RUSE won't use Ubisoft's controversial DRM

@BrianH

Not until it removes the always on DRM from its OTHER titles.

@Ballistic H Steam has a competent offline mode. The last time I actually connected to Steam on my laptop was like six months ago and my games still work fine in offline mode.

@acceptablerisk

Is that new? I've never been able to log into Steam if my internet is down.

@Ballistic H

That's been that way for as long as I can remember and I've used steam for years.

@Ballistic H
All you have to do is set steam so it doesnt auto-login to your account

@Ballistic H

In the Steam client menu, go to Steam and pick Go Offline...

That'll save a copy of your profile locally. If you shut it down while in offline mode, it'll ask if you want to connect the next time it starts up. You can tell it to stay offline for as long as you want. Also, I believe once you run it in offline mode once, if it can't get a connection when trying to start in online mode, it'll offer to start in offline mode, instead.

@Ballistic H
Does Steamworks have different rules than traditional "Steam"? I thought it was the same thing and they just slapped a name on it for marketing reasons. According to this, Steam's offline play ability is permanent for the machine the game is installed on.
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3160-agcb-2555

@Ballistic H

You kind of have to take a minute to set it up yourself. You need to make sure Steam remembers your password automatically. Then you need to go into settings and make sure the "Don't Save Account Credentials" box is unchecked. Finally and most likely obviously, you need to make sure the game is !00% ready to go.

My internet went down for about 4 hours last night, and I was able to play Just Cause 2 offline off Steam with no problems.

Dammit! 5+ years of using Steam and I always thought you had to be online to be able to log into Steam.

T_T

@sigma8
Steamworks is an API which developers can integrate into their games for free. It lets devs add stuff like voice chat, matchmaking, leaderboards, achievements, authentication, chat rooms, etc. like Xbox Live.

@Valient
The tighter they make their grip, the more sales will slip through their fingers.

That said, someday someone is going to make a Death Star DRM. It will probably be a legal thing. Like they'll pick a college with a fairly high degree of piracy and just sue everyone who goes there into the stone age, whether they're guilty or not.

@Diogenes Yeah, most gamers don't care about companies trying to make a profit and trying to protect their work. Most here just care about satisfying themselves and spending time getting offended by DRM.

@Diogenes The problem is not that they are defending their games against pirate but the way they go about it, punishing everyone that purchase the game with this draconian DRM is stupid and still gets cracked. So in the end only the one that pay for it end up suffering.

BTW almost all recent games on 360 are online being pirated before the release, for example right now kane and lynch release on 8/17 is circulating out there.

I know for sure they lost sales on their games, i didn't buy it because of their DRM both settler 7 and AC2.

@Diogenes

gears of war was bullsh**t for the pc. full of bugs that never EVER were corrected, and then they wonder why it didn´t sell?? that is of course in case it didn´t, but i seriously doubt that they only sold one copy right?? epic don´t release anything for the p.c. because Microsoft wants those games for the xbox only, period. Piracy has nothing to do with this, and here are the sale numbers of starcraft to prove it, a p.c. only game, or the witcher, a game that sold more than 1 million units on the p.c. only and a game which was not a known franchise. ubi soft games are at best average, they haven´t created anything really new or exiting for a long time, and if the p.c. market were as bad and no profitable as they have said, then why they keep creating games if they only sell one copy on the p.c. market and billions on the consoles?? simple, those are lies, they don´t lose millions of copies with the p.c. and they don´t sell billions on the consoles, consoles are as pirate-proof as the p.c. right now there are many different ways to run games on the wii and the xbox without chips or modifying the console, that´s the true, but look what happens when a good game appears on the p.c it sells, but if the game is crap and doesn´t sell well, you can always blame piracy.

@Diogenes Steam protects it as well as ubi's drm without bothering users.

@Diogenes

Gears of war is a terrible example. You had to set your computer clock back to install a patch to play it, and it used GFWL which causes further difficulties. Companies have a right to protect their software, but treating paying customers poorly and causing them to put up with DRM that doesn't work is unacceptable.

@Diogenes

I completely respect your viewpoint, and sincerely appreciate the articulate, intelligent, organized way you express it, and for the most part, I agree.

Content creators have a right to get paid.

However, DRM in general, and Ubisoft's ridiculous "always-on" scheme in particular, is not the way to do it.

If Ubisoft expects users to buy their works, any anti-piracy measures they implement must not limit the functionality of the products. Period. There is no excuse for an "always-on" DRM scheme, especially for games like Assassin's Creed 2 with no significant online content. I mean, I don't like the idea of any game constantly verifying that I am not a criminal, but when it won't let me use something I bought, that's simply out of line and out of bounds.

If I were an archvillain and had taken over the planet, I would make Ubisoft pay dearly for such insolence. I think for starters having very large men in black follow around their CEO and board members every day, never saying anything unless they get out of line and then suddenly smacking them really hard in the face when they do, would be a good start.