Ubisoft to introduce new online-enabled DRM for PC games

by Andrew Yoon on Jan 27th 2010 3:00AM

PC gamers have long been vocal about intrusive DRM programs hidden in their games. With illegal game downloads in the millions, publishers are desperately trying to find new solutions in the war against piracy. Ubisoft's upcoming The Settlers 7 will introduce a new DRM model for the company, one that doesn't require disc authentication and allows multiple installations across multiple systems. "If you own a hundred PCs, you can install your games on a hundred PCs," Ubisoft's Brent Wilkinson told GameSpy.

Central to Ubisoft's new DRM plan is its online integration. Like select Steam games, Ubisoft will require players to log-in with a Ubi.com account in order to play, even for single-player games. As a plus, the online connectivity allows saves to be stored on Ubisoft's servers, meaning players can resume a game from any computer they own. Wilkinson dismissed concerns that some players may not have a ready internet connection: "We think most people are going to be fine with it. Most people are always connected to an Internet connection."

But just in case you aren't, may we suggest AOL dial-up? It's the future, we swear!

[Via BigDownload]

Source

Tags: drm, The-Settlers, the-settlers-7, The-Settlers-7-Paths-to-a-Kingdom, ubisoft

Reader Comments (45)

Man, I remember getting one of those AOL discs in the mail like, every other day.

300 free hours!

yep, with little anime characters on the cover for no reason at all. better than most of the junk mail i've received in my lifetime.

same here, seemed like every week we'd get a new one in the mail so me and my brother ended up smashing them in the backyard as kids. good times.

uh, what's america online?

Best source of free floppy disks ever. A friend & I used to use them to transport MP3s as spanned zip files. If you'd have told us that in the future we'd have 16gb in the size of a postage stamp we'd have laughed at you.

lol, spanned zipped files... I almost forgot about doing that to cram stuff onto multiple floppies. The future (present) is good.

"Central to Ubisoft's new DRM plan is its online integration. Like select Steam games, Ubisoft will require players to log-in with a Ubi.com account in order to play."

I'm already using steam, so unless this is integrated into steam (only one login) i'm not using it.

Steam works, use it.

I have Rainbow Six Vegas 2 and the HOMM5 Collection on Steam and both of them require me to make Ubisoft accounts to play online.

It's pretty annoying.

Well I won't boycott games over their DRM, still I agree why make your own system when steamworks is free.

ROFL
that picture must be a sarcasm.

I'm glad they are making games even more annoying to play, this will certainly drive those sales RIGHT UP, compared to say, actually making the game appealing to buy and encouraging sales.

And by "appealing to buy", I mean, giving people a reason to want to purchase it.

No, putting half the game's content as pre-order/first day DLC does not do that. That just makes people irritated, and then they pirate your game AND the DLC while everyone else who actually paid money for the game gets a headache or misses out completely and hates the game.

Just bust your butts and make some original and quality games. I know, I know, "work hard for money", what a crazy concept that is! Be careful not the pull a muscle when you hold back that content to release it as DLC a week later for $10!

Oh gimme a break with your piracy justifications. No matter how appealing a game is to buy, no matter how much content it has, no matter how cheap it is and no matter how DRM-free it is, most people are still going to pirate it because they are cheap bastards who are not going to pay anything for a game they can get for free (no matter how illegal it is).

@hurasume

You're an idiot.

Ubisoft's plan baffles me even more because they've got rid of DRM before (PoP 2008 for instance, EndWar...) and it actually increased sales!

Seriously, evenkots? That's the best you can come up with?

Anyways, hurasume is right. No matter how hard companies work to discourage piracy, it still takes away a huge percentage of sales from them. You can try and dispute that all you want, but it's been proven time and time again. Stardock tried using no DRM, and paid a toll that was at least as heavy, if not heavier, than games riddled with DRM. I just wish the publishers could come up with a foolproof system to end piracy once and for all, but that looks pretty much impossible...

wcarnation is absolutely correct.

Case in point: The wii is easier to bust open than a box of cracker jacks. Softmodding the system requires downloading a saved game and a $5 Zelda rental. Then you can play whatever pirated copies of games you want. And yet, New Super Mario Wii has sold over 10 million units worldwide.

Why did it sell so well? Was its DRM scheme so hard to bypass *snicker*?

No, the game was just WORTH BUYING.

The answer to piracy is quality. DRM schemes are very easily bypassed; they only hinder people (like me) who actually buy games. People who are going to pirate software are going to do it no matter what you do to stop them.

Also, these idiot game companies forget that they have the ultimate DRM tool in their back pocket--the almighty "Cease and Desist" letter. Most of your "millions" of pirated copies of software come from torrent. Just have your legal dept. swing by piratebay once a week and mail a few C&Ds. Bing-bang-boom, the torrent goes away.

Yeah I have a gaming laptop and I travel a lot, not always to places where I have any kind of internet access. What am I supposed to do?

If history teaches us anything, you could probably pirate the game and totally circumvent the process.

BRILLIANT!

Do what I do with annoying DRM:

1. Buy the game legally.

2. Put it on your shelf un-opened.

3. Download a cracked copy from a torrent.

Job done. I'm probably one of those "Millions Of Illegal Downloads" they're desperately trying to find a solution to, but oh well.

@Rat: heh, I did exactly that with Spore and GTA4.

lol goatse

Goatse AND the insertion end of the floppy is essentially his dick.

What's a goatse?

Whats a goatse?

I don't see any goats.

great Goatse floppy :D
anyway, like brian said steam is already here so use it damnit

I knew I wasn't the only one that thought that...

