

 

False. That's where a single segment of the industry is headed. This is no different than a newspaper business saying "If we all put up paywalls, people would pay for news".

There are dozens of alternatives to Microsoft, Apple or other "big corporation" software. Some of the best are completely Open Source and free, meaning they have absolutely no desire to have anything to do with clouds.

The only thing a Cloud based solution will do is - once again - keep legitimate customers legitimate. And then them off, because no Network or internet connection is stable enough to support such technology, and probably won't be for the next decade.

 

Let alone the fact that the penetration of high speed internet would have to be near ubiquitous, redundant, and preferably wireless.

Could that happen in 10 years time? Not likely all things considered. In 25 years? Perhaps.

 

I saw AC2 at the store today, 33€ for the pc version. Normally it takes a year or even two years before a pc game is this cheap. A ps3 game costs 59€ for example.

I posted before that I wouldn't buy this game because I'm oposed to DRM, but the low price sure makes up for it. I see litle reason for people to get an illegal download, since its not expensive.

The only downside is, you need a 2.6 core2duo dekstop cpu. I doubt my 2.0 ghz core 2 duo laptop cpu will be able to handle it

edit: How can I oppose DRM if it makes games 50% cheaper?

 

You tell us. When you go to play your 50% cheaper SP game and can't because of some circumstance beyond your control like Ubi servers being down, bad connection, fussy modem/router, no wifi etc etc etc. 50% off a broken game is still a broken game. :\

 

one or two years for price to get that cheap? HUH? Usually it's a matter of a few months, unless it is a completely hot game.

 

Or a matter of days, if it's a broken game that nobody wants to buy.

 

it was even cheaper in my region at less than 30usd.
but i cant just see myself supporting a company that uses such draconian methods- whether the game works or not

 

reason its cheap...


...


no sod is buying it due to the crap drm and retailers need to shift the stock

 

Pretty funny the DRM was to stop piracy, but doing so, even further destroyed their sales profit. It's like sledgehammer to the face two times.

 

i think it's funny that the supporters were saying that it wasn't really a reasonable outcome that ubisoft's servers would go down.

then the game launches, and bam: down.

 

they even tried to blame it on a hacker attack.
super epic fail.

 

Yup, prices in Belgium are insanely high, which is why i'm so attracted by the 33€ price tag (I bought AC1 for 20€ this summer, which was like 1.5 years after the release).