Wow I remember that aol diskette, the good ole days.

"If you own a hundred PCs, you can install your games on a hundred PCs," Ubisoft's Brent Wilkinson told GameSpy.

And what if 99 of those machines AREN'T connected to the internet?

unless its like Steam and I can set offline mode, sounds pretty stupid to me, not all gamers keep their gaming machines online.

So to play my games I'll have to connect to

Steam
GFWL
this Ubisoft thing
Battle.net 2.0
those 3/4 other ones I forgot...

Wow. Publishers must think (honest) gamers just can't get enough of those flashy online services!! Now that's a real great trade for LAN support, dedicated servers and the second hand market!

Yay! PC-gaming becomes better and better...

The second-hand market = GameStop

Oh great, who will be the winner in the five-minute race to crack it? Consider this floccinaucinihilipilification.

This is a horrible idea and well pirates already have cracked this stuff before.
This just dropped sales numbers seeing as no one is gonna want there saves stored online and the games won't work years later once ubisoft kills the service or something.

Uhhhh I would like to have my saves saved online as an option....I have numerous PCs I play games on

As I vacation this week with no internet access on the plane and having to go to Panera daily to get on the internet at my parent's house, I wonder if Ubi have lost their minds.

It's just another convincing reason to pirate the game.

Sure, my gaming machine is a desktop therefore it IS always connected to the internet. What about my laptop? Sometimes I want a gaming fix on the go. At least with steam you can set it to go into offline mode. And why make another login? Just program your game to work beautifully with Steamworks and get Steam to sell it.

No one wants your shitty DRM

"Well I won't boycott games over their DRM, still I agree why make your own system when steamworks is free."

Because Steamworks is free for you not the dev/publisher. Because creating your own system allows you better control and probably saves money for the publisher since they can host all of their games on their system.

"If history teaches us anything, you could probably pirate the game and totally circumvent the process."

Not if the code to run the game is on the server and delivered encrypted. If Ubi isn't doing this you can be sure that it will be coming very soon. Expect this to be the first salvo and many publishers to follow suit to fight piracy.

I like the universal savegame feature, but I wish this was on Steam.

Is DRM ever going to work in the consumer's favor? It's 2010, people.

This will work fine until someone realizes they can't play single player games when their internet connection dies.

I think someone should make a one time registration which involves verification and accountability.

For example, a person puts in their full name and mailing address. Then the company will send them a postcard which requires some sort of key which they are given online. Then the user mails the card back. The player would be allowed to play during this process.

And then they would just register new games under this verified account.

That sounds like something from 1992.

People will end up pirating the games and going straight to playing, while people who actually bought them have to wait on the post and go through all these check systems.

It's ridiculous.

This news makes me sad. : (
Also sad that Joystiq didn't credit my name. : (

So what about the people who dont have an internet connection? I havent had the internet connected at home for 18 months, so unless i purchase a console, im pretty fucked

Sorry, you must be logged in to leave a comment.

Breaking News

The most popular posts
in the last 7 days

Vita 'UMD Passport' won't be offered in US 220 comments
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning review: A tempting fate 152 comments
David Jaffe leaves Eat Sleep Play, layoffs hit developer [Update] 107 comments
Don't call it a remake: Final Fantasy X is a 'remaster,' to be clear 95 comments
Battleship movie adapted into FPS by Double Helix 93 comments

Ubisoft to introduce new online-enabled DRM for PC games

Reader Comments (45)

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 3:04AM Ezio Auditore da Firenze said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 3:09AM SecretAgentHam said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 3:22AM s ls said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 4:11AM AntiVillian said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 5:47AM Pete said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 11:11AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 3:06AM BrianH said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 3:21AM wcarnation said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 8:19AM bigE said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 3:10AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 3:12AM wcarnation said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 3:17AM wcarnation said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 4:33AM harusame said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 10:41AM Dismissile said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 11:10AM Unvrfd said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 11:09AM Rikerbot said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 2:35PM JCDoe said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 3:17AM SpanWolf said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 3:19AM wcarnation said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 4:13AM AntiVillian said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 4:37AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 11:13AM Unvrfd said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 3:18AM GoldandFinal said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 3:20AM wcarnation said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 11:01AM AngelTheSeaguy said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 11:02AM AngelTheSeaguy said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 2:17PM Bslashingu said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 3:20AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 4:17AM Problem Medic said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 2:05PM nos879 said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 4:22AM Hivetyrant said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 4:39AM derdaim said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 11:20AM Unvrfd said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 5:05AM phizzyphizzy said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 5:51AM Sleepyperson said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 6:30AM Chris DPSN AggieCEO XBLThe Aggi said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 8:21AM spin cycle said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 8:40AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 9:15AM Machiavellian79 said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 9:37AM WiNGSPANTT from TopTierTacticsco said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 9:41AM Van said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 10:07AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 11:03AM wcarnation said

Posted: Jan 27th 2010 11:08AM RKN said

Posted: Feb 19th 2010 10:25AM (Unverified) said

Info

Description

MSRP

Release Date

Genre

Developer

Publisher

Rating

Breaking News

Double Fine Kickstarter passes $1 million in under 24 hours, breaking yet another record

Featured Stories

Ghost Recon: Future Soldier brings information warfare to the front

Rhythm Heaven Fever review: Crazy into you

Remedy not done with Alan Wake

The most popular postsin the last 7 days

Engadget

TUAW

Massively

WoW

The most popular posts
in the last 7 days